Why have we not been able to achieve absolute zero?
by 
warriorsoul
ANSWERS: 3
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We have...how do you think we know what absolute zero is...
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If you want to cool something down, say a cup of hot water, you put it near something that is cooler, a bigger cup of cold water. So in order to cool something to absolute zero we need something that is colder than absolute zero. Now call me Mr. Boring if you like, but I'm not entirely sure that's possible. I checked with my tutor, and we seem to be within a few hundreths of a kelvin at last count. EDIT: Excellent point WarriorSoul! The answer is quite subtle. The question was why have WE (ie humanity) not been able to achieve absolute zero. In order to artifcially cool something we would need something cooler than it (as I previously mentioned) AND we would have to measure it, but to measure it would require energy, which would hea up the object! However, in the big wide universe it may be possible to achieve absolute zero. There is another theory that absolute zero is a limit, ie it is a value that objects can get close to, infinatly close to, but never quite reach.
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The third law of thermodynamics (the most obscure of the three) can be seen as the reason that absolute zero cannot be reached: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_law_of_thermodynamics It's by law, not lack of technique, strange, isn't it?
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