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SteelMaiden
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28 Aug 2012, 2:39 am

I was pondering this and asked my Dad, who has a PhD in Civil Engineering, if he had any ideas and he didn't have much.

If you cool something to absolute zero, all the atoms stop moving completely, right? But the Uncertainty Principle says that you cannot measure the position and the momentum of an atom to complete accuracy. But at absolute zero, the atoms would have a definite position (they're still) and a definite momentum (zero). So surely it is impossible to cool something completely to absolute zero? Or would something quantum happen?

Any ideas from you all?


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Somberlain
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28 Aug 2012, 3:04 am

It is impossible to reach absolute zero, but:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_z ... mperatures

How can we observe that condition? Even if we can observe, how can we neglect the observer effect in place?

And about uncertainity, here is the answer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy


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outofplace
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28 Aug 2012, 3:11 am

I think what you would wind up with is a "Bose-Einstein Condensate". It's the state of matter you get when you get very close to 0 K. However, I think that 0 K is not attainable for similar reasons to why you can't go the speed of light. It's an absolute minimum or maximum value and the math gets funny if you reach it.

(Although, you CAN reach the speed of light in a relative sort of way. This is theoretically possible if you have two objects moving away from each other at a speed that, when added together, equals or exceeds the speed of light. However, Einstein was talking about the speed of light relative to a closed system, not as an absolute term.)


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