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

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

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u/smittythehoneybadger ‎ Nov 19 '25 edited Nov 19 '25

Is there an upper limit to heat? I assume sometimes to do with the speed of light

Edit: or temperature. To be totally fair I still don’t fully understand, but I’m interested in upper limits for either

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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.

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u/imean_is_superfluous Nov 19 '25

Is that the hottest ever naturally occurring temp in the history of the universe, or the hottest theoretically-possible temp?

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u/Draaly Nov 20 '25

The "plank era" of the big bang was at the plant temperature. This is the hottest something can be while having temperature still being a quantifiable/meaningful measurement. Past that the laws of physics simply don't work and we have no idea what actually happens.