Frownland

First zero-gravity 3-D printer manufactures wrench in outer space in less than a week | Daily Mail Online

Well that's a pretty good idea.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Frownland

Discovery Channel will stop making garbage “docufiction” - Salon.com

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

grindy

Not that new, but still...
Oh, and can someone explain this? I consider myself relatively well versed for a layman when it comes to science, but I don't get how it worked at all.

Quantum gas goes below absolute zero

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A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.

Oriphiel

Absolute zero is the temperature at which every substance known to man becomes frozen. And when I say frozen, I mean to the point where the particles that comprise the substance no longer have any motion. So if they've found something that can go below absolute zero without being completely suspended, then that's pretty exciting news!

grindy

That I do understand.
I study mechanical engineering, and we have lots of thermodynamics, physics and even dabbled in quantum physics a little, for good measure.
But I absolutely don't understand how they achieved it and how a temperature can be below absolute zero. Obviously the exact science behind it is way too complicated, but I thought someone might get all this talk about the reversal of the amount of higher to lower energy particles and all that.

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A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.

Chula Vista

Be sure to view the picture at full scale.

Largest Hubble Space Telescope image ever assembled offers awesome view of a portion of the Andromeda galaxy | KurzweilAI

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Oriphiel

Well, temperature is just a way of gauging movement in particles (which creates friction, and summarily heat). So absolute zero was the lowest temperature thought possible, as everything ceased to move. But if there are particles than can keep moving beyond it, then the scale of temperature will expand to accommodate it.

Think about it like this: Imagine there's a field of grass that expands infinitely into the horizon. On the field, people run as far as they can, and then when they can't physically go any further they use some paint to mark down where they finished. Eventually, after hundreds of people have gone, nobody seems to be able to break a certain record set by someone who went before, who managed to go out really far. Everyone considers this to be the furthest that a human can possibly go, until someone proves that they can go further. But when someone does manage to go further, the limit that someone can possibly run is extended to the point where they collapsed. The field has an infinite distance to it, so technically the distance that humans can go is limitless, but there is still a definite point where almost everyone will have collapsed.

Temperature is the same way. Absolute zero was considered the mark in the grass that no substance could pass. Now that something has passed it, a new mark is set down, and the scale of possible temperature increases.

But i'm definitely no scientist, so I have no idea how they managed to do it. And I certainly know nothing about Quantum Mechanics.

grindy

Absolute zero not being absolute zero, at least for this particular type of matter, is an interesting thought. I can't really tie it with what the article says, but since I don't really get the explanation there, what you say might very well be the right interpretation.

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A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.

Psy-Fi

I can't explain it to you, as I'm still trying to fully understand it myself, but this video might be of some interest to you...

NOVA | Making More Stuff

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She's a Brick House

grindy

The video sadly doesn't work in my country.
I'm trying a proxy, but doesn't seem to work either.
But thanks for the tip, I'll look around whether it's up for downloading somewhere.

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A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.