Highest Possible Temperature

BL4CKCR4Y0NS

With a lot of energy.

Nah actually ... I don't think we've ever artificially heated any substance to such high levels...

Lok

The hottest things we heated were the particle collisions from various experiments. Don't know the energy involved, but that is the only indication of temp.

BL4CKCR4Y0NS

But it did they actually reach Planck?

Lok

Clearly not, but why bother. It's just a number.

BL4CKCR4Y0NS

It's not JUST a number... and plus, it would be a nice achievement. :D

Lok

It's just a mathematical gizmo number thingy that is not necessarily of any significance ... and it is an achievement only if you get something out of it, otherwise it is just a number.

BL4CKCR4Y0NS

Okay fair enough ... =]

But you can't say that it wouldn't be an achievement if we reached absolute zero ...

Lok

Although highly unlikely that we will ever reach it, that would really be an achievement. Still from what I know zero energy is highly forbidden.

The close to 0 BE condensates are truly important and clearly an achievement in making.

uraveragechum

No, the scale from cold to hot in Kelvin should be...
0 K,...500 K,... Inf. K,... - Inf. K,... - 500 K,... - 0 K

Here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature

But I was just asking for clarification...

SpectraCat

No .. this is just an effective definition, much like negative mass, that can be useful in certain well-defined and restricted cases like the ones given in the examples on the Wiki page, but it not correct in any absolute sense. For that to be true in the absolute sense, there would have to be an upper bound on the number of energy states of the universe, and no such limit is known to exist AFAIK.

Furthermore, the fact that it is not useful or correct in the absolute case can be understood by looking at the temperature scale you posted ... it goes through infinity (!!!) and comes out the other side, which is clearly nonsense for a direct physical observable such as temperature. How could you measure negative temperatures with a thermometer? It would violate the zeroth law of thermodynamics, since an object with negative T could never be in thermal equilibrium with an object with positive T.