Did you have an actual explained mechanism by which this is going to happen?
Because if you're saying "exactly zero and close to it," we've never actually had a single atom at exactly zero, let alone a macroscopic object
But one specific mechanism exists: at a certain point there's entropy in simply the structure of the macroscopic object which prevents lowering its temperature further. So if you were to cool it as close to absolute zero as possible it would require turning it into something which was not a hard drive (again, this is something would occur far below the current achieved temperatures with even microscopic objects).
Theory says that this scenario cannot occur, so it's actually not a theoretical scenario.
Temperature is defined as the brownian net motion of a bag of particles. No reference point is involved.
How do you make that zero temperature? Are these particles zero-motion with respect to themselves? Then they aren't with respect to the planet, or the sun, or the galaxy.
Are they zero-motion with respect to the sun? Then they're hot enough to melt in seconds.
The conceptual idea of zero-temperature is not a real thing.
These people doing their fake-wise "but weird things happen at zero temperature" are just snake oil salesmen plying false knowledge.
There is no such thing as zero temperature.
In the meantime, there's nothing theoretical about the practical scenario, either. Voyager's hard drives have been in the absolute zero of outer space for more than half a century. Its heater, which did not reach the hard drives, has been off for more than a decade.
Those hard drives have been sub-1-kelvin for years and nothing changed.
These people are trying to speculate about what would happen if in a situation we've already had a dozen times, because they don't know the truth, and are filling their lack of knowledge with guesswork.
When it's presented to them that facts exist, they attempt to move the goalpost to theoretical limits which physics says aren't actually real at all, and then from there try to lean on their depth in physics.
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> So if you were to cool it as close to absolute zero as possible it would require turning it into something which was not a hard drive
This is a fantastic point, and something I hadn't even thought of.
I like this a lot.
I'm still wondering about "what, you think ball bearings in a vacuum don't work when it's chilly?"
Like I can't even think of why they think it'll fail, except some magical belief that the fact that it's cold just causes magical breakage
The operation of the damn drive is friction based. It'll heat up! Crimeny.
When people are speculating that effects will happen, even though we've done this and they didn't, by asserting that an impossible goal wasn't reached, it's appropriate to ask them how.
If you feel that it's appropriate to use emotive words like "arrogant" when someone says "please tell me how that's possible," then I guess I'm not that worried about your opinion.
Cooper pairs is one such example, where at very low temperatures electrons pair up and begin to behave like a new combined particle with integer spin. Thus they morph from fermions to bosons which are no longer subject to pauli exclusion and can all occupy the same state. The information required to describe such a system decreases substantially as the potential state space is now quite limited.
This manifests in physical phenomenon like superconductivity and superfluidity.
I will repeat my protest which you ignored from the previous comment.
1) We have never reduced even a single atom to absolute zero. Practicioners debate whether it's actually possible.
2) Your discussion of bose-einstein condensates is neat and all, but the explicit context is a hard drive. Nobody has ever condensed a macroscopic object (the breathless article about condensing a tardigrade isn't actually correct.)
There has never been a superfluid or superconductive hard drive.
Please focus on the question being asked, in the context being asked, if you must reply.
How do you propose to reduce a hard drive to actual non-almost zero degrees? Not a few particles, not electron pairs. A hard drive.
Once it's at absolute zero, formally, so what? Yes, I saw you guys handwaving "spooky stuff happens," but in reality, we've had hard drives within a tenth of a degree kelvin and nothing happened.
If you're going to propose effects, please have a specific mechanism in hand that creates the specific effects asked about, in a context that is the hard drive and not two electrons
Thanks
For the vast majority of materials (of any size), strange things do happen when you hit the critical temperature. You can take any amount of mercury for example and when it hits 4.1 K it loses all its electrical resistance.
Hard drives are not the only items that can contain information.
1. We've had hard drives within a tenth of a degree of kelvin, and the effect you're asserting did not occur
2. You're offering no explanation for what would actually cause this
3. The weight of a random superconductor is an irrelevant detail added for fake technical acumen
We have had these devices at these temperatures, and the thing you're talking about did not occur.
Until you can say why it would, there is no reason to take this seriously.
We've already done this. Your speculation is invalidated by experience and data.
Cool, cool. It doesn't, but enjoy.
Why would you imagine this would happen? The magnetic domain is not affected thus, and neither are MOSFETs.
You're a mathematical physicist? You're the single least likely person on Earth in my imagine to say "oh, you reduced the speed of some atoms? That must mean magic happens."
What could possibly wipe a hard drive from the action of cooling it down?
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> Why would heating it back up restore the information?
In short form "it doesn't."
You may be confusing that some heating processes create damage with the idea that warming something up will harm it.
As any schoolchild can tell you, DNA has survived billions of years on this planet, being heated and cooled somewhat rapidly throughout.
> And by the way, thermodynamic irreversibility is related to entropy change, which is a measure of information lost.
This is a very "consider a spherical cow" approach to physics.
The reason physicists are made fun of on those grounds is that the abstractions they bring to the discussion are frequently so far divorced from the real world situation that by the time you start bringing the real world back to the discussion, their abstractions fall apart.
Real world objects that were not designed for durability have not suffered this damage on the timescale of a fifth of the length of the universe.
That things are irreversible and related to one another isn't much use when you look at the real world and the things you're describing aren't actually happening at large scale, even in uncontrolled natural conditions.
An insect that's been in amber for 500 million years typically has DNA loss on the order of ~5%. It has been exposed to a wild range of temperatures.
If you genuinely believe that exposing a hard drive to absolute zero would destroy it, help us understand why Voyager is still running.
Maybe it's because it's still a tenth of a degree kelvin above absolute, or something?