For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

Re:For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Hu... by mcherm on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @03:57PM (#5136203)

With a reading of -40, I'm fairly certain* he's not using Kelvins.

[*] Sometimes negative temperatures are used to represent temperatures ABOVE infinity. That's when high-energy quantum states are MORE populated than low-energy quantum states... it's useful for things like making a laser. But I still think it's unreasonable to believe that the temperature outside is -40 kelvin.

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Re:For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Hu... by gokfar on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @05:10PM (#5136686)

What do you mean by 'above infinity'?

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Re:For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Hu... by defen on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @07:19PM (#5137306)

In a nutshell, if you put a negative temperature object A in contact with any object B with a positive temperature, energy will flow from A -> B, regardless of how high B's temperature is. This is the opposite of everyday positive temperatures, where energy will flow from the high-temperature object to the low-temperature one. So in a sense you could say that the temperature of A is "above infinity".

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Re:For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Hu... by mikeash on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @07:11PM (#5137282)

Negative temperatures are effectively hotter than any positive temperature, as I understand it.

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