Going Lower than Absolute Zero

didnt neone read my posts!!

See, but now we're changing what we're doing to the ball....
In the ball analogy, we used temperature as a linear scale on which the ball is on...
And anyway, nuclear charge and electromagnetic attraction keep electrons in their place...
I'm sure someone must be able to find data online that shows that depsite various temperatures, the electrophoton emission frequency will always be the same (this is used in mass spectroscopy)....

This is how we analyze light from the stars to find out what they are made up of, and we compare it to data we find by combusting hydrogen, etc, on our planet... So temperature doesnt affect it

I just love thinking about the impossible and trying to find ways to surpass everything science limits....

Well i was thinking, if you were to stop all the moving atoms, and try to go past absolute zero would not the atom become smaller in size..

Think of the ball

You have a ball. (atom)
It is rolling. (room temp motion)
It slows down. (freezes and slows down)
It stops. (absolute zero)

since the ball cannot "stop" anymore then wouldnt it shrink in size...

Im not sure of this its just a vague idea that came to mind when reading this post

From Merriam Webster:

heat (noun):

(2) : the energy associated with the random motions of the molecules, atoms, or smaller structural units of which matter is composed

So at absolute zero, motion stops. If you went beyond it (never happened that I know of), the particles would just get colder.

As a human, if you freeze to death, even if you get colder you won't get more dead. Also, when many things freeze (such as water) they actually get larger, not smaller. Of course, no matter how could you make water, once it is frozen it does not get larger just because you lower the temperature.

If the water comment confuses you, just think of the size of a snowflake verses the size of a raindrop. Snowflakes can be considerably larger.

You might want to consider what would happen around absolute zero with varying pressures. The two are related, but create different effects on matter as they vary up and down.


It's been a while since I've taken Chemistry, but a good example of the relationship between pressure and temperature are seen in the Ideal Gas Law:
PV=nRT

From Wolfram Research (the guys who make the software Mathematica):
scienceworld.wolfram.com...

A law relating the pressure, temperature, and volume of an ideal gas. Many common gases exhibit behavior very close to that of an ideal gas at ambient temperature and pressure. The ideal gas law was originally derived from the experimentally measured Charles' law and Boyle's law. Let P be the pressure of a gas, V the volume it occupies, and T its temperature (which must be in absolute temperature units, i.e., in Kelvin). Then the ideal gas law states
(1) PV=nRT

where n is the number of moles of gas present and R is the universal gas constant

This probably doesn't help the topic much, but it is very important in learning Chemistry.

Absolute Zero:
scienceworld.wolfram.com...

The temperature at which all classical molecular motion stops, equal to 0 Kelvin or -273.15� Celsius. However, quantum mechanically, molecules cannot cease all motion (as this would violate the Heisenberg uncertainty principle), so at 0 K they still vibrate with a certain small but nonzero energy known as the zero-point energy.

Uncertainty Principle:
scienceworld.wolfram.com...

A quantum mechanical principle due to Werner Heisenberg (1927) that, in its most common form, states that it is not possible to simultaneously determine the position and momentum of a particle. Moreover, the better position is known, the less well the momentum is known (and vice versa).

In this principle two things are taken into consideration, position and momentum. If you froze a particle, you'd know its position, but then it could have any momentum (although you'd assume this would be zero). Why is this important? Just because you freeze a particle doesn't mean that another property will come into effect and counteract your freezing it. Think of dumping snow on a pizza inside of an oven. Particles are designed not to freeze (THIS IS A VERY GOOD THING). Ahhh... the miracles of existence.

Originally posted by robertfenix [...] BUT what happens when it no longer spins, does it lose the atomic structure as we know it ? [...]

This is the interesting part of this question for me. If at the point of AZ you remove all entropy (for this question that's defined as however you are understanding that, be that spin, motion, heat and such) ... then what would happen to the atomic structure.

Maybe nothing, thinking it through a bit more - if there is absolutely no energy in the system at that point then nothing can happen, you'd just have a lump of stuff - the same stuff pretty much that you had just above AZ maybe - but absolutely inert, (as distinct from almost inert as it approached AZ).

Hmm, that's kinda rationalised myself out of a potentially interesting thought there.



Oh well, I guess I'm in the 'not-reverse' side of this discussion. AZ is simply that. Absolute - unless I'm wrong of course.

Originally posted by Protector
Perhaps this is a better way to look at the situation:

You have a ball. (atom)
It is rolling. (room temp motion)
It slows down. (freezes and slows down)
It stops. (absolute zero)

Can you stop a ball that has already stopped? No.

Antimatter is actually theorized to be the topological opposite of matter. This means that the structures of matter can un-make the antimatter through a complex mathematical structure (they can combine and unravel).

Why? Photons and Antiphotons are identical, yet still destroy one another. How can 2 things be identical, but destroy each other instead of collide? Think of computer encryption. If you read the encryption you see nothing. If you know the encryption key you can't see anything, unless you apply it to the encryption itself. Thus, once the encryption is matched up with the encryption key, the secret coding is "undone" and only the original message is left.

If matter does come to a halt, it may have a number of effects, but we already know that matter and antimatter will annihilate one another (with only small fragments left behind in most cases).

matter and antimatter particles have opposite electrical charges

How would 'being cold' reverse a charge? It doesn't make any sense...

How could an atom 'work in reverse' ? You mean the electron orbitals would spin the other way or what? This wouldn't affect anything I don't think? It would be like a planet orbiting the sun in an opposite direction. Nothing would change?

And surely if the charges reversed as someone said they think they would, then they wouldn't do it at exactly the same time? So the atom would in theory destroy itself (everything repelling everything else).

But still, I don't think it would work. Everything would just stop...

(Sorry if this has been said but I couldn't bare reading 3 pages of the same stuff)

Regards,
Ash

Originally posted by A5H

How could an atom 'work in reverse' ? You mean the electron orbitals would spin the other way or what? This wouldn't affect anything I don't think? It would be like a planet orbiting the sun in an opposite direction. Nothing would change?

If a planet orbiting the sun suddenly changed direction and started going the opposite... wouldnt the seasons change on the planet... such as Northern hemisphere would have winter during the months of june, july, and august... and the southern hemisphere would have winter in the months of december, january, february..

Originally posted by Kazkek

Originally posted by A5H

How could an atom 'work in reverse' ? You mean the electron orbitals would spin the other way or what? This wouldn't affect anything I don't think? It would be like a planet orbiting the sun in an opposite direction. Nothing would change?

If a planet orbiting the sun suddenly changed direction and started going the opposite... wouldnt the seasons change on the planet... such as Northern hemisphere would have winter during the months of june, july, and august... and the southern hemisphere would have winter in the months of december, january, february..

Even if that happened (I don't think it would), then nothing would happen to an atom? Atoms don't have seasons

atoms aren't small solar systems,its much more complex than that

Originally posted by DarkSide
atoms aren't small solar systems,its much more complex than that

Oh please do elaborate...
Protons, neutrons, electrons... hardly the most complex thing in the world

I haven't read the entire thread, so it may be that someone has already said this. The answer to your question depends on your definition of temperature. If you define the amount of random movement of the particles in the system as the temperature, it is obvious that you can't go below absolute zero. Moving in a direction requires the same energy as moving in the other direction.

However, temperature can also be defined as dS/dE, the change in entropy in respect to a certain change in energy. In that case, negative temperature can occur. [url=http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/neg_temperature.htmlThis article[/url] has more information about that.

My theory is that if we could cool an item to below absolute zero that we would create anti-matter. You reach the point where all atoms cease to move and go beyond I beleive once you go beyond the atoms start to operate in reverse causing anti-matter.

The way it was explained to me; you have to have the anti-matter first in order to get below AZ.
What?

Originally posted by PinGear

My theory is that if we could cool an item to below absolute zero that we would create anti-matter. You reach the point where all atoms cease to move and go beyond I beleive once you go beyond the atoms start to operate in reverse causing anti-matter.

The way it was explained to me; you have to have the anti-matter first in order to get below AZ.
What?

Isn't that the very essence of the answer.

Whatever stuff you have, be that matter, or for the sake of completness 'antimatter' - under conventional understanding there is nothing beyond AZ. That's it - it's a line, an Absolute.

At this point there is no energy in the system, no further activity is possible.
(Unless it's some kind of non-euclidean edge, in which case it simply cannot be reached and the question never has to be considered).

I'd say, (yeah right, like what do I know ) that it's a question that cannot really be asked as there is no way to describe the answer. Much like the "what happened before the big bang" question - even if it were possible to imagine, would we have the understanding or the linguistic tools to describe it ? What if the very laws that led to that singularity ceased to exist at the point of origin, and new laws were a consequence of that event ?
What if at the point of AZ, the laws that exist in physics no longer apply ?

(Not helped the debate much tho').

Oh please do elaborate...
Protons, neutrons, electrons... hardly the most complex thing in the world

i'm guessing you've never learned about the more simple quantum mechanics.

the thing is, electrons DONT orbit the nucleus like in a planetary model, as suggested by Rutherford (?). They exist at different energy levels, and attempt to stay in the lowest state possible. as for what someone mentioned earlier (i think?) about the quantum number representing spin, the +/- is just to denote clockwise or counterclockwise spin for a pair of electrons in one orbital (correct term?)

also, my personal thinking follows exactly like your ball model, once stopped, you cant stop more.

I sort of see why you'd think it would be smaller, cus if you pressed on something that is resisting you, it does get a bit compressed...
BUT...thats completely different from removing heat from an atom. once all the heat is gone, you cant take more. "Cold" is not a thing in its own, it is the absence of heat.

hope what i learned in chem this semester is good enough ^^

Originally posted by ZetaGundam007

Oh please do elaborate...
Protons, neutrons, electrons... hardly the most complex thing in the world

i'm guessing you've never learned about the more simple quantum mechanics.

the thing is, electrons DONT orbit the nucleus like in a planetary model, as suggested by Rutherford (?). They exist at different energy levels, and attempt to stay in the lowest state possible. as for what someone mentioned earlier (i think?) about the quantum number representing spin, the +/- is just to denote clockwise or counterclockwise spin for a pair of electrons in one orbital (correct term?)

also, my personal thinking follows exactly like your ball model, once stopped, you cant stop more.

I sort of see why you'd think it would be smaller, cus if you pressed on something that is resisting you, it does get a bit compressed...
BUT...thats completely different from removing heat from an atom. once all the heat is gone, you cant take more. "Cold" is not a thing in its own, it is the absence of heat.

hope what i learned in chem this semester is good enough ^^

Electrons don't orbit the nucleus? What is this? Suddenly chemistry has changed?
(Also feel free to name anything other than protons, neutrons and electrons, that exist in an atom)
I am aware that the electrons are arranged in 'shells', incidentally made up of 2, 8, 8 etc electrons respectively...
Then they also have energy leves, s, p etc etc...

Originally posted by Esoterica
We can make antimatter now.

As for going below absolute zero, well, it's when the material isn't moving at all. You can't be moving slower than 0.

What if it slows down a 4th dimension, like time? The particle is standing still in 3 dimensions but what is it doing in the other 6 (7 in string theory) dimensions? Do gravitrons become trapped and unable to move with unlimited freedom? What would be the result of that?

DarkHelmet there is also dust in the darkness of space becuase if nothing was there the there would be zero pressure and everything in space would expand to fill it. that why a balloon collapes whebn you suck the air out. because nature wants to fill th spaces with nothing in them. And i dont believe you cant below zero because, you would take all the energy out of the particle and since all matter is made of energy the particle would be destroyed.

absolute zero is a theoretical limit because nothing can reach it because it would mean the particles have an energy level of zero and there isn't an energy level of zero. the lowest energy level is 1, this is zero point energy level.
at absolute zero all particles stop moving even photons stop, pressure also stops as it results from particles colliding with each other. so the volume remains constant.
as for spin being negative some fundamental particles do have negative spin due to them having differing pairs of quarks. charge is also the same.
anti-particals simply have opposite values of spin and charge other then that they are the same as normal particals.
also the positions of electrons around a nucleus are uncertain due to the principal of improbabiity so are somewhere in a ring around the nucleus this is where orbital shells come from.

Originally posted by BlackJackal
My theory is that if we could cool an item to below absolute zero that we would create anti-matter. You reach the point where all atoms cease to move and go beyond I beleive once you go beyond the atoms start to operate in reverse causing anti-matter.

Hmm, actually, having thought about this a bit more, I have a degree (oops, no pun intended) more appreciation of this theory now. I wouldn't go so far as to agree with reverse thing causing 'anti-matter', but (and it might just be sematics) but, if one could actually reach AZ, then what would actually happen to the stuff involved ?

Clearly it's properties would alter, possibly to as yet, 'unkonwn' or 'new' states - if a system has no energy, what actually happens to it's atomic structure, surely the shell cannot 'collapse' as that would require, and produce energy (or mass), so what other options remain then - is it left as an inert lump of whatever it was, or of a lump of something new, or does it simply cease to exist ... (See, maybe it's just semantics after all - is the opposite of 'matter', 'anti-matter', or is it the absence of matter [or energy come to that] ?) ...

(This arguement could just as easily involve the entropy in entirely anti-matter scenaio's too, I'd say) ...