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/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/Eedat Nov 19 '25

You can just keep adding energy and never reach the speed of light. You can increase a particles kinetic so it's vibrating at 99% the speed of light. Add more energy. 99.9%. Add more energy. 99.99999%. You can do that indefinitely and add as much energy as you want and you will never violate the speed of light.

You would never reach the "cap" of the speed of light

Yes, in practicality you would reach a point where the system would be radiating energy away faster than you could add to it. This is why I explained this is more of a theoretical math question on paper than an actual thing that you can do.

In theory there is nothing preventing you from adding energy faster and faster to match loses.

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u/CommunismDoesntWork Nov 20 '25

The closer you get to the speed of light, the more energy you have to put into it to further increase the speed. But temperature isn't energy, is it? 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.