What exactly happens at Absolute Zero

Join the discussion
Registration is free. Ask a follow-up in this thread, or start your own.
33 replies · 37K views
mgervasoni said:
I have a question, and please be nice as I am a new lover of physics:

As I understand:
1: The Bose-Einstein Condensate says the passage of light / photons can slow down at very low / near absolute 0 temperatures.
2. Einstein's theory of relativity states that the speed of light in a vacuum is the constant of the universe, not space or time or space-time, as Newton assumed.
Questions 1:
What happens inside this slowing of the passage of light in relation to (space)time? If we could slow down light, say, all around us, what would be happening?Question 2:
Is reaching absolute 0 impossible, or possible but we haven't figure out how yet?

Clarified one of your statements. As for absolute zero, thanks to quantum uncertainty, it is not reachable. Although scientists have gotten ridiculously close.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Thanks for clarifying that makes a huge difference.. but I still don't accept theories with the word quantum in the front.. maybe someday tho I'll be forced to.
 
mgervasoni said:
Thanks for clarifying that makes a huge difference.. but I still don't accept theories with the word quantum in the front.. maybe someday tho I'll be forced to.

If you don't accept them, then you don't accept that things like transistors work? Lasers? They work exactly as described by Quantum Mechanics. It is not a coincidence.

mgervasoni said:
Isn't a free electron, electricity (electric current)?

Nope. A free electron is just a free electron.
 
Just think of it as a prediction tool. Science is concerned with describing behavior and making predictions, not what something "really is." While I know incredibly little about quantum mechanics compared to many people here, I still highly doubt that the wacky world it describes is "true." However, whether it is true or not is completely irrelevant to the theory's validity.
 
Last edited: