How cold is the coldest place in the Universe, that we know of? What's the lowest man-made temperature ever achieved? And just how many zeroes are needed to express 'absolute hot', after which the fundamentals of conventional physics start to break down in all kinds of strange ways? All is revealed by in this awesome infographic by the guys at BBC Future.
See below for the whole infographic, or click here for an even bigger version, courtesy of the BBC.
Most people are pretty familiar with absolute zero, it's -273.15 degrees Celsius, and it's the lowest possible temperature that can ever be achieved, according to the laws of physics as we know them. This is because it's the coldest an entity can get when every single skerrick of heat energy has been sucked right out of it. Even the coldest known place in the Universe - the creepy-looking Boomerang Nebula - isn't as cold as absolute zero. Just look at that thing, I last like three seconds before I have to look away for fear of having my soul ripped out of me just like how Evil Pan tries to tear everyone's shadows from their bodies in Once Upon a Time.
But what about 'absolute hot'? It's the highest possible temperature that matter can attain, according to conventional physics, and well, it's been measured to be exactly 1,420,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 degrees Celsius. Which, of course, is ridiculous. The only thing that we know of that's ever come close to absolute hot is the temperature of the Universe, at 104 seconds old.
Way back up on the infographic is our biggest achievement in the heat stakes - 5,500,000,000,000 degrees Celsius, which scientists were able to achieve by crashing lead ions against each other in Sweden's Large Hadron Collider.
There's so much more fascinating stuff on this infographic, you can find out the temperature of the clouds on Jupiter, the average January temperature in the coldest place on Earth, and the temperature inside a conventional chemical bomb. Thank you, science.
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