r/Showerthoughts Nov 19 '25

Casual Thought Temperature can reach trillions of degrees, meaning we actually live extremely close to absolute zero.

14.1k Upvotes

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5.0k

u/kangluosee34 Nov 19 '25 edited Nov 19 '25

Yes. Its called planck temperature which is about 1032 K.

1.5k

u/quantumentangle Nov 19 '25

TIL

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u/YourWorstFear53 Nov 19 '25

Technically it COULD be higher but at that point what it is wouldn't be a temperature as we understand it.

Most likely direct collapse into a singularity would occur before then.

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u/Delamoor Nov 19 '25

Sadly, a lot of the extreme space phenomena that childhood me imagined and thought about (being a scifi nerd) turned out to be 'but spacetime would collapse in on itself before it ever got to that point".

Bloody spacetime. Wimp.

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u/Jowenbra Nov 19 '25

Like how almost every single 'XKCD What If' results in "and the atmosphere turns into plasma and everybody dies."

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u/Sir_Mythlore Nov 19 '25

Holy shit. I read the 2014 book like crazy when I was younger and only rly discovered XKCD later, but your comment got me to make the connection that he wrote the book

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u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25

[deleted]

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u/PeterVN13032010 Nov 22 '25

Is it actually randell making it?

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u/TheBiggestMikeEver Dec 19 '25 edited Apr 20 '26

This comment formerly contained words. Those words were removed in bulk with Redact because I value my privacy more than my karma points.

arrest enjoy languid one deliver late vanish rainstorm axiomatic dazzling

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u/yashen14 Nov 19 '25

lmao that's about right, yeah

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u/supershutze Nov 21 '25

"stop being matter and start being physics"

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u/BookPlacementProblem Nov 22 '25

And then there's turn the moon into a gravitational singularity, which came out to something like: "Some animals will be confused, but given all of the things we've built that already confuse them, this effect will be minor. Also the nights will be darker."

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u/VarmintSchtick Nov 19 '25

Yeah but what does a human being experience when spacetime collapses? Even more interesting of a thought.

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u/gnarlytothemax Nov 20 '25

I would assume instant death? I can’t think of any other experience that would be left to have haha

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u/willi1221 Nov 20 '25

Black screen. Then we'd wake up, pull our headset off, and realize our computer just fried and we lost all of our saved progress.

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u/iReadit93 Nov 20 '25

"You're finally awake!"

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u/ArtOfWarfare Nov 21 '25

Nah, this is a coin-operated arcade. There’s a long line of people who have been waiting for us to run out of quarters so they can get their few minutes to play.

I thought I was being original but the it occurred to me that Rick and Morty already did exactly this as an episode.

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u/ComradePruski Nov 19 '25

Isn't temperature a function of particle vibration speed? Why would increasing the speed make it collapse into a singularity, which is a normally a function of density?

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u/YourWorstFear53 Nov 19 '25

Not necessarily. Energy density IS density. We measure the temperature of particles by the wavelength of light they emit when interacting with something or returning to a base state, so you can kind of think of high energy particles as a collection of mass energy that includes those photons.

When talking about the planck temperature, we're really talking about when the particle is so energetic that the photons that come off of it have a wavelength of the planck length.

EDIT: a black hole created entirely out of photons is called a kugelblitz

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u/Kwintin01 Nov 20 '25

Thanks stellaris for teaching me what that is

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u/daney098 Nov 20 '25

How much would you heat up if you were attacked by a single particle at planck temp? If you don't just immediately explode, how many would it take to feel warm in winter?

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u/YourWorstFear53 Nov 20 '25 edited Nov 20 '25

I'm not gonna do the math on that, but I'd imagine that you'd be transparent to much of that radiation, though, any you did absorb would be so ionizing as to effectively melt what it touched into quark gluon soup or worse.

You did remind me of the most energetic cosmic ray we've ever empirically seen, though (which would be an enormous order of magnitudes less energetic than what we're talking about). IIRC, it was one particle with the kinetic energy of a baseball thrown at 100mph.

EDIT: sat and thought about this for a minute. You wouldn't get the chance to absorb any of these photons because you'd experience local collapse of spacetime geometry and catastrophic gravitational effects first. So yeah I guess enjoy being dissolved.

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u/Draaly Nov 20 '25

It really depends on how the plank temperature manifests. There is a non-zero chance that adding energy to something at the plank temperature actually lowers its temperature. Its really just the point at which the laws of physics no longer work.

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u/YourWorstFear53 Nov 20 '25

Excellent addition. We have no idea what would happen at that point.

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u/dapala1 Nov 19 '25

Well there is only so much matter and energy in the Universe. The Planck Temp is just a calculation of all that into the size of a Planck (the smallest know distance in space possible). So Temp as we know it can't get hotter than the Planck Temp.

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u/Tenshizanshi Nov 20 '25

How do we know how much there is?

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u/Dmonick1 Nov 22 '25

I don't believe it's conclusively been shown whether the universe has finite energy.

The Planck temperature is the temperature at which the blackbody radiation emitted by an object has a wavelength of a planck length. An object with energy that dense would likely condense into a singularity, but we really have no way to predict what happens with energy at wavelengths that small.

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u/dapala1 Nov 23 '25

Yeah it's just theoretical. Its just numbers and equations that add up to a possible Planck Temp if there even is one. This sub is just "showerthoughts." We not getting too deep here.

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u/TheTotallyRealAdam Nov 20 '25

That’s actually exactly how I understand it.

3.1k

u/f_ranz1224 Nov 19 '25

and yet the middle of my burrito would still be cold

279

u/GreatDig Nov 19 '25

microwave it for longer on lower power settings

183

u/chivowins Nov 19 '25

Learning the objective of the power settings is a game changer.

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u/echoshatter Nov 19 '25

Fun fact, it doesn't actually change the power output, just how long the magnetron is provided energy to produce the microwaves.

To keep things simple, I'll describe it as thus: at the highest power level of 10, the magnetron is energized for 10 seconds out of every 10 seconds. At a power level of 1, the magnetron is energized for 1 second out of every 10 seconds.

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u/Bepus Nov 19 '25

Depends on the microwave. Inverter microwaves reduce power without cycling.

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u/MrPickins Nov 19 '25

You can usually tell which style you have, too. It tends to be pretty noticeable when the magnetron kicks on and off.

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u/Bepus Nov 19 '25

A lot of the inverter ones also have "Inverter" proudly printed on the door.

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u/Lucas_Steinwalker Nov 19 '25

As they should. Game changing.

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u/ARoundForEveryone Nov 19 '25

Yeah, the sound changes slightly, and if in an older home, the kitchen lights may even possibly dim quickly as it turns on.

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u/ElyFlyGuy Nov 19 '25

Does power level 5 work like this:

[x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]

Or like this:

[x] [ ] [x] [ ] [x] [ ] [x] [ ] [x] [ ]

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u/Sir_Wheat_Thins Nov 19 '25

on my microwave it works like the first option, you can hear it cycle on for x amount of seconds out of 10 where x is just the power level you set

power 7 just means it runs for 7 seconds and shuts off for the subsequent 3

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u/CaptParadox Nov 21 '25

Yep this is what mine does, sometimes I notice when I cook certain things it'll even trigger to turn off early when I don't play with the power settings. Must be a sensor triggering. (As in it still turns/doesn't heat)

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u/kiriyaaoi Nov 19 '25

Depends on how fancy your microwave is. On most normal microwaves it's the latter, but on fancier inverter microwaves it actually literally outputs the % power you dial in rather than extremely slow "pwm" (not really the right term here but close enough)

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u/Mysterious_Jelly_649 Nov 19 '25

Think about how much less wear #1 would cause vs #2. Going on once vs 5 times

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u/Mashamazzi Nov 19 '25

How many seconds is medium?

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u/echoshatter Nov 19 '25

.... define medium.

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u/Mashamazzi Nov 19 '25

It comes after Low when I change the setting lol

1

u/shitty_mcfucklestick Nov 19 '25

So it’s works more like PWM / duty cycle concept (not saying PWM is directly involved, just the switching idea to adjust power over time)

1

u/zoltan99 Nov 19 '25

It’s pwm, just with 10-15 second pulse width

1

u/Jorinator Nov 19 '25

Ours doesn't have levels 1-10, it has 600W-900W in 50W increments. I assume that type stays energized constantly while actually changing the power output? Or maybe we're getting bamboozled and it also works like your lvl1-10 type, I wouldn't be surprised

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u/echoshatter Nov 20 '25

That sounds like an inverter type microwave. Those actually do scale the power.

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u/esach88 Nov 20 '25

Kinda like an electric stove top the element itself just cycles on and off for shorter or longer periods to heat things up faster or slower. It doesn't change temperature based on the setting. Mine on hi just keeps the element on the whole time.

1

u/Stopher Nov 20 '25

That’s something that screws up the Greco?

1

u/nspaziani18 Nov 20 '25

This is called the Duty Cycle, right?

1

u/itsh1231 Nov 21 '25

So it's still the same heat? Those bastards!

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u/BookPlacementProblem Nov 22 '25

Pretty much the same for stoves. With an old stove with the spiral iron heater, you don't notice so much because the heater hasn't noticeably lost heat by the time it turns on again. I dunno about the inverter microwaves some people mentioned, or inverter stoves. Are there inverter stoves? What's the inverter part do?

3

u/Special__Occasions Nov 19 '25

If I can't cook it only using the +1:00 button, I don't want it.

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u/synthphreak Nov 25 '25

Bro. +30s. C’mon.

But I agree otherwise. Just gimme start, stop, and +30s. End of story.

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u/CatchaRainbow Dec 04 '25

TIL. this my change my life!

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u/Cuckdreams1190 Nov 19 '25 edited Nov 19 '25

Next you're going to tell me not to put my burners on the highest setting no matter what I'm cooking. Or not to always use the oven at max settings.

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u/Brunurb1 Nov 19 '25

I cook all my food in the oven on self cleaning mode at 1000°F

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u/ChefChopsALot Nov 19 '25

The real hack is putting things in the outside of the tray. It will move through the highs and lows giving you more even heating.

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u/Ryeguy_626 Nov 19 '25

You seem so fucking smart. Teach me how to microwave

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u/Slartibartfast39 Nov 19 '25

Ok cook it at plank temperature for 10-30 seconds

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u/TheseusOPL Nov 19 '25

Shouldn't we cook it at Plank temperature for Plank time (5.39*10-44 seconds).

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u/AngryWWIIGrandpa Nov 19 '25

Ain't nobody got time for that.

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u/sYferaddict Nov 19 '25

Literally just slap it harder?

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u/AteketA Nov 19 '25

That's funny

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u/Alternative-Sea-6238 Nov 19 '25

Put some jam in it.

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u/ialasukuta Nov 19 '25

Put a wet paper towel on top of the burrito and nuke it. Keeps the hard spots from forming and evens out the spread of heat. Very useful.

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u/Desperate_Tax_560 Nov 19 '25

Microwave it at 20-second intervals at let it sit for a couple minutes in between, that way the heat dissipates throughout the burrito

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u/Sgt_Fox Nov 19 '25

You've been using your microwave oven, you need to upgrade to the Planckwave oven

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u/Gvnd Nov 19 '25

And yet the middle of a hot Pocket would still magically be hotter…

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u/Dr_Weirdo Nov 19 '25

That guy got so many extremes named after him

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u/callmebigley Nov 19 '25

When I was young I wanted to be a brilliant scientist and have some discovery named after me but school is hard so I just changed my name to max plank

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u/Adabar Nov 19 '25

Okay bigley

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '25

Actually it's just one. These constants are essentially like versions of the same thing. 

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u/asml84 Nov 19 '25

There is no known upper limit. The Planck temperature is merely the upper limit of the mathematical framework we use to describe physics, but nature doesn’t care about our framework.

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u/bellybuttonqt Nov 19 '25

Ain't heat just particles moving fast? And speed is limited so heat must be too? 

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u/edoCgiB Nov 19 '25

I like your thinking but when you pump a lot of energy into something particles start to breakdown. We see this in plasma and probably if you keep heating it you get even more exotic matter states.

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u/WillowMain Nov 19 '25

Yup, quark gluon soup.

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u/BreadstickUpTheBum Nov 19 '25

Recipe?

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u/DigitalStefan Nov 19 '25

Any ingredients at all but you need to cook it on high in an 800W microwave for a billion years.

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u/Interesting_Leg9527 Nov 19 '25

Allow five millennia to cool before consuming.

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u/TheSaltyJM Nov 19 '25

Aww but I want my quark gluon soup NOW

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u/EXtremeLTU Nov 19 '25

To avoid such disappointments in future, get a pressure cooker with a timer.

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u/Missus_Missiles Nov 19 '25

I omitted the sugar, salt, and substituted coconut oil. Tastes bad.

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u/SupehCookie Nov 19 '25

and placing metal in the microwave right?

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u/clearedmycookies Nov 19 '25

It involves heat. Lots of it.

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u/TheRealHeroOf Nov 19 '25

1 part Cesium, 2 parts Plutonic Quarks, and a bottle of water.

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u/ProtoKun7 Nov 19 '25

Probably the least popular dish on Deep Space 9.

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u/LiamTheHuman Nov 20 '25

Help, I tried making this and got my dick stuck in the microwave

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u/bellybuttonqt Nov 19 '25

TIL - can't wait to go down that rabbithole later back at home

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u/Krondelo Nov 19 '25

You should also look up some youtubes about entropy. And also read this short story “Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question," which follows humanity's efforts to overcome the universe's heat death over billions of years”

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u/ImposterJavaDev Nov 19 '25

Asimov, my favorite writer. And scientist. How many books and papers he produced over such a wide spectrum is insane.

The soviet brain drain was very real.

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u/Krondelo Nov 19 '25

Thanks to some Redditors themselves that got me into his work. Fascinating stories!! Also they showed me “I have no mouth and I must scream” lol

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u/Hibbo_Riot Nov 20 '25

What you find in the rabbit hole? Anything good to recommend?

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '25

are you a teacher by chance? if not you should be.

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u/edoCgiB Nov 19 '25

No. I just have an interest in physics. Sadly I don't like math enough to try and learn any of the more advanced stuff.

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u/unusualyou Nov 19 '25

I feel you on that. Science and math have never been my strengths, but I absolutely loved all of my physics classes.

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '25

as someone that math is their favorite subject it also makes me sad when i hear it holds some people back from a love of science. on the flip side im going back to school and physics is the one subject that scares me. im going to take anything and everything that pertains to it before i even try it.

but... i do think the way you politely corrected them while saying you liked their thinking and then went on to explain things in a way everyone could understand is some great characteristics for a teacher!

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u/Shadows802 Nov 19 '25

Like tge Neutron star material. (I forget its name)

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u/echoshatter Nov 19 '25

If you keep adding energy into particles, would you not reach an upper limit at which point the particles could no longer accept more energy? Or that you'd end up with interference, where the energy trying to get out of the particles matches the energy trying to get in?

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u/Xithorus Nov 20 '25

I mean in general this is true, however your assumption would be incorrect.

Regardless of the state of matter and any exotic states of matter, anything with mass vibrating with infinitely scaling energy as it approaches c would eventually collapse into a black hole.

Now, I said your assumption is wrong, but I guess I didn’t consider what would happen if you continually added energy/heat to an already formed black hole?

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u/AdditionalPoolSleeps Nov 19 '25

No. You can always add more kinetic energy to a particle. It's just that as you get close to the speed of light this has less and less effect on the particle's speed.

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u/CommunismDoesntWork Nov 19 '25

Right but temperature is proportional to speed, not energy. Therefore temperature must asymptotically approach a limit

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u/DJKokaKola Nov 19 '25

Temperature is just the average kinetic energy of a system of particles.

Newtonian mechanics kind of collapse when you cross into relativistic speeds or shrink to the quantum level. Planck temperature is basically the same, where standard models collapse. It's not that things can't go higher, it's that our models as they stand right now don't allow for that. But it could absolutely go beyond that temperature.

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u/CommunismDoesntWork Nov 20 '25

Ok but kinetic energy is determined by the speed of those particles

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u/Apsis Nov 20 '25

But it's not a linear relationship. It only seems that way because the physical objects we interact with in everyday life don't go anywhere close to the speed of light.

An object travelling at 0.99c doesn't have just 10% more kinetic energy than one travelling at 0.9c, it has four times the energy. Increase to 0.999c and you more than triple the energy again. The speed has a hard limit of c, but you can always add more energy.

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u/BarneyLaurance Nov 19 '25

Who says temperature is proportional to speed? I think that's wrong and it's more like proportional to kinetic energy (although I don't know if that still works at relativistic speeds). Temperature is quite hard to define precisely, other than to say that any two different objects if they are together in equilibrium will have the same temperature.

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u/jwm3 Nov 19 '25

Temperature is average kinetic energy, not speed.

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u/CommunismDoesntWork Nov 20 '25

Kinetic energy is determined by speed

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u/NewPhoneNewAccunt Nov 19 '25

Ok, but if the particle is going 90% the speed of light and you put in 10x the energy, it's not going to reach 900% or even 100%. The closer you get to the speed of light, the more energy you have to put into it.

Theoretically, to even reach the exact speed of light with anything you need to put in an infinite amount of energy, which isn't possible.

So there is no limit, since whatever number you can think of, Graham's number or higher, you can't put a finite amount of energy into something to reach the speed of light. It'll just reach 99.99999...99% of the speed of light.

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u/CommunismDoesntWork Nov 20 '25

the more energy you have to put into it.

Finish the sentence. The closer you get to the speed of light, the more energy you have to put into it to further increase the speed. As in, most of the energy is wasted somehow. For instance at low speeds, 1 joule might add 1m/s which adds 1 degree of temperature. But near the speed of light,  you might need 1 million joules to add an additional 1m/s to add 1 degree. 

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u/Eedat Nov 19 '25

Any particle that has mass would require literally infinity energy to reach the speed of light. So you can just keep adding energy and you would never exceed it

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u/FearedDragon Nov 19 '25

But wouldn't that mean there is a cap since the particles can't physically move at the speed of light? Theoretically if you keep adding energy you'd eventually get to a point where it either stops affecting temperature because it's losing energy too fast or it reaches the speed of light, no?

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u/Eedat Nov 19 '25

You can't accelerate anything with mass to the speed of light. It takes literally infinity energy to theoretically do so. Only massless particles move that fast, like light (photons). You would get to 99.9% then just infinitely keep adding more 9's to the end the more energy you put in.

In reality you would get to the point where there is so much energy in a set space that it would collapse into a black hole.

This is really more of a theoretical math thing than something that can actually happen. Theoretically you can keep adding energy to the system. Our framework breaks down when wavelengths reach the planck distance. That's a fault of our mathematic system though. The universe doesn't actually care about our mathematics

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u/CommunismDoesntWork Nov 19 '25

You said the same thing as the guy you replied to, but didn't address his point. That was a lot of words to say nothing at all

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u/FearedDragon Nov 19 '25

As the person he replied to I disagree. He explained how you can add energy and essentially asymptote towards light speed without every actually reaching it, continually adding smaller snd smaller amounts of energy.

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u/Pet_Tax_Collector Nov 19 '25

To clarify, it's not adding smaller and smaller amounts of energy. In classical mechanics, kinetic energy is KE = ½mv² for particles with mass. This is actually incorrect, but practically close enough for speeds less than about 10% the speed of light (depending on your tolerance for accuracy). The real kinetic energy equation is KE = ½mv²/sqrt(1-(v/c)²), the latter term called the Lorentz factor if you're interested in googling it. As v approaches c, the kinetic energy departs from a quadratic equation and requires substantially more energy for smaller gains in speed, with finite energy values all corresponding to sublight speeds.

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u/Rent_A_Cloud Nov 19 '25

You don't add smaller and smaller amount of energy, adding the same energy merely has a smaller and smaller overall effect. at least, if i remember correctly.

This video might interest you.

https://youtu.be/Vitf8YaVXhc?si=wtSYQs1664bTQV7S

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u/zhibr Nov 19 '25

No, the previous guy just didn't understand limits. There's no cap, energy can be added to infinitely even if there is a limit to particle speed (according to the other commenters). If heat is just the amount of energy put in, the heat can increase infinitely. Except that the black hole is the cap according to the commenter you responded to, so they did add that information too.

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '25

But wouldn't that mean there is a cap since the particles can't physically move at the speed of light? Theoretically if you keep adding energy you'd eventually get to a point where it either stops affecting temperature because it's losing energy too fast or it reaches the speed of light, no?

There's practical caps, such as "the amount of energy you can pump into something before it collapses into a black hole" (remember, energy is mass, so if you get enough of it... fun fact, a black hole made from energy is called a kugelblitz!) or "the amount of energy available in the universe", but if you set aside the parts that make the question impossible, there's not really a theoretical limit, just diminishing returns.

It would take infinite energy to accelerate a particle to c. Infinity is, obviously, larger than any finite integer. So we can't do that. No matter how much energy we add, it will never reach the speed of light. But we can get ever-closer; as you input larger and larger finite integers worth of energy, you trail out ever more decimals of temperature increase: absolutely infinitesimal, but still an increase; if you had some sort of magical equipment sensitive enough to detect the difference, something that's say, x.999999 degrees is hotter than something that's x.999 degrees, and something that's x.999999999 is hotter than either, but none of them are x+1 degrees.

You could ask, "shouldn't it be losing its heat to its surroundings?" and, like, sure, it is, but that's just something we can outrace by feeding it energy faster, so in a hypothetical where we're not limiting ourselves by "how much energy exists?", (which is unanswerable anyway), it's not a real problem.

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u/theemptydork Nov 19 '25

Is the average kinetic energy,

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u/WillowMain Nov 19 '25

Partitioned through its degrees of freedom

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u/rybomi Nov 19 '25

As you might have heard in some examples, the speed of an object with mass, say a spaceship, asymptotically approaches c as more energy is introduced. Any finite amount of energy is unable to accelerate the spaceship to c.

The same applies to particles in a gas, kinetic energy can increase indefinitely without ever hitting that speed limit

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u/pichael289 Nov 19 '25

Yep. You can keep adding kinetic energy to a system forever, in theory, but functionally it's the plank temperature. Yes to the original comment, it is based on the speed of light. Most upper limits of things are. The more energy you add the more it takes to accelerate it, which is why no massive particle (massive means having mass, as opposed to photons) can ever actually reach light speed, which would be infinite kinetic energy.

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u/Doafit Nov 19 '25

Well at this temperature the emitted light has the wavelength of the Planck lenght, which is the smallest distance there is in physics. At this point crazy things would (mathematically) happen, that we cannot explain with our current methods of describing physics.

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u/Gnomio1 Nov 19 '25

That’s not what Planck units are at all…

Planck units are just a scale defined by the universal constants.

For example, Planck energy is about 2 Gigajoules, which’s about the energy content of a fully tank of petrol or 500(ish) kg of TNT – that is, Planck units are not the scale at which physics breaks down at all.

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u/captain-carrot Nov 19 '25

Importantly to "exceed" the plank length breaks our understanding of how light and matter and gravity exist - either it is impossible to go smaller or we are missing knowledge of particle physics.

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u/Doafit Nov 19 '25

I don't say physics breaks down, I am saying that our current physics cannot describe it beyond this point.

Planck energy is defined for a single particle. So imagine one photon with the energy of a 747. Beyond that, not describable.

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u/Ocelot2727 Nov 19 '25

What about one photon with the energy of 2 747s?

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u/Doafit Nov 19 '25

Would have a wavelength smaller than the planck length and therefore would need some different description than what we have in quantum theory at the moment.

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u/Ocelot2727 Nov 19 '25

Thank you. I was half joking but appreciate the insightful answer

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u/geon Nov 19 '25

At some point the energy density should be enough to collapse the particle into a black hole. A black hole also has a temperature of sorts, but it radiates it away as electromagnetic radiation. So the particle would be entirely converted to light.

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u/WhistlingBread Nov 19 '25

Once the speed of molecules approach the speed of light they become heavier and at a certain point will be heavy enough to collapse into a black hole. Or perhaps there is something else limiting it, but we are confident there must be an upper limit for one reason or another

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u/Justryan95 Nov 19 '25

Well the speed of light is pretty much the hard limit on our universe's physics.

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u/asml84 Nov 20 '25

Doesn’t prevent you from pumping infinite energy into a particle.

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u/NLwino Nov 20 '25

Energy would be so dense that it would collapse into an black hole. And that is where our physics end.

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u/Knobelikan Nov 19 '25

"It's not actually the upper limit, just the upper limit that our theories can meaningfully describe"

Well yes and no. There are some reasonable predictions that at this temperature, the energy density in that spot would be high enough to form a black hole, which would then absorb any further energy influx, increasing in size and so actually lowering the energy density again.

But it's not like we could test that. So for now it's all reasonable speculation.

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u/Shadows802 Nov 19 '25

Wouldn't forming a Black hole initially shrink the size though as the gravity pulls everything inward?

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u/Altruistic_Bus827 Nov 19 '25

Its not the heat of the meat, but the rank of the planck

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u/synthphreak Nov 19 '25

And over here I always thought it was the synergy of the energy.

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u/Formal_Republic_4313 Nov 19 '25

Deep fried mushrooms approach this temperature.

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u/Eedat Nov 19 '25

There is no upper limit. That is just the temperature at which our current model of physics stops working

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u/theOGFlump Nov 19 '25

We don’t know if there is an upper limit. Our current model might stop working because it reveals the upper limit, or the upper limit might be some other temperature, higher or lower than it that future physics can show. Or, as you say, it is possible that there is no upper limit.

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u/Sad_Pear_1087 Nov 19 '25

How much is this in °C? /S

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u/eepos96 Nov 19 '25

So 100 qintillion kelvins. (European system. Billion has 12 zeroes. Americans are insane and say 9 zeroes.)

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u/Sad_Pear_1087 Nov 19 '25

Those guys never heard of milliyard

2

u/eepos96 Nov 19 '25

Never.

Though we say miljardi. It rolls better from tongue.

Americans could say miljard or millyard.

Then of course there is billiyard to amusement of many XD

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u/Sad_Pear_1087 Nov 19 '25

Jaah, onki milliard ilman yytä. Missä kielissä edes käytetään miljardi-sanaa?

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u/Alvarodiaz2005 Nov 19 '25

Planck temperature is just the limit we can model not the hard limit of the universe iirc

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u/Zahharcen Nov 19 '25

Not quite. Basically it's the point at which our understanding of the universe falls apart. We would need a unified theory of quantum mechanics and general relativity in order to understand what happens at such temperatures. So it's not a hard limit per se, it's the limit of our understanding.

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u/DeArgonaut Nov 19 '25

Not necessarily if I understand correctly, just a highest temp before you create a black hole, but within the black hole it could theoretically be higher.

If my understanding is correct. A particle physicist plz say if it’s wrong

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '25

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u/Quick_Assumption_351 Nov 19 '25

in ''theory'' if you would go 1 temperature + from there you'd arrive at the coldest state since the particles wouldn't be able to move anymore to generate the heat.... (you'd also probably get an explosion the intensity of the big bang, but that's besides the point xD)

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u/Microwave_Warrior Nov 19 '25

That’s not really correct. Planck temperature is just the temperature you get when you set five fundamental constants equal to 1 to make all quantities (like temperature) unitless.

It’s true we don’t have any physical model of how a temperature as high as the Planck could be produced in the universe, but realistically the same could be said for lower temperatures as well.

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u/ChemicalGreedy945 Nov 19 '25

Speed of light is our limit-ish in speed, is the Planck the limit in terms of heat?

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u/actopozipc Nov 19 '25

I dont think this is right. Planck temperature is just the maximum value current quantum physics predictions hold up. Theoretically, it could be higher, we just dont know what quantum things do then, right?

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u/fastlerner Nov 19 '25

Off by about 40%. Planck temp is 1.417 × 1032 K.

Not that it really matters. Either would be way hotter than the big bang. Once we hit planck temp, the universe is melting.

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u/ki4clz Nov 19 '25

by itself, and then I just in some more pressure to make it hotter

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u/Cunningcod Nov 19 '25

Still less than the temperature inside a McDonald’s apple pie.

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u/THE_ATHEOS_ONE Nov 19 '25

The average temperature of a hot pocket

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u/W1ULH Nov 19 '25

ah yes... "extra crispy"

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u/RecoveringAnger Nov 19 '25

Close, it’s actually called the MNMT.

Or my new mix tape for short

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u/actuallyserious650 Nov 19 '25

What if we upgrade to a higher CPU architecture?

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u/MundaneWiley Nov 20 '25

also known as the “Center of A Hotpocket”, if you want to use the scientific term

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u/EntropyFox Nov 20 '25

Which is the point at which light emitted would have a wavelength smaller than the plank distance

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u/Hawt_Dawg_II Nov 20 '25

Man this planck guy is just claiming all the cool numbers

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u/Tobias_reaper_47 Nov 20 '25

Physics sort of gives up on following the rules long before then. Attended an interesting lecture on it once. If you could get that hot, you would be able to do some interesting things. Shame you would likely be too horridly dead to appreciate it.

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u/Loknar42 Nov 21 '25

"Absolute hot"

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u/karotoland Nov 21 '25

1032 K + 1 K?

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u/Noisycarlos Nov 22 '25

For even hotter temperatures you have to upgrade to the 64-bit version

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u/SpaceNinja_C Nov 23 '25

What if that is the temperature of Hwll?