Negative temperature.

Some time ago the question was asked of the Cs "what is the temperature at the earth's core"? The rather bizarre (and seemingly nonsensical) answer was "-40K". And we all know that nothing can be colder than absolute zero, right?

Well maybe the Cs knew something that we didn't... ;)

http://news.yahoo.com/atoms-reach-record-temperature-colder-absolute-zero-193405195.html

Atoms Reach Record Temperature, Colder than Absolute Zero
By Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor | LiveScience.com – 3 hrs ago


When an object is heated, its atoms can move with different levels of energy, from low to high. With positive temperatures (blue), atoms more likely occupy low-energy states than high-energy states, while the opposite is true for negative temperatures.

Absolute zero is often thought to be the coldest temperature possible. But now researchers show they can achieve even lower temperatures for a strange realm of "negative temperatures."

Oddly, another way to look at these negative temperatures is to consider them hotter than infinity, researchers added.

This unusual advance could lead to new engines that could technically be more than 100 percent efficient, and shed light on mysteries such as dark energy, the mysterious substance that is apparently pulling our universe apart.

An object's temperature is a measure of how much its atoms move — the colder an object is, the slower the atoms are. At the physically impossible-to-reach temperature of zero kelvin, or minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius), atoms would stop moving. As such, nothing can be colder than absolute zero on the Kelvin scale.

Bizarro negative temperatures

To comprehend the negative temperatures scientists have now devised, one might think of temperature as existing on a scale that is actually a loop, not linear. Positive temperatures make up one part of the loop, while negative temperatures make up the other part. When temperatures go either below zero or above infinity on the positive region of this scale, they end up in negative territory. [What's That? Your Basic Physics Questions Answered]

With positive temperatures, atoms more likely occupy low-energy states than high-energy states, a pattern known as Boltzmann distribution in physics. When an object is heated, its atoms can reach higher energy levels.

At absolute zero, atoms would occupy the lowest energy state. At an infinite temperature, atoms would occupy all energy states. Negative temperatures then are the opposite of positive temperatures — atoms more likely occupy high-energy states than low-energy states.

"The inverted Boltzmann distribution is the hallmark of negative absolute temperature, and this is what we have achieved," said researcher Ulrich Schneider, a physicist at the University of Munich in Germany. "Yet the gas is not colder than zero kelvin, but hotter. It is even hotter than at any positive temperature — the temperature scale simply does not end at infinity, but jumps to negative values instead."

As one might expect, objects with negative temperatures behave in very odd ways. For instance, energy typically flows from objects with a higher positive temperature to ones with a lower positive temperature — that is, hotter objects heat up cooler objects, and colder objects cool down hotter ones, until they reach a common temperature. However, energy will always flow from objects with negative temperature to ones with positive temperatures. In this sense, objects with negative temperatures are always hotter than ones with positive temperatures.

Another odd consequence of negative temperatures has to do with entropy, which is a measure of how disorderly a system is. When objects with positive temperature release energy, they increase the entropy of things around them, making them behave more chaotically. However, when objects with negative temperatures release energy, they can actually absorb entropy.

Negative temperatures would be thought impossible, since there is typically no upper bound for how much energy atoms can have, as far as theory currently suggests. (There is a limit to what speed they can travel — according to Einstein's theory of relativity, nothing can accelerate to speeds faster than light.)

Wacky physics experiment

To generate negative temperatures, scientists created a system where atoms do have a limit to how much energy they can possess. They first cooled about 100,000 atoms to a positive temperature of a few nanokelvin, or billionth of a kelvin. They cooled the atoms within a vacuum chamber, which isolated them from any environmental influence that could potentially heat them up accidentally. They also used a web of laser beams and magnetic fields to very precisely control how these atoms behaved, helping to push them into a new temperature realm. [Twisted Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings]

"The temperatures we achieved are negative nanokelvin," Schneider told LiveScience.

Because tTemperature depends on how much atoms move — how much kinetic energy they have. The web of laser beams created a perfectly ordered array of millions of bright spots of light, and in this "optical lattice," atoms could still move, but their kinetic energy was limited.

Temperature also depends on how much potential energy atoms have, and how much energy lies in the interactions between the atoms. The researchers used the optical lattice to limit how much potential energy the atoms had, and they used to magnetic fields to very finely control the interactions between atoms, making them either attractive or repulsive.

Temperature is linked with pressure — the hotter something is, the more it expands outward, and the colder something is, the more it contracts inward. To make sure this gas had a negative temperature, the researchers had to give it a negative pressure as well, tinkering with the interactions between atoms until they attracted each other more than they repelled each other.

"We have created the first negative absolute temperature state for moving particles," said researcher Simon Braun at the University of Munich in Germany.

New kinds of engines

Negative temperatures could be used to create heat engines — engines that convert heat energy to mechanical work, such as combustion engines — that are more than 100-percent efficient, something seemingly impossible. Such engines would essentially not only absorb energy from hotter substances, but also colder ones. As such, the work the engine performed could be larger than the energy taken from the hotter substance alone.

Negative temperatures might also help shed light on one of the greatest mysteries in science. Scientists had expected the gravitational pull of matter to slow down the universe's expansion after the Big Bang, eventually bringing it to a dead stop or even reversing it for a "Big Crunch." However, the universe's expansion is apparently speeding up, accelerated growth that cosmologists suggest may be due to dark energy, an as-yet-unknown substance that could make up more than 70 percent of the cosmos.

In much the same way, the negative pressure of the cold gas the researchers created should make it collapse. However, its negative temperature keeps it from doing so. As such, negative temperatures might have interesting parallels with dark energy that may help scientists understand this enigma.

Negative temperatures could also shed light on exotic states of matter, generating systems that normally might not be stable without them. "A better understanding of temperature could lead to new things we haven't even thought of yet," Schneider said. "When you study the basics very thoroughly, you never know where it may end."

The scientists detailed their findings in the Jan. 4 issue of the journal Science.

This is really some ground-breaking stuff, very amazing.
It is incredible how such a thing, considered to belong to abstract theories
or even science fiction, proves to be real...
I guess this is another hit for the C's, given that -40K reference.
I wonder what's next, discovery of negative mass? Or magnetic monopoles?

It's refreshing to see new discoveries that potentially turn current 'understanding' on it's head - you'd think it would make people more open minded to possibilities.

Maybe you're right, good catch!

I've thought about the physical property of entropy at times for a while now (it's easy to do while you're smoking ) and wondered if the physics are different in a physical 3D STO world in that regard. Maybe this test is demonstrating that they are, if the absolute zero barrier is being broken and entropy is being reversed with negative temperatures. So maybe an STO world has a "negative" temperature in general (though they might regard our positive temperatures as negative, from their perspective) and so entropy isn't one of the fundamental underlying physical properties of their reality, as it is ours.

Very interesting article, rs! Thanks for sharing.

I made a mistake, it was stated as being -55K, not -40K.

Session 31 October 2001

Q: (A) I want to ask about this magnetic pole reversal. It's the current theory or understanding of magnetic field of planets in terms of dynamo mechanism, where there is a liquid metal - iron - which is hot - there are convective currents, and there is self-excitation through magnetic field. That's the present model. They were able to model this magnetic pole reversal using this kind of magneto-hydro-dynamics. Is this model essentially correct?
A: Only partly.
Q: (A) What is the main thing that is important, and that is lacking from this model?
A: Crystalline ammonia core.
Q: (A) Everybody thinks that the core is a crystal iron; that's the present thinking. Say it's an ammonia core: is an ammonia core in all planets with magnetic fields? Is this so?
A: From this perspective, no but from the perspective of organic life, yes.
Q: (A) When we speak about crystalline ammonia, do you mean a new kind of crystalline ammonia that is not yet known on Earth to our scientists?
A: More or less.
Q: (L) I think we need to find out something about this crystalline ammonia. (A) What would make it go into the very core? (L) I don't know. We don't know enough about it to even know how to frame a question. I know we thought it was crazy when they were talking about Jupiter and the ammonia, and then of course all this ammonia shows up on Jupiter. And I remember them saying something about this at the time, but I don't think we ever followed up on it because I thought it was even to crazy to think about. Maybe we need to find out something about ammonia, crystalline ammonia. (A) Is there a mini black hole in the center of the Earth?
A: No.
Q: (L) I remember when I was a kid - this is a funny thing - we got this kind of chemistry experiment. You put these chemicals together and it grew crystals. I think ammonia was part of it. I think you had to use ammonia to grow crystals. (A) Okay, now this crystalline ammonia core inside the Earth, can we have idea how big it is, what radius?
A: 300 km.
Q: (L) What is surrounding it, what is the next layer? (A) Normally people would say it's an iron crystal. What is the next layer?
A: Correct.
Q: (A) There is this ammonia - crystalline... (L) Surrounded by iron crystal. Is it crystal iron? (A) Probably at this pressure that is here, it may very well be crystal. (L) Okay, is the iron surrounding the ammonia, is it crystalline?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) What's the next layer?
A: Molten iron.
Q: (A) Okay, now we know that some planets have this crystalline ammonia, and some do not. When we consider planets that have this crystal ammonia inside, how did it get there? Was it a kernel first around which the planet was formed, or first the planet was formed and then during some processes the ammonia sank and crystallized inside? I would like to know how it got there?
A: It is the natural formation process for ammonia to accrete iron from supernovae.
Q: (L) I read somewhere - about supernovae - that the only reason we have iron is because it's produced in supernovas. That would mean that our solar system is formed from a supernova, right? In which case what blew up and when? (A) I understand that this crystalline ammonia core - 300 km radius - must have certain magnetic properties which are important. Because it was mentioned that it was lacking in dynamo theory or certain very important properties concerning heat convection. So there are these two main things in dynamo theory - conductivity and electric properties - on the other hand heat convection properties. Why is this ammonia important for the magnetic field because of what properties?
A: Super conducting.
Q: (A) According to what we know it's very hot inside the earth because of the pressure. Now, is this ammonia also hot, as much as iron?
A: Grows alternately cold and hot.
Q: (A) Is it super conducting even if when it is very hot?
A: No.
Q: (A) When it gets cold, how cold does it get?
A: 55 degrees below absolute zero.
Q: (L) What is absolute zero? (A) That is something you can't get below. That's why it's called absolute zero. It's a new thermo-dynamics. (L) How often does it alternate?
A: Close to hour long periods.
Q: (L) So when it gets so cold and becomes super conducting, the act of super-conducting is what heats it up? Is that it?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Well once it heats up, how does it then get cold again?
A: It stops conducting.
Q: (L) What is it conducting? When something is super conducting what does it conduct?
A: Electrons.
Q: (A) The point is, you see, that when something is super conducting it offers no resistance. Which means that the current it flows through it, is not heating it. Well we learned that it gets hot because it's super conductive, right? Which is somewhat contradictory because when it is super-conducting there's no reason for it to be hot except it can become hot because there is the hot external shell of iron. So that is very likely why it would become hot. Because by the very definition of super conductivity you don't become hot when you conduct, see? Well, if there are big, very big currents, then okay, they can stop super conductivity, then it gets warm.
A: Currents of this nature set the surrounding iron to vibrating which produces heat, not heat produced by the current.
Q: (A) Now, I want to go back to this 55 degree below absolute zero. And here I would like to have a confirmation of this 55 degree below zero. Because. according to the current knowledge of physics, the absolute zero was set by definition, as the temperature on the scale, according to the science of thermo-dynamics, which is - so to say - nothing moves so you cannot go below this temperature. If you say 55 degrees below zero it means we have to redo physics and redo thermo-dynamics.
A: You have entered a different realm.
Q: (A) What?
A: Lack of movement as measured by physics is based upon 3rd density conventions.
Q: (A) What causes this appearance of new physics in the center of the planet? We do not see this need for new physics around us. But somehow there are specific conditions, apparently, in the center of the planet that cause necessity of entering this new physics.
A: Windows.
Q: (L) Let me ask this, if it was possible to measure a temperature of something that was being subjected to a very intense electro-magnetic field what would it show? (A) Well the question is different, you see, because we asked first about why there is this ammonia crystal inside, okay? The answer was it was a natural process. But now we see there is this window inside. What is the reason that there is this window inside? Now you suggest, honey, that the widow inside is because there are - or because who knows what causes what - but there are very strong electro-magnetic fields. Is the window inside related to the fact that we have to go beyond standard physics? Is it related to the fact that there are very strong electro-magnetic field inside?
A: Reciprocal function.
Q: (L) What is ammonia composed of? (A) Ammonia? NH3, one nitrogen and three hydrogen atoms, and it kind of rotates, and that's ammonia. (A) What is nitrogen number? Six? Or seven? Seven is phosphorus, yeah? (L) I don't know, I don't remember, I'm too tired to remember. (A) You're too tired.
Q: (L) We haven't received any offers, you said we'd get an offer and we should do something.
A: Soon, have faith.

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Very interesting stuff. In all due honnesty I can't really comprehend the depth of it but it's still amazing nontheless.

You know I miss having these kind of discussion with people. I know quite a few people that love to learn about "how the universe work" but as I've quickly noticed, in general, all they know about is the classic Big Bang Theory, Superstrings etc. Mainstream view, nothing more. Everytime I bring other theories such as the electric universe theory or worst, the possibility of a direct link between consciousness and matter and they are just like "oh yeah" and kind of acknowledge, without really thinking at all, or so it seems. I'm there and think "did they really get what I said or what" and they just keep looking at me with a big smile not saying a word.

I'm in college and had to choose for a complementary class and I chose not to take astronomy exactly because I don't want to be told the Big Bang theory and be forced to learn it for an exam (seriously).

Anyhow, great material! It's always fun to observe things that shouldn't happen in reality (I mean, according to what we understood so far). That is often when we make the most spectacular discoveries (if done objectively).

Peace.

Foxx said:

I've thought about the physical property of entropy at times for a while now (it's easy to do while you're smoking ) and wondered if the physics are different in a physical 3D STO world in that regard. Maybe this test is demonstrating that they are, if the absolute zero barrier is being broken and entropy is being reversed with negative temperatures. So maybe an STO world has a "negative" temperature in general (though they might regard our positive temperatures as negative, from their perspective) and so entropy isn't one of the fundamental underlying physical properties of their reality, as it is ours.

Very interesting article, rs! Thanks for sharing.

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Throwing objectivity to the wind, this discovery is AMAZING! I followed a similar thought process as you Foxx link while reading this article. However, what if STO realms acknowledge a more cyclical temperature scale, barring there are still temperatures, than the linear one we've been adhering to? My guess is they have more of a balance between these two manifestations of temperature that would possibly set up a system of give and take. So far a typical internal combustion engine just consumes fuel and ejects waste. But a hypothetical engine that could operate within the negative temperature realm, as well as the positive, could possibly operate without continuous "one-way" consumption. The implications are staggering relative to what we've been taught by mainstream science and institutions.

I also enjoyed the notion they made when it was mentioned that temperature might not be linear but in fact cyclic.

Here we see that this concept of the cycle is becoming more pervasive in our reality as we open our minds to more possibilities.

To be fair, the understanding itself is nothing new. It is understood by any physics undergrad who lasts until at least his thermodynamics class, and although it may seem impossible to the layman because of the connotations of the terms used in scientific vulgarization of the temperature concept.

That being said, the experimental creation of such high-energy states is a feat in itself, and does hint at unexplored areas of physics. The awareness of the technical feasability of negative temperatures throws a new light on its engineering application and most definitely leads me to inquire if this concept has been generally overlooked as a core mechanic of our cosmogony.

Soluna said:

It's refreshing to see new discoveries that potentially turn current 'understanding' on it's head - you'd think it would make people more open minded to possibilities.

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Indeed it is, when this article appeared on sott I also found this one on magnetic monopoles:

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2009/01/29/making-magnetic-monopoles-and-other-exotica-in-the-lab said:

Physicist Shou-Cheng Zhang has proposed a way to physically realize the magnetic monopole. In a paper published online in the January 29 issue of Science Express, Zhang and post-doctoral collaborator Xiao-Liang Qi predict the existence of a real-world material that acts as a magic mirror, in which the never-before-observed monopole appears as the image of an ordinary electron. If his prediction is confirmed by experiments, this could mean the opening of condensed matter as a new venue for observing the exotica of high-energy physics.

Zhang is a condensed-matter theorist at the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science (SIMES), a joint institute of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University. He studies solids that exhibit unusual electromagnetic and quantum behaviors, with an eye towards their use in information storage. But due to his training as a particle physicist, Zhang always keeps the big picture in mind. That's why it was so easy for him to see that the material he was already working on could behave like what theorists call a magnetic monopole, an isolated north or south magnetic pole.

The monopole is thought of as electric charge's magnetic cousin, but unlike positive or negative charges, north or south poles always occur together in what's called a dipole. A lone north or south pole simply doesn't show up in the real world. Even if you take a bar magnet and cut it in half down the middle, you won't get a separate north and south pole, but two new dipole magnets instead. For symmetry-minded theorists, however, it's natural that there should be a magnetic equivalent of charge. String theories and grand unified theories rely on its existence, and its absence undermines the mathematical feng-shui of the otherwise elegant Maxwell's equations that govern the behavior of electricity and magnetism. What's more, the existence of a magnetic monopole would explain another mystery of physics: why charge is quantized; that is, why it only seems to come in tidy packets of about 1.602x10–19 coulombs, the charge of an electron or proton.

For decades, scientists have kept their eyes peeled for the elusive monopole, but perhaps they were looking in the wrong place. "They were literally hoping it would fall from sky," Zhang says. The notion isn't as far-fetched as it seems—our world is constantly bombarded by weird particles showering from far-off cosmic events, and magnetic monopoles could very well show up as part of that rain. Some enterprising physicists installed loops of superconducting material on their rooftops. If anything remotely like a magnetic monopole fell through, the loops, being sensitive to magnetic fluctuations, would register it.

But in more than 30 years of searching, no one's been able to conclusively detect this particle. Accelerator experiments have been no more successful, leading scientists believe existing monopoles must be far too heavy to create in even the Large Hadron Collider.

Interestingly, Zhang's magnetic monopole didn't fall from the heavens; instead, it was leading a quiet life on the other side of a mirror, but a mirror made of a very special type of alloy. What's more, says Zhang, the math to prove the effect is very clear. "You could give the last part of the mathematical derivation as a final exam in a junior or senior year undergraduate physics class."

To understand how a material can act like a magnetic monopole, it helps to examine first how an ordinary metal acts when a charge—an electron, say—is brought close to the surface. Because like charges repel, the electrons at the surface retreat to the interior, leaving the previously neutral surface positively charged. The resulting electric field looks exactly like that of a particle with positive charge the same distance below the surface—it's the positive mirror image of the electron. In fact, from an observer's point of view, it's impossible to tell the difference.

The concept of an image charge is something undergraduate physics students encounter in their very first electricity and magnetism class, along with the idea that the magnetic monopole doesn't exist. But Zhang's "mirror" alloy is no ordinary material. It's what's called a topological insulator, a strange breed of solid Zhang specializes in, in which "the laws of electrodynamics are dramatically altered," he says. In fact, if an electron was brought close to the surface of a topological insulator, Zhang's paper demonstrates, something truly eerie would happen. Instead of an ordinary positive charge, Zhang says, "You would get what looks like a magnetic monopole in the 'mirror.'"

To go back to the example of image charges, it's important to emphasize that there isn't actually half of a bar magnet somewhere inside this material. Instead, Zhang discovered, due to a peculiarity of the material called strong spin-orbit coupling, the nearby electron would induce a current in the surface that circulates constantly without dying out. This in turn—undergraduate physics majors, get out your pencils—would create a magnetic field that looks like that of a magnetic monopole. Experimentalists have tried to approximate this field before, for instance by arranging permanent magnets in certain ways. But to an outside observer, Zhang's material would be completely indistinguishable from the monopole particle that physicists were hoping to catch in their superconducting detectors.

"We like to find things that don't exist," says Zhang. His work on the monopole has further ramifications; this could be a way to physically realize a number of particles that, until now, have only existed as mathematical loopholes in high-energy physics theories. For instance, Zhang has shown that the electron and image monopole together would act like a so-called "anyon" located at the solid's surface. "The 'any,' in this case, is as in 'anything,'" Zhang explains—they are particles that only exist in two dimensions, whose properties straddle those of the two classes of three-dimensional particles, fermions and bosons.

Although Zhang works as a theorist, he has close ties to experimental physics. In 2007, his prediction of the quantum spin Hall effect in mercury telluride was confirmed experimentally, earning his work praise in Science as a runner-up breakthrough of that year. "As a theorist you're always motivated by the math, but it's a testament to our understanding that we can predict real-world materials," Zhang says. "Before, new materials were more or less found by accident." Now other SIMES researchers will be using the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource at SLAC to closely study two specific materials, bismuth selenide and bismuth telluride, that Zhang has predicted will exhibit this strange mirror behavior. They hope to confirm the prediction experimentally some time this year.

"Exotic particles such as the magnetic monopole, dyon, anyon, and the axion have played fundamental roles in our theoretical understanding of quantum physics," Zhang writes in the paper. "Experimental observation of these exotic particles in table-top condensed matter systems could finally reveal their deep mysteries." Topological insulators could provide a new experimental outlet for high-energy physicists. "You don't have to look towards the cosmos," Zhang says. "I think we'll see more of the beautiful mathematical structures of high-energy physics become realized in condensed matter physics."

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Very interesting, in that it comes from the field of high energy physics.

Very interesting, bngenoh, as is the rest of this thread. I've thought about it since this thread started. What is really fascinating is that there are so many discoveries that show how mainstream materialistic science does NOT give an accurate picture of our much more complex world. This linear thinking about universal physical laws that's promoted by popular science writers in mainstream media (and so often implying a much greater understanding than we currently possess) is a real disservice to the human population at large.

So many of the strange and mysterious things about our universe can be better interpreted in a hyper-dimensional framework -- using the working hypothesis of densities. Starting with second density, it really becomes evident that nothing is as it seems, the importance of consciousness and information, etc. But even with first density, there are so many strange happenings and exceptions to "known physical laws," etc., that also point to nothing being as it seems and that physical laws are NOT linear and universal. There ARE conditions where the question comes up as to whether physical laws MUST be uniform in all of the universe. And again, the hypothesized densities really make it easier to interpret some of the strangeness.

Taking second and third density, as an example, in our working hypothesis, we really can't know exactly how our second density interactive companions perceive us humans. But we do know that they perceive us in some way. We, as third density beings, can't even directly perceive the hypothesized fourth density beings. And fourth density is supposed to be the last density with any physicality at all -- though variable physicality. So the "laws of physics" can be so different there that they would be pretty much unrecognizable to us.

To try to illustrate, and take the "higher animals" to do it, do some of our human doings seem "magical" to, say, dogs, cats, horses, etc. Again we can't know for sure. But I've thought about Ouspensky's speculations in Tertium Organum and other similar ideas, and I find them fascinating and very plausible. We do know that many animals, for example, generally have much stronger sense of smell than humans do. But what are they're total perceptions, including the visual perception (which could vary from species to species) of humans, as we do seem to "occupy the same realm" on this planet. Again do some of our doings seem "magical" to these animals, as some of the hypothesized hyperdimensional phenomena can seem to be to humans (and then they can go off and consider these higher density beings gods, etc).

Or even some of the health and diet issues. Sometimes we're a long way away from understand ALL the "mechanisms" behind these issues, even though our understanding has increased quite a bit regarding epigenetics, cell communications, etc. I still think of some of the examples of different "scales of time" mentioned by Ouspensky and Gurdjieff, and I think Mouravieff too in one of the Gnosis volumes, about certain experiences like alcohol consumption and the time it takes to feel the effects don't seem to jive with the conventional understanding of physiological processes and how long it should take, etc.

These thoughts seem to keep coming back after reading (and watching, e.g. the Barcelona presentation videos) material by Laura and Ark, and others. As has been said by Vallee, as well as, shown in more detail by Laura in her (especially more recent) writings, "the future of physics is information physics," to paraphrase.

Sorry to go into a bit of a tangent, but considering so many crazy sounding things the C's have said through the years, to then come across scientific findings later either confirming or strongly implying the C's claims were true, I think all of the above are significantly related. FWIW.