How does negative absolute temperature work?

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Of course you can’t reach absolute zero, but theoretically you could go below it, and reach a form of temperature that works opposite to how our temperature works in terms of energy, but… what would it look like? I’m having a little trouble visualizing it. Would my hand heat up or cool down, and would it the negative value just keep rising?

In: Physics

6 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

You can’t go “below” absolute zero.

Negative temperatures are actually extremely ***hot*** values, not cold values, and the fact that they’re mathematically resolved with a negative sign is more because of a problem with the way we resolve temperature in physics.

Any physics problems involving negative temperatures can’t actually use temperature, but instead uses the *inverse* of temperature, known as thermodynamic beta.

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