but what is the hottest it can get? firstly it is pretty
much accepted that Absolute zero, that's
zero degrees Kelvin, or -459.67 degrees Fahrenheit is understood by textbook
definition to be the absolute coldest anything can be, a temperature threshold
at which atoms actually lose all of their kinetic energy and stop moving
completely (or at which entropy reaches its lowest value), there can be nothing
stiller than completely still, and hence absolute zero is as low-energy as
something can go, so to the other extreme how hot can it get?
the
short answer is 141,679,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Kelvin, give or take a few zeros, the
most straightforward candidate for an upper limit is the Planck Temperature, or
142 nonillion (1.42 x 1032) Kelvin (K)—the highest temperature allowable under the
Standard Model of particle physics, but temperature comes about only when
particles interact and achieve thermal equilibrium, this from Stephon Alexander, a physicist at Dartmouth University, “We just don’t know whether we can take energy all the way up
to infinity, but it’s theoretically plausible, to
have a notion of temperature, you need to have a notion of interaction",
back to our days fishing, it was hot that day.
No comments:
Post a Comment