If you take all the energy out of something, you will reach absolute zero, the lowest temperature in the universe (or almost absolute zero, the more the better). But what is the highest temperature? “Nothing is wasted. Everything is transformed,” said Michael Ende. I think a lot of people have wondered about the highest possible temperature and found no answer. If there is absolute zero, there must be absolute... what?
Let's take a classic experiment: drop food coloring into water with different temperatures. What will we see? The higher the water temperature, the faster the food coloring is distributed throughout the entire volume of water.
Why is this happening? Because the temperature of the molecules is directly related to the kinetic motion - and speed - of the particles involved. This means that in hotter water, individual water molecules move with higher speed, and this means that the particles food coloring will be transported faster to hot water, than in the cold.
If you stopped all this movement - brought everything to perfect condition rest (even breaking the laws of quantum physics to do so) - then you would reach absolute zero: the coldest possible thermodynamic temperature.
But what about moving in the other direction? If you heat up a system of particles, obviously they will move faster and faster. But is there a limit to how hot you can heat them, is there some kind of catastrophe that will prevent you from heating them beyond a certain limit?
At temperatures of thousands of degrees, the heat you transfer to the molecules will begin to break down the very bonds that hold the molecules together, and if you continue to increase the temperature, electrons will begin to separate from the atoms themselves. You will get an ionized plasma consisting of electrons and atomic nuclei, in which there will be no neutral atoms at all.
This is still within reason: we have individual particles - electrons and positive ions - that will jump at high temperatures, obeying the usual laws of physics. You can increase the temperature and wait to continue.
As the temperature rises further, the individual entities you know as “particles” begin to break apart. At about 8 billion degrees (8 x 10^9), you will begin to spontaneously produce matter-antimatter pairs - electrons and positrons - from the raw energy of particle collisions.
At 20 billion degrees atomic nuclei will begin to spontaneously break apart into individual protons and neutrons.
At 2 trillion degrees, protons and neutrons will cease to exist, and fundamental particles will appear, their components are quarks and gluons, their bonds can no longer withstand such high energies.
At about 2 quadrillion degrees you will begin to produce all known particles and antiparticles in huge quantities. But this is not the upper limit. A lot of interesting things happen within these confines. You see, this is the energy at which you can produce the Higgs boson, and therefore the energy at which you can restore one of the fundamental symmetries in the Universe: the symmetry that gives a particle its rest mass.
In other words, once you heat the system to this energy limit, you will find that all your particles are now massless and traveling at the speed of light. What was to you a mixture of matter, antimatter and radiation will become pure radiation (will behave like it), while remaining matter, antimatter or neither.
And this is not the end. You can heat the system to even higher temperatures, and although everything in it will not move faster, it will be brimming with energy, just as radio waves, microwaves, visible light and X-rays(and everyone moves at the speed of light), even if they have completely different energies.
Perhaps particles unknown to us are born or new laws (or symmetries) of nature appear. You would think that simply heating and heating everything to infinite amounts of energy would be enough to find out, but that’s not the case. There are three reasons why this is not possible.
- There is only a finite amount of energy in the entire observable universe. Take everything that exists in our space-time: all matter, antimatter, radiation, neutrinos, dark matter, even the energy inherent in space itself. There are about 10^80 particles of ordinary matter, about 10^89 neutrinos and antineutrinos, a little more photons, plus all the energy of dark matter and dark energy spread out over a radius of 46 billion light years of the observable Universe, the center of which is at our position.
But even if you turned all of that into pure energy (using E=mc^2), and even if you used all that energy to heat your system, you wouldn't get an infinite amount of energy. If you put all this into unified system, you will receive a gigantic amount of energy, equal to approximately a temperature of 10^103 degrees, but this is not infinity. It turns out that the upper limit remains. But before you get there, you have one more obstacle.
- If you conclude too a large number of energy in any limited region of space, you will create a black hole. Typically, you think of black holes as huge, massive, dense objects that can swallow hordes of planets: without breaking a sweat, casually, easily.
The point is that if you give a single quantum particle enough energy - even if it is a massless particle moving at the speed of light - it will turn into a black hole. There is a scale on which simply having something with a certain amount of energy will mean that the particles will not interact as usual, and if you get particles with that energy, equivalent to 22 micrograms using the formula E = mc^2, you can gain energy 10^19 GeV before your system refuses to get hotter. You will start to have black holes that will instantly decay into low-energy thermal radiation. It turns out that this energy limit - the Planck limit - is the upper one for the Universe and corresponds to a temperature of 10^32 kelvins.
This is much lower than the previous limit, since not only is it finite, but black holes act as a limiting factor. However, that’s not all: there is even more limitation.
- At a certain high temperature you will release the potential that led our Universe to cosmic inflation, expansion. Back in the days Big Bang The Universe was in a state of exponential expansion, when space unfolded like a cosmic balloon, only in geometric progression. All the particles, antiparticles and radiation were quickly shared with other quantum particles of matter and energy, and when the inflation ended, the Big Bang occurred.
If you manage to reach the temperatures required to return to a state of inflation, you will press the reset button on the Universe and cause inflation, then the Big Bang, and so on, all over again. If you haven't realized it yet, keep in mind that if you get to this temperature and cause the desired effect, there is no way you will survive. Theoretically, this can occur at temperatures of the order of 10^28 – 10^29 Kelvin, this is still only a theory.
It turns out that you can easily reach very high temperatures. Although physical phenomena The temperatures you are used to will differ in detail, you will still be able to reach higher and higher temperatures, but only to the point where everything you hold dear will be destroyed. But don't be afraid of the Large Hadron Collider. Even with the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth, we reach energies that are 100 billion times lower than those needed for a universal apocalypse.
Ecology of knowledge. If you take all the energy out of something, you will reach absolute zero, the coldest temperature in the universe
If you take all the energy out of something, you will reach absolute zero, the lowest temperature in the universe (or almost absolute zero, the more the better). But what is the highest temperature? “Nothing is wasted. Everything is transformed,” said Michael Ende. I think many people have wondered about the highest possible temperature and have not found an answer. If there is absolute zero, there must be absolute... what?
Let's take a classic experiment: drop food coloring into water at different temperatures. What will we see? The higher the water temperature, the faster the food coloring is distributed throughout the entire volume of water.
Why is this happening? Because the temperature of the molecules is directly related to the kinetic motion - and speed - of the particles involved. This means that in hotter water, individual water molecules move at a faster speed, which means that food coloring particles will be transported faster in hot water than in cold water.
If you were to stop all this movement - bring everything to a perfect state of rest (even overcoming the laws of quantum physics to do so) - then you would reach absolute zero: the coldest possible thermodynamic temperature.
But what about moving in the other direction? If you heat up a system of particles, obviously they will move faster and faster. But is there a limit to how hot you can heat them, is there some kind of catastrophe that will prevent you from heating them beyond a certain limit?
At temperatures of thousands of degrees, the heat you transfer to the molecules will begin to break down the very bonds that hold the molecules together, and if you continue to increase the temperature, electrons will begin to separate from the atoms themselves. You will get an ionized plasma consisting of electrons and atomic nuclei, in which there will be no neutral atoms at all.
This is still within reason: we have individual particles - electrons and positive ions - that will jump at high temperatures, obeying the usual laws of physics. You can increase the temperature and wait to continue.
As the temperature rises further, the individual entities you know as “particles” begin to break apart. At about 8 billion degrees (8 x 10^9), you will begin to spontaneously produce matter-antimatter pairs - electrons and positrons - from the raw energy of particle collisions.
At 20 billion degrees, atomic nuclei will begin to spontaneously break apart into individual protons and neutrons.
At 2 trillion degrees, protons and neutrons will cease to exist, and fundamental particles will appear, their components are quarks and gluons, their bonds can no longer withstand such high energies.
At about 2 quadrillion degrees you will begin to produce all known particles and antiparticles in huge quantities. But this is not the upper limit. A lot of interesting things happen within these confines. You see, this is the energy at which you can produce the Higgs boson, and therefore the energy at which you can restore one of the fundamental symmetries in the Universe: the symmetry that gives a particle its rest mass.
In other words, once you heat the system to this energy limit, you will find that all your particles are now massless and traveling at the speed of light. What was to you a mixture of matter, antimatter and radiation will become pure radiation (will behave like it), while remaining matter, antimatter or neither.
And this is not the end. You can heat the system to even higher temperatures, and although everything in it won't move faster, it will be brimming with energy, just as radio waves, microwaves, visible light, and X-rays are all forms of light (and all move at the speed of light), even if they have completely different energies.
Perhaps particles unknown to us are born or new laws (or symmetries) of nature appear. You would think that simply heating and heating everything to infinite amounts of energy would be enough to find out, but that’s not the case. There are three reasons why this is not possible.
1. There is only a finite amount of energy in the entire observable Universe. Take everything that exists in our space-time: all matter, antimatter, radiation, neutrinos, dark matter, even the energy inherent in space itself. There are about 10^80 particles of ordinary matter, about 10^89 neutrinos and antineutrinos, a little more photons, plus all the energy of dark matter and dark energy spread out over a radius of 46 billion light years of the observable Universe, the center of which is at our position.
But even if you turned all of that into pure energy (using E=mc^2), and even if you used all that energy to heat your system, you wouldn't get an infinite amount of energy. If you put all this into a single system, you will get a gigantic amount of energy, equal to approximately a temperature of 10^103 degrees, but this is not infinity. It turns out that the upper limit remains. But before you get there, you have one more obstacle.
2. If you trap too much energy in any limited region of space, you will create a black hole. Typically, you think of black holes as huge, massive, dense objects that can swallow hordes of planets: without breaking a sweat, casually, easily.
The point is that if you give a single quantum particle enough energy - even if it is a massless particle moving at the speed of light - it will turn into a black hole. There is a scale on which simply having something with a certain amount of energy will mean that the particles will not interact as usual, and if you get particles with that energy, equivalent to 22 micrograms using the formula E = mc^2, you can gain energy 10^19 GeV before your system refuses to get hotter. You will start to have black holes that will instantly decay into low-energy thermal radiation. It turns out that this energy limit - the Planck limit - is the upper one for the Universe and corresponds to a temperature of 10^32 kelvins.
This is much lower than the previous limit, since not only is the Universe itself finite, but black holes act as a limiting factor. However, that’s not all: there is even more limitation.
3. At a certain high temperature, you will release the potential that led our Universe to cosmic inflation, expansion. Back at the time of the Big Bang, the Universe was in a state of exponential expansion, when space expanded like a cosmic balloon, only in geometric progression. All the particles, antiparticles and radiation were quickly shared with other quantum particles of matter and energy, and when the inflation ended, the Big Bang occurred.
If you manage to reach the temperatures required to return to a state of inflation, you will press the reset button on the Universe and cause inflation, then the Big Bang, and so on, all over again. If you haven't realized it yet, keep in mind that if you get to this temperature and cause the desired effect, there is no way you will survive. Theoretically, this can occur at temperatures of the order of 10^28 – 10^29 Kelvin, this is still only a theory.
It turns out that you can easily reach very high temperatures. Although the physical phenomena you are accustomed to will differ in detail, you will still be able to reach higher and higher temperatures, but only to the point where everything you hold dear is destroyed. But don't be afraid of the Large Hadron Collider. Even with the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth, we reach energies that are 100 billion times lower than those needed for a universal apocalypse. published
It seems to me that many people, including those who answered above, have a slightly misunderstanding of what temperature even is. And another has the wrong idea of what the Planck temperature is. So let's look at everything in order.
1. First, I’ll tell you what temperature is NOT:
> temperature is NOT a measure of movement;
> temperature is NOT a measure of internal energy;
> temperature is NOT determined from the Gay-Lusac law (in general, this answer is somehow strange, how can one determine completely real physical quantities from an empirical law?).
To better understand temperature, let's answer the question. Imagine a lot of molecules of, say, water moving in one direction without deviations, without vibrations, at the same speed. What is the temperature of such a system? A person who has (normally) taken molecular physics will answer that such a system has no temperature at all. And he will be right. And it doesn’t matter how fast the particles move.
The fact is that there is such a thing as a state, and such a thing as the distribution of particle velocities. For the state in which the previous system was, the concept of temperature is not defined at all. Temperature is determined strictly for one type of state - the equilibrium state, in which the Maxwellian distribution of velocities takes place (with all sorts of variations). In this case, temperature is simply a parameter included in the exponential. Thermodynamically, it can be defined as the derivative of internal energy with respect to entropy. But this derivative makes sense ONLY in the case of equilibrium (i.e. Maxwellian distribution). And internal energy has nothing to do with it. There may be a system with non-zero internal energy, but with zero entropy, respectively, with zero temperature (Nernst’s law).
2. Planck temperature is NOT a maximum temperature (energy). In general, Planck quantities in theory arose as the most natural normalizing factors, by which it is convenient to normalize (dimensionless) quantities (as theorists like to do). Therefore, these quantities do not carry such a deep meaning. That's why they are characteristic. Those. It is clear that the theory should not work at such energies, but this does not mean that such energies are impossible.
Theoretically, there really is no absolute maximum temperature. The system can theoretically heat up (in a state of equilibrium) to any temperature. Another thing is what processes will occur during high temperatures, and whether we will be able to describe them. At high temperatures, first, molecules will begin to decompose into atoms, then atoms into nuclei and electrons, then nuclei will begin to disintegrate into nucleons, then nucleons into quark-gluon plasma... and... But what next is unclear. Quarks - elementary particles, they have nothing left to disintegrate into. What will happen at higher temperatures (say, the same Planck temperatures) is completely unclear.
As noted above, the highest temperatures occurred at the time of the Big Bang (or the beginning of inflation, as you prefer). But the problem is that it is impossible to say exactly what temperatures there were, and even more so, to say what exactly happened at such temperatures.
Therefore, the maximum limit in this case is due to the fact that we simply do not know what happens to matter at high temperatures, that’s all.
I am the author of an answer about Gay-Lussac's law. And I did NOT answer the question of what temperature is, because no one asked such a question. It's quite strange to say that my answer is wrong because it doesn't answer any of your own questions.
And now let’s return to the author’s question. I don't understand where the problem is with Gay-Lussac's law. It just so happens that physics is an experimental science, so in it vital role observations and empirical laws play a role. An empirical law is not identical to a qualitative law. Actually, the law we are considering allows us to calculate even the value of absolute zero very accurately.
The way you defined temperature - through entropy - is the opposite, defining entropy through temperature, since this is nothing more than the second law of thermodynamics. The concept of temperature in physics was used even before the concepts of entropy. But entropy is precisely defined as the derivative of heat with respect to temperature.
In addition, Gay-Lussac's law was obtained BEFORE the second law of thermodynamics, i.e. what you are talking about. To date, this law has not been refuted, which means it is true. The area of its applicability allows one to very accurately (up to a degree) calculate the absolute zero temperature (and this is how it was historically obtained), and to conclude that there is no upper limit for temperature.
I believe that your criticism of my answer is based on nothing.
Answer
Listen. I don’t even know how to seriously argue about this. First of all, your answer is simply wrong. Well, let Gay-Lussac's law work at temperatures up to 1e-3 K. And who said that it will work at more low temperatures? Well, let's say it works at temperatures of 1e-10000 K. And lower? What right do you have to extrapolate an empirical law to zero? Or maybe it doesn’t work at all at very low temperatures (by the way, this is so). Maybe there the law changes altogether, or becomes asymptotic. In order to answer this question, we need more fundamental concepts than some kind of empirics.
Answer
Gay-Lussac's law is simply derived from molecular physics. This is a statistical law about statistical quantities, which was initially obtained empirically.
The point is not whether the law will be refuted or not. The point is the fundamental nature of this law. Well, Gauss's law in electrodynamics or Coulomb's law are also very correct (empirical) laws. But you and I know that these are CONSEQUENCES of Maxwell’s equations, which are more fundamental because they are derived from the principle of least action in field theory.
Roughly speaking, if we want to describe the world not with an infinite number of Gay-Lussac laws, concepts of temperature and similar empirical laws, then we need to reduce everything to more fundamental concepts, such as the Boltzmann equation, the H-theorem derived from it and, consequently, the concept ( statistical) temperature.
Secondly, yes, you did not answer the question “what is temperature”, and in vain. Obviously, the author of the question does not quite understand what temperature is. The question disappears 90% when a person understands the essence of temperature itself.
It doesn’t matter at all how laws were discovered historically. What happened first, etc. Who cares? What matters is what we have today. After all, theory is universal knowledge about the structure of the world. If you omit the most important points of the theory and talk about some subordinate laws that any schoolchild can deduce from the fundamental principles, then you will not give any in-depth understanding of the subject.
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4 more comments
You wrote the most important thing in the very last paragraph. Any schoolchild can deduce this from school course. Do you think this is bad? This is the whole point. Why complicate things if you don't have to. Yes, oh quantum physics You can’t talk about temperatures at this level, but you can and should (at least start) about temperatures. You are not asked about exact numbers, but they ask about the fact that there are limits. It seems to me that it is very interesting that such complex things can be obtained from the basic laws on which the rest of thermodynamics was then built (the equation of state is also obtained from gas laws).
About extrapolation, it’s as if you weren’t reading me carefully. I wrote that from this law the value for absolute zero (and not just some K) is obtained with an accuracy of a degree. It is clear that this is an estimate, since at zero the gas is no longer a gas, but nevertheless, the estimate is surprisingly accurate.
What you are arguing with me about is completely strange. I understand the importance of fundamental laws and theories of unification. But I see no point in using them to explain physics to non-physicists when an easier and, I emphasize, correct explanation can be provided. This is a generally strange position. Probably, you will still solve problems on gravity from a school textbook using the universal law of gravity, and not general relativity. And all because Newtonian gravity is a special case of Einsteinian gravity, and within certain limits the first one can and should be used. It's the same story with gas laws. Gay-Lussac's law is a special case of the equation of state.
Well, whether I should have started with determining the temperature or not, that’s probably still up to me. And I answered as I considered necessary (as you did in your answer). And the fact that my (precisely) logic of the answer does not satisfy you does not at all make it incorrect. This is why you “omitted” the answerer:
"Planck temperature. Let's just say it's not that it's a limit, it's just that modern physics does not have the ability to imagine/describe temperatures higher than this."
And then you simply repeat his words:
“Therefore, the maximum limit in this case is due to the fact that we simply do not know what happens to matter at high temperatures, that’s all.”
In addition: “Temperature is determined strictly for one type of state - the state of equilibrium” - this is not true, otherwise all bodies would have the same temperature. But this is more of a typo than an error, as I understand it.
Further, I completely agree with the definition of temperature (how can you disagree? It’s still true). But I’m afraid it will be difficult to understand for a person who asks about the maximum temperature limit. Because he hardly knows what the Maxwell distribution is.
I would put it more simply: Temperature is a characteristic of a system of interconnected elements, for example, gas, or solid. A bunch of water molecules flying in the same direction at the same speed and without deviations do not interact with each other in any way and are nothing more than individual molecules; an individual molecule has no temperature. For bodies, the simplest definition of temperature is this: temperature is a quantity proportional to the average kinetic energy particles of a body (system), without taking into account the movement of the body itself. Those. as if the body is the center of the frame of reference.
Temperature is generally not easy to give a real definition, since it is purely empirical and originally arose from our sensation of heat and cold. As opposed to the same time or distance.
Well, yes, temperature is a parameter in the Maxwell distribution. We can say that temperature is a quantity proportional to the dispersion of the speeds of molecules in the system.
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Comment
We know that the minimum possible temperature is -273.15 °C. At this temperature, the movement of particles stops, and the emissions released by them thermal energy becomes equal to zero. There must probably be a point beyond which the particles will no longer be able to release more thermal energy, having reached their maximum.
Modern physics believes that this point is at a level of 1.41679 × 10 32 K (Kelvins) and is called the Planck temperature. This is exactly what the temperature of the Universe was in the first fractions of seconds after the Big Bang.
How to convert Kelvin to Celsius?
In physics, it is convenient to measure temperature in Kelvin, which does not imply the presence of a scale negative temperature, that is, absolute zero here is zero. To represent the temperature in degrees Celsius, which are more familiar to us, it is enough to know the formula used to calculate the temperature in Kelvin. T K (temperature in Kelvin) = T C (temperature in Celsius) + T 0 (constant equal to 273.15). In other words, to convert Kelvin to Celsius, it is enough to subtract the number 273.15 from Kelvin. for example, 1000 K = 1000 - 273.15 = 726.85 °C.
Given the formula for converting Kelvin to degrees Celsius, we can represent the Planck temperature in degrees Celsius as 1.41679 * 10(32)-273.15 °C. Certainly, this assessment calculated theoretically and based on the fact that if matter heated to the Planck temperature is given more energy, this will not lead to an increase in the speed of particles and, as a consequence, an increase in temperature. But it will cause the appearance of new particles during chaotic collisions of existing ones, which will lead to an increase in the mass of matter. But let’s imagine that matter, heated to the Planck temperature, is still given more energy in order to try to heat it even more. In this case, the entire Universe is waiting... and no one knows what awaits the Universe after passing the Planck temperature point. It is likely that the gravitational interaction between particles of heated matter will become so strong that it will become equal to the other three interactions: electromagnetic, strong and weak. None of the physical theories existing today can describe the physics of our world.
But let us return from cosmic affairs to earthly affairs. In his attempts to achieve the highest possible temperature within laboratories, man established temperature record at a level of about 5.5 trillion Kelvin, which can be written as 5 * 10 12 K. Of course, scientists did not heat a piece of iron to this unthinkable temperature - there simply would not be enough energy for that. This temperature was recorded during an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider during the collision of lead ions at near-light speeds.
What is temperature? Is there a limit to how hot an object can be? Now you will learn about this in an accessible form.Temperature characterizes energy in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. That is, the system had enough time for conditional equilibrium to occur after the interaction of all particles. This state is called maximum entropy and absolutely all systems come to this sooner or later.
To put it simply, it is impossible to determine the temperature of chaotically moving particles by different directions. The system within which equilibrium will occur must be precisely defined. Imagine a pot of boiling water. The boundaries of the pan are a closed system and when all the water particles begin to interact with each other, the temperature can be determined. This is why the boiling point of water is defined as 100 degrees Celsius, or in other words, equilibrium in boiling water occurs at 100 degrees.
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Now about the temperature limit. A closed system can receive an infinite amount of energy and this will require an infinitely long time for the process to “settle down” and the temperature can be determined. It took the Sun 4.6 billion years to reach a temperature of 5500 degrees Celsius. For supernova or distant explosions cosmic rays the concept of temperature is not applicable at all, since the processes in these phenomena are chaotic and it is impossible to talk about equilibrium.
It turns out that the physical model of the world allows for infinite high temperature for a particular system (object). You can heat as much as you like, pumping the system with energy, but there must be enough time left for equilibrium to occur and this temperature to be determined. The conclusion is that there is no temperature limit!
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