Question about things that are really cold

[Fallingstar1971]

I was watching a show on PBS about the quest for absolute zero and how a scientist was able to liquefy different element by dropping there temperature using extreme pressures. At one point they even showed a liquid defying gravity and flowing out of the top of a glass.

Now I was wondering, right before a star ignites it too is under a tremendous pressure. Does it go from being very very cold to instantly heating up from fusion? Or does it warm up some and then ignite?

Also with these liquids defying gravity due to their temperature, If something were cold enough could it escape the gravity of a black hole (Einstein Bose condensate)

Or is it more of a pressure thing that makes these oddities possible?

Star

 

[origin]

I was watching a show on PBS about the quest for absolute zero and how a scientist was able to liquefy different element by dropping there temperature using extreme pressures. At one point they even showed a liquid defying gravity and flowing out of the top of a glass.

Now I was wondering, right before a star ignites it too is under a tremendous pressure. Does it go from being very very cold to instantly heating up from fusion? Or does it warm up some and then ignite?

Also with these liquids defying gravity due to their temperature, If something were cold enough could it escape the gravity of a black hole (Einstein Bose condensate)

Or is it more of a pressure thing that makes these oddities possible?

Star

The phase transformation between liquids and gases is dependent on temperature and pressure. The formula is the ideal gas law PV = nRT ( P is pressure, V is volume, n is the number of moles, R is the gas constant, and T is temperature). If I wanted to condense a gas I can either increase the pressure or decrease the temperature.

Another aspect of the gas law is that if the pressure is increased the temperature will increase. There is a everyday example of this, which is the diesel engine. Large diesel engines do not need spark plugs; the heat of ingnition comes from the cyclinder compressing. The pressure of the gas gets to the point that gas is so hot it auto-ignites. What this means is that if you want to make a liquid by compressing it the gas must be cooled for it to condense. Of course since the gas is at a high pressure you may only need to cool it to room temperature to have it condense. Liquid nitrogen is a good example. Imagine a high pressure canister of liquid nitrogen at room temperature. Now if the lid is removed the nitrogen immediatly begins to boil, because the pressure has been lowered. At atmospheric pressure nitrogen boils at -195 C. If the lid was replaced the boiling nitroghen would increase the pressure in the closed bottle just like a pressure cooker. The pressure would increase to the point that it would stop boiling and as the liquid heated back up to room temperature it would increase the pressure in the canister.

Very cold liquids do not defy gravity; nothing defies gravity - it's the law. I am not sure what it was you are refering to; it could simply be that a liquid was heated up and it expanded and came out of the bottle. Cold stuff is affected by gravity so it will be pulled into a balck hole like everything else.

 

[MeteorWayne]

In a nascent star, the pressure and temperature continually increases as gravity draws the material together until it reaches the point where fgusion can start. In fact the same thing goes on with planets and asteroids, they just never reach the high temperatures required for fusion due to the lower mass, but they all start out hot...in fact the planets are all still radiating away some of that gravitational heat of formation.

Regarding superfluid helium, that would not escape a black hole...first of all it couldn't exist in a black hole, and second, what makes a black hole is the gravity is so strong nothing, not even light, can escape.

It is a surface effect from the container:

"Superfluidity is a phase of matter or description of heat capacity in which unusual effects are observed when liquids, typically of helium-4 or helium-3, overcome friction by surface interaction when at a stage (known as the "lambda point" for helium-4) at which the liquid's viscosity becomes zero"

 

[drwayne]

Perhaps this is a reference to the demonstration people love to do with superconductors "levitating"
in a magnetic field?

Most examples of something "defying gravity" are really demonstrations of the intorduction of another
force into the system that offsets gravity. In the case of levitating superconductors, it is the interaction
between the external magnetic field and the superconductor, which acts to exlude magnetic fields.

Wayne

 

[Fallingstar1971]

No I watched that part with the frozen hockey puck levitating on a race track.

And yes, superfluity is how I was going to survive my Black Hole vacation, but now I understand that it wouldn't work

But what REALLY got me interested was how things behaved so differently when they were extremely cold. I started thinking about the Big Bang and how much we don't understand, but in the very beginning it would have been that cold (pre-big bang, Zero K no heat sources) So any element or part of an element (quarks, whatever) may have been behaving differently under those circumstances (and yes, I understand that it is generally accepted that there was nothing BEFORE the big bang, but now, with this understanding, there very well COULD have been something that was VERY cold behaving in ways we do not expect.)

Example. We start with a void, nothing

Quantum fluctuation causes a particle and antiparticle to appear.......

So now we have a particle and antiparticle, they cannot be at absolute zero because then they would not be able to move twords one another to annihilate. So in order to move, there temperature must be greater than Zero K.

Actually, if a particle and antiparticle WERE at Zero K, then they would NOT be able to annihilate one another. They would not be able to move until they at least warmed to a fraction of a kelvin.

Perhaps these frozen particles were the key. Perhaps this is how we have particles left over for atoms. If many of these fluctuations happen at the same time......if I have 100 particles and 100 anti-particles and some are frozen at Zero K then its entirely possible that when all is said and done, the survivors could be vast distances apart. I do not need the precise anti-particle that spawned with any particular particle, any of the 100 in my example would do. So after the .....particle event? Any surviving particle pairs could be so far apart that they cannot influence one another. Kick in the normal laws of physics and BOOM, particles merge and become atoms.

But what becomes of our surviving anti-particle twin brethren? Does this mean that somewhere, out there, there could be entire systems composed of anti-particles? I don't want to say "anti-matter", I guess you could describe it that way but I do not know if anti-particle and anti-matter are the same thing.

If for every surviving particle there is an anti-particle, then could our one Universe be divided into two?

Star

 

[origin]

No I watched that part with the frozen hockey puck levitating on a race track.

And yes, superfluity is how I was going to survive my Black Hole vacation, but now I understand that it wouldn't work

But what REALLY got me interested was how things behaved so differently when they were extremely cold. I started thinking about the Big Bang and how much we dont understand, but in the very beginning it would have been that cold (pre-big bang, 0K no heat sources) So any element or part of an element (quarks, whatever) may have been behaving differently under those circumstances (and yes, I understand that it is generally accepted that there was nothing BEFORE the big bang, but now, with this understanding, there very well COULD have been something that was VERY cold behaving in ways we do not expect.)

Example. We start with a void, nothing

Quantum fluctuation causes a particle and antiparticle to appear.......

So now we have a particle and antiparticle, they cannot be at absolute zero because then they would not be able to move twords one another to annihilate. So in order to move, there temperature must be greater than 0K.

Actually, if a particle and antiparticle WERE at 0K, then they would NOT be able to annihilate one another. They would not be able to move until they at least warmed to a fraction of a kelvin.

Perhaps these frozen particles were the key. Perhaps this is how we have particles left over for atoms.

Star

If you want to be a carpenter you do not start out by designing a mansion - you first learn what tools are needed and how to use the tools, then you work as an apprentice and learn the trade.

This is what you are doing by postulating these grand ideas for the fundemental make up of the universe. You do not know the very basics of physics so your ideas have huge holes in them. It is fine if you want to keep posting these ideas that are fundementally flawed and then learn from having people correct them, but you will not gain a good understanding of physics this way, it is too much of a hit or miss way to gain knowledge. You should take a course at a community college, an online course or get a text book and study it. Start off with the basics. You are clearly curious and my guess is you would find the course work very interesting.

 

[Fallingstar1971]

Any ideas on some online books? I don't have the kind of time to dedicate myself to schooling. Big family, small income. Today I happen to have off.

So as much as I would love to get back into school and study this, (not to mention meet some professors)and hear there thoughts and ideas)

I have watched many online lectures, (in fact, almost ALL the ones here) but you cant really interact with a movie. You can not ask a movie questions.

STar

 

[drwayne]

To borrow and hack a line from "The Matrix" - No one can be told what much of science is,
you have to understand it for yourself. That goes beyond simply reading or watching
a lecture. There is a reason why text books have those problem sets at the end of
a chapter, other than to destroy the free time of students - doing the grunt work to
understand the how's and why's of the concepts is essential.

The Shaum's review series is an excellent, and *relatively* inexpensive resource. In each
chapter, they briefly cover the topic, they then have a combination of worked out
solutions, and problems with answers that offer one a hand guiding one through the
hard work of applying the concept to really solve problems.

 

[aphh]

Supercritical element creeps out from a open container, because it has properties from both phases, gaseous and liquid. It starts mixing with air like a gas, despite having liquid appearance. Air and gas molecules are in constant motion and some actually beat gravity for being very light, like Helium.

A helium molecule is in motion faster than what gravity could hold, hence we're venting all our precious Helium out in space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_fluid