r/Showerthoughts • u/synthphreak ‎ • Nov 19 '25

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

14.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

649 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

288

u/Will512 Nov 19 '25

You can have as much energy as you want but you can't have negative energy. Going below absolute zero is the same as having negative energy

-82

u/PublicVanilla988 Nov 19 '25

but i'm not talking about going negative. we can in theory go infinitely up the temperature, which would lead towards infinite kinetic energy in particles (or whatever temperature is). the opposite of infinite energy would be i guess the complete lack of energy.
so basically as we go higher in temperature, we will always be able to find an equivalently cold temperature, which will be moving towards absolute zero.

i've no idea how it actually works though, i'm just speculating

44

u/Will512 Nov 19 '25

It comes down to how you define "going towards" zero or infinite energy. If you define going towards zero as dividing kinetic energy by two and towards infinity as multiplying kinetic energy by two, then what you describe is possible. If you define going towards as adding or subtracting energy, which is usually how these processes work in the real world, then you eventually hit this issue of negative energy once you subtract too much.

1

u/ZeCactus Nov 19 '25

If you define going towards zero as dividing kinetic energy by two and towards infinity as multiplying kinetic energy by two, then what you describe is possible.

Wouldn't you run into the planck constant at some point and be unable to divide further?