I recently read Four Laws that Drive the Universe and it did not make me happy. I can really say now that my idea of reality is even less precarious than what it once was. I have actually never taken a chemistry course in my life and I only briefly studied thermodynamics when I took physics, so the laws were not a total shock. What got me was that the author argues we should think of temperature inversely. The Celsius, Fahrenheit, Kelvin, and Rankine (similar to Kelvin but uses Fahrenheit degrees) scales should not be used when we think of temperature. Rather, we should use the formula, b=1/kT, which is reported in units of inverse joules.

Temperature should not be thought of in terms of hot and cold, but in terms of the positions (energy levels) that atoms or molecules occupy. Absolute zero is a fantasy or an idealized version of reality, so it is not considered. However, the energy levels that are next to absolute zero are considered. There are 2 such possible energy levels - the one above and the one below. We are familiar with the energy levels above absolute zero, yet we also utilize those energy levels below absolute zero.

If a group of atoms is directly above absolute zero, then that means they are occupying one energy level - the lowest. As temperature increases, the atoms start to occupy different energy levels. If temperature were to become infinite, the atoms would spread out to occupy every energy level, even those closest to absolute zero. And entropy would be maximized, but never infinite. Entropy can never reach infinity but it can reach zero. This is because there is only one way for something to be perfect but many ways for it to not be perfect.

If a group of atoms is directly below absolute zero, then that means they are occupying one energy level - the highest. As temperature becomes more negative (we're on the Kelvin scale), the atoms start to occupy different energy levels. If negative infinity were reached, then the same situation observed at positive infinity would occur - the atoms would occupy every energy level. A device that uses temperatures below absolute zero is a DVD player, which uses a laser to produce many atoms in a high energy level, which corresponds to a negative temperature on the Kelvin scale.

Um...a DVD player uses temperatures BELOW Absolute Zero ... how again? That last part made no sense.

I think he was actually referring to the idea of an absolute zero energy state which cannot be reached, not a temperature (which caused the confusion). The laser of the player, which gives off heat, indicates that the atoms are in a low energy state. Although I thought from the molecular dynamics course I took its the other way around (heat means they are in a highly aggitated state) but who knows, I barely paid attention in that class.

Dude, there's this thing you can do with baking soda and vinegar that would blow your friggin' mind.

You'll really have to read the book, which is here:

  http://www.amazon.com/Four-Laws-That-Dr … 342&sr=1-1

   The author explained that directly below absolute zero, one will find the opposite of what happens directly above absolute zero.

   ABOVE = all atoms in the lowest energy state
   BELOW = all atoms in the highest energy state

   It's not intuitive, any more than the notion of apoptosis being beneficial is intuitive. What happens with energy levels is that atoms occupy them more evenly as the temperature increases. If you could reach infinity, you would find that every energy level is occupied, from the lowest to the highest. That is definitely not intuitive. Intuitively, you would expect that only the highest energy level would be occupied at an infinite temperature. However, you find that this happens only below absolute zero. The author explains this in the book. I'm not a thermodynamicist.