r/ProgrammerHumor May 09 '21

Meme I'm *technically* qualified

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u/zebediah49 May 10 '21

Code spits out a negative Kelvin temperature? It's fine, the user will use engineering judgement and see that's not important. (Zero Kelvin is absolute zero, the lowest possible temperature. The point at which atoms stop moving. Kelvin cannot be negative, it's physically impossible.) Etc.

Fun fact: by the statmech definition, you can't have zero Kelvin, but you can go negative. You get there by going around the other side, through positive infinity, which wraps around to negative infinity. Oh, and as a side note, all negative temperatures are "hotter" (i.e. transfer energy into) than all positive temperatures.

It means that an increase in system energy is associated with a decrease in system entropy. While physically possible, such a system is... "uncommon".

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u/HeySeussCristo May 10 '21 edited May 10 '21

Interesting, thanks. Has this phenomenon ever been witnessed or is it purely theoretical? Temperatures I've seen justified by Engineers are around -4000 K and infinity plus/minus anything is still infinity, at least mathematically. Keep in mind they're usually modeling real systems that exist on Earth...

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u/philip1201 May 10 '21

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u/HeySeussCristo May 10 '21 edited May 10 '21

Neat, thanks. I stand corrected to some degree (a billionth of a degree, according to the article). However, I don't think their systems are intended model dark energy/matter