Beyond Absolute Zero

[myrthman]

We know faster than light travel is theoretically impossible; however, that hasn't stopped sci-fi authors from "playing around." It's also theoretically impossible to have a temperature lower than 0 degrees Kelvin. Are there story possibilities dealing with this concept? What about approaching absolute zero if not breaching it?

[torainfor]

The only problem is, what's the point? Maybe if approaching 0 K, and the subsequent lack of subatomical motion, had a psuedo-time effect. World's coming to an end, so freeze it until a solution can be found?

[myrthman]

Or perhaps an exploration of the nature of the human soul: do thoughts and emotions also stop when all subatomic motion ceases? Or do they continue, perhaps at a phenomenal progression? If a person could be placed at 0 K for even a brief period of time and then be successfully revived, would he have an explosion of creative ideas and imagined memories? A solution or two to science's most vexing questions? This could be the ultimate internal journey...

[torainfor]

Perhaps our souls and other unseen forces would also slow down, at an appropriately accelerated rate, so that as we approach 0K they become more and more visible. They move and change too quickly to be seen now. What would they look like if they stayed still? A translucent cloud of pudding? Light that forgot to travel?

"Be still and know that I am God." There's some implications for ya.

[scintor]

Another possibility is rather explosive. Since mass is energy (E=MC2 and such) and things are cooled by reducing the energy of a system, there is the possibility that removing that much energy form a mass could destabilize the the very structure of matter itself and cause it to disintegrate into its equivalent energy. The resulting explosion would make a nuclear warhead look like a firecracker.

Scincerely,

[e-mail]
AKA Mark McDonald

[newburydave]

Or to take it in a totally different direction; since this physical reality is only a "vapor" (the Epistle of James), the physical rules of this vapor only apply within it.

To burst the bonds of these physical "laws" may put us out into the stuff in which our vaporous "story world" floats. It would potentially expose the Meta world to our view, as happened with Paul (lifted up to the third heaven when he was stoned to death and broke the laws of biological life) and John when the Spirit called him up to heaven to see the second half of the Revelation (That probably broke some kind of physical law).

At death most of the elect who have their wits about them testify about seeing the meta-world of Angels, and heaven. Many of the reprobate have screamed their way into Hell about seeing demons and the such like. Death is exceeding the "Physical Laws of This (Vapor) World".

This strikes me as a powerful Christian 'Mystical' Sf concept that all of us can use.

SGD

[newburydave]

And in the physics realm;

www.physorg.com/news187421719.html

[torainfor]

Indeed, Scintor. Where would the heat be pumped into to get the universe down to 0K?

I thought about that Dave, but my ancient and feeble calculus skills pulled me away.

God is outside of time and space. To my mind, this means He's at least one integral above us, if not several. To reach a state of electron stillness at 0K, that's stopping motion, which is a derivative of our world. That would seem to move away from the spiritual realm rather than toward it.

But, despite seventeen years of math in my life, I've forgotten nearly everything above algebra, so I'm sure this is easily refuted!

[scintor]

Mar 16, 2010 16:40:10 GMT -5 torainfor said:

Indeed, Scintor. Where would the heat be pumped into to get the universe down to 0K?

That's a good question that has set my mind a-buzz on the nature of heat and energy. If it could be done it would be a method that would allow the total conversion of mass to energy which would be the ultimate power source.

The current methods are rather crude. (Compress gases into liquids through mechanical compression and then cool other substances by immersion in the resultant liquid and allow heat diffusion to cool them.)

The only other method I have heard of is to is to fire synced lasers at a target to stop all vibration, which I don't think applies to to the task at hand because it adds energy to a system rather than removing it.

Come to think of it there is one more method I know of. When certain liquids evaporate in a environment which is below their boiling point, they draw enough energy from the the surrounding substances to allow them to change energy states. This is how perspiration works in the human body. Sweat draws energy from our skin in order to evaporate, which cools us down. Rubbing alcohol applied to the skin does the same thing at an even greater rate. We literally freeze as these liquids boil off our skin.

Does anyone else know of another method of cooling things besides mechanical compression, diffusion and perspiration?

Whatever the method, if you remove energy from a system at absolute zero, you are left with a "black hole" style quandary. (i.e. the standard laws of physics seem to break down.) In such a situation the only possible source of energy is the break down of matter itself into energy. As we know from nuclear fusion and fission, this releases a tremendous amount of energy in the process.

This has opened a whole realm of possibilities in my mind because it is completely opposite of any mass to energy conversion processes I ever heard of being researched or theorized.

Scincerely,

[e-mail]

[myrthman]

I was reading up on absolute zero since my original post. I have no idea how they measured it, but scientists have recorded temperatures within one-billionth of 0 K! Wow! And the bits and pieces begin to exhibit quantum behaviors? Cool! (er--cold!)

scintor, et al: if accomplishing this builds up a massive amount of energy as you say it would, could this be a way to synthetically reproduce a "big bang"? Maybe this is the origin of a stacked multiverse?

[scintor]

Not a big bang, just a massive nuclear explosion.

[e-mail]

[myrthman]

semantics semantics

[newburydave]

Beloved bretheren (and sisteren) Methinks we are stuck in the "Vapor world" paradigms in our thinking. Trying to extrapolate beyond the limiting values of a mathematical model cannot yeild any valid estimates.

The things we call "physical laws" are the mathematical models that describe the regions between the critical values where the functions become asymptotic to the vertical axis at the critical value.

My wife is a Physics teacher so she's always bringing home books about this kind of stuff. One that she brought home from a physics conference was a compendium of the latest thought on the beginnings of the universe. Several things were interesting:

1. The "big bang" theory is about 50 years outdated. Nobody in the research cosmlogical community (the Physicists who study beginnings) talks about "big bang" anymore except to illustrate old pop cosmology. It is akin to believing in a flat earth.

The most current theory (according to Hawking, who is the main gate keeper of this stuff) is:

"In the beginning was a dense Plasma cloud, so hot that there was no division between matter and light. Everything kept switching between matter and light, millisecond to millisecond. "Creation happened" when the cloud cooled enough to allow light and matter to seperate out and become different states of being."

Many questions in that aren't there? Like if it cooled, where did the energy "go"? What made it cool?

To my mind that sounds like God creating light and dividing between light and darkness. . . but then I'm a young earth creationist, so I see God everywhere .

2. The second thing that stood out to me was that the top minds say that during the first few time constants of this change all the laws of physics that we know today were not in force.

Now that my friends is liberating. If the physical laws didn't work before our current "Vapor" was established as it is today, then we can't really use them as a predictive or analytical model for exploring the boundary layers between our "vapor universe" and whatever there is out beyond it, can we?

One of the phenomena that I found intriquing when I was studying higher order calculus was the way that certain limiting functions work. When certain functions (like the description of resonance) approach the resonant limit (ie. when a tank circuit approaches its resonant frequency) the amplitude function goes to infinity.

Now this mathematical behavior is the basis for things like our radio tuning circuits, but the full implications of the mathematical model cannot actually exist in the real world of matter and energy. These weird functions are what cause theoretical mathematicians to posit the existance of at least ten more dimensions, outside of the four dimensions we esperience in "real space". There must be ten more dimensions "outside" of our experienced world for the math to work.

It's sort of like an iceberg. We see about 10% of the ice above the surface of the ocean; but the other 90% has to be there below the surface or the 10% we see wouldn't be there.


So what does this have to do with the current discussion? I'm so glad you asked.

We have extensive experimentation to show that when matter approaches absolute zero (0 deg K) the "laws of Physics" stop functioning; or at least they stop working the way they do in the linear region away from the critical value (0 deg K). This is suggested by the plot of any mathematical function approaching a critical limit. The plot of the function goes to negative or positive infinity and approaches but never reaches the critical value.

What that says to me is that we can't mathematic our way around this issue. We have to write "Sf" to deal with it.

"Tally ho! The Game is afoot!"

SGD