Someone here mentioned the idea that making objects very cold was a more plausible source of unexpected physics leading to extinction than high energy physics because high energy events occur in the atmosphere all the time whereas there’s no reason to expect any non-artificial cause of temperatures in the millKelvin range. Does someone have a source for this observation? I’m writing a post where I’d like to attribute this properly.
Hm, that’s an interesting idea. I don’t think it’s at all workable, though. You can’t mess up a stable equilibrium by making it colder, so the only option I see for cool novel physics at low temps is a spontaneously broken symmetry. Which will then re-symmetrize as it heats up in a way that is much more guaranteed than heating something up and then cooling it down.
I think it is interesting in so far as you not only create setups wiith very low temperature but also with very regular structures. Structures where quantum computing is possible and exploits the calculation power of reality. I think it’s at least conceivable that this could trigger novel effects. Especially so if the universe it a simulation where this could cause things like stack-overflow :-)
I agree that it doesn’t seem likely: part of why I wanted it was not the specific scenario but the point that it isn’t always obvious when we we are pushing the universe into configurations where material is not naturally in and don’t appear in nature in any way.
Someone here mentioned the idea that making objects very cold was a more plausible source of unexpected physics leading to extinction than high energy physics because high energy events occur in the atmosphere all the time whereas there’s no reason to expect any non-artificial cause of temperatures in the millKelvin range. Does someone have a source for this observation? I’m writing a post where I’d like to attribute this properly.
Cool risks outside the envelope of nature?
Yes. Thank you.
Hm, that’s an interesting idea. I don’t think it’s at all workable, though. You can’t mess up a stable equilibrium by making it colder, so the only option I see for cool novel physics at low temps is a spontaneously broken symmetry. Which will then re-symmetrize as it heats up in a way that is much more guaranteed than heating something up and then cooling it down.
I think it is interesting in so far as you not only create setups wiith very low temperature but also with very regular structures. Structures where quantum computing is possible and exploits the calculation power of reality. I think it’s at least conceivable that this could trigger novel effects. Especially so if the universe it a simulation where this could cause things like stack-overflow :-)
I agree that it doesn’t seem likely: part of why I wanted it was not the specific scenario but the point that it isn’t always obvious when we we are pushing the universe into configurations where material is not naturally in and don’t appear in nature in any way.
Can’t be so bad:
Macroscopic object (40kg) cooled to 77 nanokelvin:
https://news.mit.edu/2021/motional-ground-state-ligo-0618