Less than absolute zero

Is absolute zero less absolute than we thought? What is normal to most people in winter has so far been impossible in physics: a minus temperature. On the Celsius scale minus temperatures are only surprising in summer. On the absolute temperature scale, which is used by physicists and is also called the Kelvin scale, it is not possible to go below zero . For the specific heats at least, the limiting value itself is definitely zero, as borne out by experiments to below K.

Even the less detailed Einstein model shows this curious drop in specific heats.

In fact, all specific heats vanish at absolute zero , not just those of crystals.

Likewise for the coefficient of thermal expansion. These scientists are of course not fakers, but many science journalists are overhyping legitimate and valuable but NOT revolutionary new sometimes . Absolute zero is often thought to be the coldest temperature possible. Oddly, another way to look at these negative temperatures is to consider them hotter than infinity, researchers added.

ABSOLUTE zero sounds like an unbreachable limit beyond which it is impossible to explore. An improved way of getting there, outlined last week, could reveal new states of matter. In colloquial usage, negative temperature may refer to temperatures that are expressed as negative numbers on the more familiar Celsius or Fahrenheit scales, with values that are colder than the zero points of those scales but still warmer than absolute zero. Through an elaborate approach—harnessing lasers and rapidly-flipping magnetic fields—the scientists figured out how to push atoms to temporarily take on energies below absolute zero.

Researchers imagine that if new materials could somehow be made out of below-freezing atoms, then they would probably act in some mighty strange ways.

Thus, it is impossible to create such temperature because the device to cool will itself break because it can not handle absolute 0! As the lowest possible temperature state, where atoms stop moving is absolute zero less than we . Nothing can be colder than absolute zero. However, scientists have defined negative temperatures, which has more t. The researchers operated their negative temperature system so close to absolute zero that there were only . Despite the near universal desire to find the other-worldly in the everyday, there is . By this definition the temperature cannot go below zero. On the Kelvin Scale, the absolute temperature used by physicists, it is not possible to get colder than zero degrees kelvin.

There can be nothing stiller than completely still, and hence absolute zero is as low-energy as something can go.