Temperature

[WeAreBongo]

Is absolute zero the coldest possible temperature? Is there a maximum possible temperature?

[lord molly]

absloute zero (-273*c) is apperently the lowest attainable temperature, due to an extrapolation of a graph measuring temperature against molecular activity. Absloute zero is the temperature at which all molecular and intramolecular movement stops, according to known laws of physics. it is acully impossable to reace absloute zero, as you will never be able to know when you have reached it, as no known means of measuring the temperature would work, hence th need to extrapolate that last degree or so.

as for the highest tepmerature, nobody hay yet discovered it, as there seems to be no limits to heating, as the matter would just move through the four known states of matter; solid, liquid, gas and then plasma, but temperatures higher than several million degrees are only limited by the technology we as humans have. such high temperatures require vast ammounts of electricity and safety precautions, all adding to cost. curently the highest temperature is about 12,000,000*c in a fusion reactor
the temperature was so high magnets had to be used to stop the gas touching the side of the reactor tube as it woud have gone straight through the sides.

[jake-the-peg]

Temperature is a measure of the amount of energy in something.

Yes absolute zero is the lowest temperature possible because by definition there is zero energy. You can't actually get to zero energy because when you get very low you start to get tiny quantum fluctuations that give you a very small tempreature.

Temperatures down to 200 billionth of a degree above absolute zero were managed about 10 years ago to get a new phase of matter called an Einstien-Bose Condensate and that was beaten again a few years ago at 50 billionth of a degree to get something called a Fermionic condensate.

This is massively colder than anything you'd find anywhere in space

I can beat Lord Molly's 12million degrees with 2 billion degrees:
http://www.livescience.com/technology/060308_s andia_z.html

The problem with very high tempreatures is that you have to start being careful about what you mean.

Normally we think of temperature as a measure of how much the atoms and molesules are bouncing about. Already at these temperatures the atoms have broken into electrons and nucleii. When we look at the collisions in nuclear accelerators we see that when subatomic particles hit eachother hard enough they are distroyed and new and short lived exotics come into existance.

In these sorts of collisions, which are like the conditoins in the early Universe the idea of tempreature becomes a bit meaningless and we start talking about the energy of the particles.

The new accelerator at CERN will be able to give particles 14,000,000,000,000 volts worth of energy (14TeV) which if you stretch the meaning comes out at a few trillion degrees

[styley]

I read the other day that scientists somewhere recently made a temperature of 950,000 approx degrees C.

[kujawski]

so how quick would it take to boil an ostrich egg then?

[JPChenet]

I reckon at 2 billion degrees you could boil a whole ostrich.

What Gas Mark would that be?