So, we all know whether a train is moving depends on where the observer is. For passengers riding on it, the train is not moving. And high temperature are just particle moving with high speed. Is it possible that some observers will find a hot object cold? Just like the passengers on the train Thanks in advance!
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One answer is that temperature is always relative, it’s just to a well defined zero.
A more interesting way of seeing it is that it is actually kind relative luke you describe too. Temperature is basically how “riled up” a set of molecules are. The hotter they are, the more they’re vibrating and crashing into each other. When colder, they’re more stable and still.
Imagine what happens for a meteor entering our atmosphere. It blazes up in a ball of fire that’s many thousand degrees hot. But that sort of temperature wasn’t actually anywhere to be found. The meteor is cold, and the atmosphere is cold. So where does the sudden heat come from? Well, it comes from the meteor crashing into air molecules at very high speed.
What did we say temperature was again? Molecules at high speed crashing into each other…
So we *could* argue that the meteor was in fact hot all along, except all the molecules were moving in the same direction, so it’s only hot relative to our atmosphere and not hot by itself. Or we could argue that it was in fact our atmosphere that was very hot if we use the meteor’s perspective. Or we could argue that as long as it doesn’t hit our atmosphere, it’s cold. That would make it relative.
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