Seeking 'absolute zero', copper cube gets chillingly close

a reply to: puolikuu

You're phone is sluggish when it's very cold, not because of the electronics, but because of the battery.

Batteries don't like the cold as much as electronics do.

originally posted by: nOraKat
So what would happen if you licked it?

You have to lick it three times to reach the chewy center. One, tuh-hoo, thrrrreee. Three.

originally posted by: MysterX
a reply to: puolikuu

You're phone is sluggish when it's very cold, not because of the electronics, but because of the battery.

Batteries don't like the cold as much as electronics do.

Thank you for clearing that up, mate

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

I

absolute zero, while given a numerical value, really equates more to a state that the matter is in, not a temperature. Temperature relates to the amount of energy within the item. In this case, absolute zero means that there is no energy present.

I'm pretty sure that someone much smarter than me stated that energy can't be destroyed. No energy at all sounds like picking apart a cornerstone of science, unless we are just no longer able to detect that energy.

originally posted by: QuietSpeech

I'm pretty sure that someone much smarter than me stated that energy can't be destroyed.

It can't, but you can move it somewhere else. See also: refrigeration.

a reply to: puolikuu

The sluggishness is not really the battery, if it was, the phone would crash. Drops in power delivery are the biggest source of freezes in computer systems.

The sluggishness you see is actually the response speed of the LCD slowing down at lower temperatures.

The technology is called a dilution refrigerator, it is not really new tech. Many universities have them for various experiments. in this case it was for a double beta decay experiment called Cuore

www.lngs.infn.it...

Im actually surprised lots of people here didn't start out with "Its a waste of money"

a reply to: ErosA433

this is the correct answer.

originally posted by: ErosA433

Im actually surprised lots of people here didn't start out with "Its a waste of money"

You never know what you're going to find pushing limits.

Maybe it would be some Kantorian thing ala Greg Bear - reduce a sample of atoms to absolute zero and use them as a proxy for the information structure of other atoms. Change one, change the other.

originally posted by: puolikuu

An Italian lab has cooled a cubic metre of copper to within a tiny fraction of "absolute zero", setting a world record, the National Nuclear Physics Institute said Tuesday.
"The cooled copper mass... was the coldest cubic meter in the universe for over 15 days," the INFN said on its website. "It is the first experiment ever to cool a mass and a volume of this size to a temperature this close to absolute zero (0 Kelvin)," it said.
The cubic meter, or 35 cubic feet, of copper weighing 400 kilogrammes (880 pounds) was brought to a temperature of six milliKelvins or minus 273.144 Celsius (minus 459.66 Fahrenheit).
Absolute zero—considered the lowest possible temperature—is -273.15 C or zero on the Kelvin scale, named after 19th-century Irish engineer and physicist William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, credited with establishing the correct value of the temperature.

link

So close to absolute zero, but still so far.
Is it even possible to reach absolute zero here on earth? I mean, it's so mindbogglingly cold.. Better think of this when the winter hits to keep us all warm and cozy inside

I wonder if the scientists were "double dog daring" each other.

a reply to: NavyDoc

I'm old enough to have sacrificed finger meat to a metal ice cube tray:



You quickly learned not to grab them with damp fingers...

eta: "double dog dare" is a phrase we often used. Occasionally, the "triple dog dare" was issued. Not sure why canines were involved.

a reply to: nOraKat

Ha-ha, that was the first thing that came to my mind also. How sad is that, I guarantee you would be tongueless relatively quickly.

Makes me wonder how much did it cost and whats the point?

originally posted by: markovian
just cool stuff

cant wait to see what happens when we reatch this

the furture of tech i is suppercooled

look at cpus u take a modern prosessor down to -50 and its 10x faster overclocked ofcourse

imagin taking down to that temp

im always fasinated with the cold and electronics as all electronics love the cold

Cray did that 40 years ago with the Cray-2. They used Fluorinert to cool the rack-packed circuit boards down to freezing temperatures.

archive.computerhistory.org...

www.extremetech.com...

These days, your average Playstation 3 or Xbox One console system or smartphone has more computing power

If you do a search on Science board, there is a thread of scientists achieving a negative temperature, below the absolute zero. The result is the molecules started moving again but the temperature was starting to go in the negatives.

originally posted by: Heruactic
If you do a search on Science board, there is a thread of scientists achieving a negative temperature, below the absolute zero. The result is the molecules started moving again but the temperature was starting to go in the negatives.

I'm not sure I understand this. Are you saying that the "molecules" increasingly slowed down as the temperature approached absolute zero but then started moving again as that threshold was passed in the negative?

If so, I would think that bears much further study...

originally posted by: Heruactic
If you do a search on Science board, there is a thread of scientists achieving a negative temperature, below the absolute zero. The result is the molecules started moving again but the temperature was starting to go in the negatives.

Bogus. I've seen it used in SF twice, though. Alan Nourse and Greg Bear, if I recall.

a reply to: Riffrafter

I'm not saying i remember every word. Just the gist of it. Please do not quote me as a source =D.

Tsk Tsk people, been there done that

A simple Google search found this quantum gas experiment that went below absolute zero.

Researchers force a gas to a temperature below absolute zero
phys.org...

And this video explains it faster if you don't want to read all that.

Scientists Freeze Quantum Gas Down to Below Absolute Zero
www.youtube.com...

Now granted, it was not a solid block of copper, but still very cold and freaky too !

originally posted by: Jeroenske
Tsk Tsk people, been there done that

A simple Google search found this quantum gas experiment that went below absolute zero.

Sorta. Kinda. Not really:

"The inverted Boltzmann distribution is the hallmark of negative absolute temperature; and this is what we have achieved," says Ulrich Schneider. "Yet the gas is not colder than zero Kelvin, but hotter. It is even hotter than at any positive temperature – the temperature scale simply does not end at infinity, but jumps to negative values instead."... At first sight it may sound strange that a negative absolute temperature is hotter than a positive one. This is, however, simply a consequence of the historic definition of absolute temperature; if it were defined differently, this apparent contradiction would not exist.

So this is all wrong and misleading ?

Using lasers and a magnetic field to manipulate an ultra-cold gas, the researchers, as they describe in their paper published in the journal Science, managed to coax the temperature of the gas to a few billionths of a Kelvin below absolute zero. Read more at: phys.org...

Absolute zero was first defined by Lord Kelvin back in the mid 1880s, as the lowest possible temperature state, where atoms stop moving. The temperature scale bearing his name starts at that lowest point, but over the past several decades, scientists have discovered that there are exceptions to the rule and that at least theoretically, it should be possible for a system to produce conditions where temperatures fall lower than absolute zero. This is possible, they say, because the temperature of a system is generally considered to be the average energies of the particles in it. Most hover around a certain point, with a few moving to higher levels. But, when the system is turned upside down, with most of the particles exhibiting higher energy levels, and just a few have lower energy, the system is reversed as are the temperature signs, indicating temperatures below absolute zero. Read more at: phys.org...

To turn such a system upside down in the real world, the physicists started by chilling a quantum gas made up of potassium atoms to near absolute zero. They used lasers and magnetic fields to force the atoms into a lattice pattern. At temperatures above absolute zero, the atoms naturally want to repel one another, keeping the system stable. But by adjusting the lasers and magnetic field, the researchers were able to force the atoms to attract one another, essentially, turning the system on its head. At positive temperatures, they note, such a system would quite naturally be unstable – to force it to be stable, the team also adjusted the lasers that held the atoms trapped in place. Doing so, they report, resulted in the gas transitioning to a temperature below absolute zero. Read more at: phys.org...

And is it not hotter because they flipped this system by going Below absolute zero ?