• Question: Why is there an "absolute maximum" temperature, and how did scientists work out what this is?

    Asked by doppler to Adam, Sheila, Suzie on 24 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Suzie Sheehy

      Suzie Sheehy answered on 24 Mar 2011:

      Hi there, as far as I know there isn’t an absolute maximum temperature. The temperatures inside the sun are millions of degrees, and perhaps in things like fusion experiments you could get 100,000,000 degrees… but as far as I know theoretically there is no maximum? Tell me if I’m wrong, always happy to be corrected 🙂

    • Photo: Sheila Kanani

      Sheila Kanani answered on 24 Mar 2011:

      Another great q!
      I think the highest known temperature is 2.538 x 10^32 degrees Fahrenheit but we realise that we dont know everything we can know about physics which means we dont know if that is the highest temperature possible.

    • Photo: Adam Tuff

      Adam Tuff answered on 24 Mar 2011:

      We don’t know if there is an absolute maximum temperature – our knowledge beyond planck time is incomplete (the furthest we can theoretically see back in time to) – that’s about 10^32 kelvin, but beyond that, who knows.

Comments