- #1
milks
- 1
- 0
ello
first of all appologies for my fuzzy knowledge and termanology, its been nearly ten years since I have studied physics in any form.
Watching a BBC documentry the other week 'Star on Earth?' with Prof. Brian Cox, he talked of how a gram of matter has the same amount of energy as that which is released during a nuclear explosion (I think this must be comparing to one of the early nukes).
Now I believe also that when matter is cooled to absolute zero it ceases to exist as all the matter has been converted to energy, though this has never been proven.
Given these two facts, surely to cool all the equipment of the CERN LHC to near absolute zero must require extracting unthinkable amounts of energy?
My understanding is that temperature and energy have a linear relation. So to heat a mass by one degree requires a fixed amount of energy regardless of the starting temperature of the mass (assuming constant pressure and that the mass is not at the cusp of changing state).
My question then is does cooling a mass to nearly 0°K really require extracting as much energy as a nuclear explosion per gram, or is there some kind of latent heat/energy of existence, similar to the energy overhead required to change the state of matter e.g. the latent heat of fusion? Perhaps latent heat of tactility would be more descriptive for this case.
first of all appologies for my fuzzy knowledge and termanology, its been nearly ten years since I have studied physics in any form.
Watching a BBC documentry the other week 'Star on Earth?' with Prof. Brian Cox, he talked of how a gram of matter has the same amount of energy as that which is released during a nuclear explosion (I think this must be comparing to one of the early nukes).
Now I believe also that when matter is cooled to absolute zero it ceases to exist as all the matter has been converted to energy, though this has never been proven.
Given these two facts, surely to cool all the equipment of the CERN LHC to near absolute zero must require extracting unthinkable amounts of energy?
My understanding is that temperature and energy have a linear relation. So to heat a mass by one degree requires a fixed amount of energy regardless of the starting temperature of the mass (assuming constant pressure and that the mass is not at the cusp of changing state).
My question then is does cooling a mass to nearly 0°K really require extracting as much energy as a nuclear explosion per gram, or is there some kind of latent heat/energy of existence, similar to the energy overhead required to change the state of matter e.g. the latent heat of fusion? Perhaps latent heat of tactility would be more descriptive for this case.