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Posted on 06/18/2025 12:46:24 PM PDT by Red Badger
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If you have not watched any of Sabine Hossenfelder’s videos on yewtewb, I highly recoomend them.
I’m in luuuuuuv ...
(I don’t always agree with her ... but then I don’t always agree with myself.)
That question makes no sense. First of all things can’t be “twice as cold” since “cold” is not a physical concept but rather the absence of molecular energy. Speaking loosely, “twice as cold” would really mean “half as hot”. Since temperature is a measure of “hotness” (or more accurately, molecular energy), if the temperature is absolute zero, you can’t get “half as hot” (half of zero is still zero). The question is analogous to saying “if you build a house at the North Pole, what would you see when you look north from your house?” The question just doesn’t make sense.
There is a lot of confusion on this. Einstein has been wrong about a lot of things. He was wrong about the universe being static. He was wrong about randomness in quantum mechanics. People confuse “Einstein was wrong” with “general relativity is wrong”. Examples like the ones I gave and like this example are examples of the former. It by no means implies that Einstein’s theories, especially relativity, are wrong.
Probably fine for 9th grade, but that form of relativity was already well
known long before Einstein. It was actually Galileo who first made an argument for simple relativity of velocities. He argued (using the fastest method of transport in his day — ships) that a person picked below deck on a smoothly traveling ship has no way of determining whether or not the ship is moving. An insect onboard would fly in all directions with equal ease and speed. A fish in a bowl would swim at the same speed in all directions within his bowl.
Galileo assumed, though, (incorrectly as it turned out) that if you go 50 mph one way and someone approaches at 50mph in the opposite way, that the relative speed of the two people would be 100 mph - that is velocities are additive. The reason it took so long to figure out that this is wrong is that for low velocities they are approximately additive with the deviation too small to detect. Only at speeds approaching light speed would there be noticeable deviations.
You are thinking classically. The classical treatment of the atom was actually one of the main driving forces that led to quantum mechanics. Not only at absolute zero would there be an issue with the classical picture of electrons orbiting the nucleus, but regardless of temperature, atoms could not exist in this model. An accelerating electrical charge produces electromagnetic radiation. To orbit the nucleus, the electron must be accelerated (accomplished by the electrical attractive force the nucleus exerts on the electron.) This radiation reduces the energy of the electron, and therefore the electron would eventually lose its velocity and fall into the nucleus.
This picture is modified by quantum mechanics. The electron bound in an atom is not orbiting the nucleus. The idea of the electron as a tiny particle with a definite position at any given time and a definite velocity is not a valid one. The electron is better treated as a delocalized standing wave rather than a particle. The standing wave under ordinary circumstances constructively interferes with itself at certain locations in the space around the nucleus. The electron always, even at absolute zero, possesses a zero point energy. The atoms and molecules as a whole lose their kinetic energy, but the zero point energy of the electron is constant and does not depend on temperature.
Keep in mind I’m just thinking out loud.
For an electron to have zero-point energy at absolute zero means that there can be energy absent movement. I’m having a difficult time assimilating that concept.
Energy is either based on movement or it is untethered to reality.
Again, just dipping my toes in! LOL
Good post on string theory—nailed it.
And you get perfect electrical transmission at 0 Kelvin.
Just a hint on how science can go wrong (in general terms).
Experiments showing X provides a satisfactory explanation for phenomenon Y—and Experiment X continues to do that under controlled conditions.
Science then concludes that X causes Y.
Why is that a problem?
Because then science stops. They conclude they have found the explanation.
But—suppose there is another unknown phenomenon (Z) that has never been a part of any experiment.
One hundred years from now somebody tries Z and it also causes Y.
Now there are two possible explanations that are both possible—but scientists accepted the first one.
Centigrade or Farenheit?
We have all seen people fight over things like:
Ginger or Maryann or which football teams are the best etc.
Imagine being in a room with Einstein and Walther Nernst when they argue....
Einstein: Maryann!
Nernst: Ginger!
BTW they used the time travel machine their buddy H. G. Wells invented to view the tv show Gilligan’s Island.
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