There is no windchill at absolute zero

created by Mhojo

(idea) by Pyromancer (1.6 mon) (print) ? (I like it!) 2 C!s Thu Dec 06 2001 at 22:36:41

There is no windchill at absolute zero, because there can be no wind at absolute zero.

Heat is just molecules jiggling around. In order for them to stop jiggling around, they have to be absolutely stationary relative to each other. Even if we imagine a perfectly rigid piece of air relative to itself, moving with respect to the ground and running into some hapless human, the molecules involved would get bumped around quite a bit upon contact with said human. They would inevitably pick up some energy, and would therefore rise above absolute zero in temperature.

Conversely, if we imagine that nothing but the object in question is at such a low temperature, windchill still could not occur because of issues with heat transfer. When an area of cool air surrounds a warm object, some of that object's heat is transferred into the air (varying based on relative temperature and the object's thermal characteristics). Heat transfer between that object and the surrounding air slows down as the object heats air in its general vicinity, since less heat is transferred between objects of similar temperature. Wind blows already-heated air away from an object, causing heat transfer to accelerate on its exposed surfaces. An object at absolute zero, by definition, cannot transfer any heat into its surroundings--it has no stored heat to begin with, and the surrounding air is always at the same temperature or higher--so the windchill effect cannot accelerate its (lack of) heat loss.

Of course, the laws of thermodynamics imply that nothing in our universe can ever achieve absolute zero, so the statement is more or less meaningless anyway.

(idea) by allseeingeye (17.9 hr) (print) ? (I like it!) 3 C!s Wed Jan 07 2004 at 19:13:43

The steam whistle dopplers in my head, making a bizarre siren song. I feel like I'm being teased down a black hole, smeared toward the event horizon like a stripe of paint on a canvas. Thinner and fainter, slower and further. I feel the cold. This is familiar. He rattles his cage in horror and raw animal fear. He knows.

We have been here before.

We are beyond the pale now, again, same as it ever was. Each life we live runs aground here. The chairs are set in the familiar places, either side of the stone faced Judge.

There are three players on this stage. The Judge, Myself and It. I am myself. No, wait. This will make little sense to a whole soul. We exist as three parts of a whole, the jigsaw of consciousness. I am free of want, the essence of nirvana. It is the spot of black that colors all things, the negative of my image. He thrashes against his chains, foaming and howling, a whirlwind of emotion and need and desire. The Judge, the keeper of Here, sits in eternal repose, waiting for us.

I just died again.

The shortest life I lived was when I was a silkworm, clinging to the underside of a mulberry bush. I died in a frost, before I even tasted the leaves. It was cold, almost as cold as it is here.

I've heard the whistling sound before. When I stormed the trenches in Ypres, the grenade that stomped all the air away beside me drowned me in it. The overload that made my ears scream was a pale echo of it.

When I slipped off the icy rooftop in Prague, I felt everything fall away from around me. The void swims exactly like the cobblestones did just before they leapt up and struck me dumb, dashed to pieces on the cold wet street. The vertigo washes over me.

I remember each and every time I lived because I remember each and every time I died. It is the punctuation on the sentence. They remember too.

He is incoherent with rage, not that he says much when he does speak. When the lives end, he loses. The fire of life lashes and tortures him, and he wails and howls for the ones he leaves behind. They are the tethers that tie him down to his chair. He squirms and thrashes, never tiring, as though the chair was made of thorns and red hot iron. The animal wants to live.

The Judge nods to us each in time and opens the book, same as it ever was. We do the dance we have done a thousand times before.

You stand in Judgment.

I understand.

He spits and bares his teeth, wild-eyed with rage.

The karma must balance.

I understand.

He cries and wails, frothing at the mouth.

If it does not, you will be cast from the bardo once again into the world.

Why does he cry like that?

This is his hell. He wants to live forever. Do you?

No. I couldn't remember the stories without the ends.

printable version
chaos

Technology that gets lost between now and Star Trek	How not to transmit information faster than light speed	You cannot blow bubbles with gum arabic	Absolute Zero
How to listen to tech support	This node is an illusion	On the beach, by myself. How it turned out.	The Three Laws of Thermodynamics
If I had a rocket launcher, some son of a bitch would pay!	Yesterday I kissed the girl I love	Young Black Teenagers	Cthulhu for President
Don't call me "Generation X," call me a child of the Eighties	Bardo	Why the existence of God cannot be disproven	Node for the Apes
windchill	Position Independent Code	Ideological masochism	Evolution is iterative feedback against the Second Law of Thermodynamics, motherfucker
When my inside selves just jump out with wings of fire	Katha Upanishad	Event Horizon	Vanilla Sky

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