Quantum Gas Goes Below Absolute Zero 264
First time accepted submitter mromanuk writes in with a story about scientists at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich who have created an atomic gas that goes below absolute zero. "It may sound less likely than hell freezing over, but physicists have created an atomic gas with a sub-absolute-zero temperature for the first time. Their technique opens the door to generating negative-Kelvin materials and new quantum devices, and it could even help to solve a cosmological mystery."
Not as new as it seems (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:better explanation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:better explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
Surely it's more important that technical terminology be technically correct than intuitively graspable? There's a reason that computer techs don't refer to the whole computer as the "hard drive", even though that's obviously exactly where you put all your files when they're on the computer.
Re:better explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, don't bother trying to learn why this is; just blame it on someone else and think yourself the better man for being ignorant.
Richard Feynman [wikiquote.org]: "If you can't explain something to a first year student, then you haven't really understood it."
I'll take Feynman's attitude towards obtuse, confusing jargon over your smug shit any day.
Re:better explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the things I love about slashdot. People with no knowledge of a subject call professionals "retarded" and get modded insightful.
It seems to me to be a retarded description, like calling infinity + 1 a negative number.
Think about reciprocals.
They need to use a proper name for it,
How about "nagative temperature". That's a proper name for it.
Temperature is defined by energy and entropy. Add energy and the entropy increases. That means the temperature is positive. How positive is how big that change is. Nice, straightforward, works well. Does whay you expect.
Then some quantum physicists discovered that adding energy makes the entropy go down. Well, plug that into the definition of temperature and the number comes out negative.
So basically, what you are claiming is that physicists are retarded because you don't like how the maths work out and you would rather they change the perfectly good classical definition of temperature to fit your sensibilities.
Deal with it. Quantum physics is very strange and many ideas you bring with you from the classical world simply don't work.
That doesn't make the professional physicists retarded, by the way.
Re:The real question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Proving/Disproving God isn't a Scientific Mission. Understanding how the Universe works is.
If we ever figure it all out we can go.
Well that is how the Universe Works and that is it.
or we can go.
Wow so that is how God did it.
You are confusing the Idea of a God with Religious interpretations of God. Science has more or less disproven that the Stories in the Bible are often not Factual or at least exaggerations. But it doesn't disprove God.
God and Science do not Mix. The God idea exists outside of Science as God is defined as a SuperNatural entity or more plainly God exists out of the rules of Observable Nature, Science is the study of Observing Nature.
This come with a two edge sword.
1. Any Science that states that God did it, is faulty because God is unobservable thus you cannot equate it as an observed fact. At best if there is a God Influence it would probably be considered a seemingly Random Element that will need further study.
2. The counter to this, is Science can't disprove God, because he is out of Observable Ability. Thus any work to Disprove God will be trying to apply God as a factor to disprove it.
Keep God out of Science, Also Keep Atheism out of Science as well.
Re:Not as new as it seems (Score:4, Insightful)