Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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Scientists have discovered something called negative temperature when they were able to drop the temperature on molecules past absolute zero.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_2404666.html
Article_sl said:
"The inverted Boltzmann distribution is the hallmark of negative absolute temperature, and this is what we have achieved," said researcher Ulrich Schneider, a physicist at the University of Munich in Germany. "Yet the gas is not colder than zero kelvin, but hotter. It is even hotter than at any positive temperature - the temperature scale simply does not end at infinity, but jumps to negative values instead."
More evidence that we're just in a big software simulation and the programmers used an unsigned variable to determine energy.

As a layman this sounds extraordinary and very suspicious. Like the dudes that said they got a particle to accelerate FTL.
 

TheBeagle

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Just reading your quote and not the article it looks like more semantics gymnastics, which is the most annoying thing about theoretical physics from my layman's POV.
 
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Voyce

Shit Lord Supreme
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Mention of Perpetual Motion machines within first page, call me a fool but I want someone with Sci cred and a nice speaking voice to come out and sell me on such business.
 
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Mention of Perpetual Motion machines within first page, call me a fool but I want someone with Sci cred and a nice speaking voice to come out and sell me on such business.
I'm skeptical also. That link I provided is the best description of the phenomenon I could find so far. If (that's an if) this pans out looks like perpetual motion.

I'm sure detractors will pop up in a few days once they have had a chance to go over all the information.


It probably is just an intentionally head line grabbing article to rustle some jimmies and get funding.
 

Dioblaire

And now my Watch has ended...
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Mention of Perpetual Motion machines within first page, call me a fool but I want someone with Sci cred and a nice speaking voice to come out and sell me on such business.
Pfft, you know you would be happy with Morgan Freeman narrating it
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Kaosu

Bronze Knight of the Realm
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Just read up on negative temperatures. This isn't necessarily a new discovery, rather I think this is one of the first times they've been able to achieve this quantum phenomenon in labs and it seems only certain systems are able to produce negative temperature. In this case, lasers were used. The process is above my current knowledge to really understand, so I won't bother explaining. However, I think most of the confusion is the idea of negative temperatures. It seems like it wouldn't make sense under thermodynamics but apparently it does, if you break down a few things:

Wiki_sl said:
That a system at negative temperature is hotter than any system at positive temperature is paradoxical if absolute temperature is interpreted as an average internal energy of the system. The paradox is resolved by understanding temperature through its more rigorous definition as the tradeoff between energy and entropy, with the reciprocal of the temperature, thermodynamic beta, as the more fundamental quantity. Systems with a positive temperature will increase in entropy as one adds energy to the system. Systems with a negative temperature will decrease in entropy as one adds energy to the system.
It does make sense, but its hard to wrap your head and actually visualize such a phenomenon.

As far as endless energy, be mindful that even if this phenomenon was potentially limitless 'energy' for motion, the requirements to even achieve this system is beyond anything other than knowledge building - even remotely useful in technology is quite some time off.
 

Voyce

Shit Lord Supreme
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Pfft, you know you would be happy with Morgan Freeman narrating it
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I write a letter every day before work and send it to Mr. Freeman in hopes he will take my lucrative offer of .83 cents an hour to narrate my life, my entire life. On a minute to minute bases.
 

Tarrant

<Prior Amod>
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I write a letter every day before work and send it to Mr. Freeman in hopes he will take my lucrative offer of .83 cents an hour to narrate my life, my entire life. On a minute to minute bases.
How old are you? If you just turned 30 today you would need to pay him $218,124 and he'd probably want the money up front.
 

Tarrant

<Prior Amod>
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Calculators, how do they fucking work? You're numbers are off though. at 89 cents an hours that $21.36 a day, which is $7,769.40 per year. Granted my numbers were off a bit, but yours were way off.
 

Numbers_sl

shitlord
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I wasn't sure where to put this article about the Fukushima clean-up, but since it talks about the development of new technologies to remove cesium from the environment I think this is appropriate even though there is a sad element of politics and nepotism. The well connected construction company's workers have left hundreds of garbage bags full of soil and other contaminated items all over the place.https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/b...denounced.html

"What's happening on the ground is a disgrace," said Masafumi Shiga, president of Shiga Toso, a refurbishing company based in Iwaki, Fukushima. The company developed a more effective and safer way to remove cesium from concrete without using water, which could repollute the environment. "We've been ready to help for ages, but they say they've got their own way of cleaning up," he said.

Shiga Toso's technology was tested and identified by government scientists as "fit to deploy immediately," but it has been used only at two small locations, including a concrete drain at the Naraha-Minami school.

Instead, both the central and local governments have handed over much of the 1 trillion yen decontamination effort to Japan's largest construction companies. The politically connected companies have little radiological cleanup expertise and critics say they have cut corners to employ primitive - even potentially hazardous - techniques.
 

Tarrant

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I thought some Japanese science crew were the first to film it a few years back? This guys pictures are much more clear though.

Edit: I thought your post said they were the first, my bad.
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