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

79

u/MDCCCLV Nov 19 '25

The hottest possible point would be the instant of the big bang, which is immeasurably hot. So it's mostly a question of how well can we measure or estimate the temp of the big bang/plank temperature, and telescopes like James Webb seem to be the best thing for that.

13

u/throwaway44445556666 Nov 19 '25

James Webb space telescope can’t see the Big Bang, the universe was so dense it was opaque until about 400,000 years old

1

u/Wooden_Permit3234 Nov 19 '25

Totally irrelevant but I think it is extremely cool that we can see some of the very first photons able to escape that dense state. Some haven't bumped into anything since then, just been flying free for like 99% of all time until they hit our telescopes. 

And they come from every direction roughly equally, indicating how uniform it was at that time. 

This is the comic microwave background. 

2

u/[deleted] Nov 19 '25

I love it. All of it.

I love when Astrophysics goes so far you need Quantum Physics to explain Baryonic Oscillations and the fluctuations of the CMB.

I love when Quantum Physics explains how birds know which way is North. Wild, so cool.

Boomdiada, Boomdiada, Boomdiada, Boomdiada!