Why is there a limit to how cold something gets and no limit to how hot something can get?

Answer 1

Temperature is measured by how much movement is done by the atoms/molecules of a substance. The hotter the temperature, the faster the atoms/molecules move. At absolute zero, the atoms/molecules are completely still and thus cannot get any colder. On the other end of the spectrum, if enough pressure is applied, there is no limit to how hot something can get because an atom/molecule can always move faster.

Answer 2

You are right, there is no limit to how hot something can get, because in the beginning of our universe, it saw temperatures far greater than any we had ever seen or are able to imagine.... I am sure there is a cap on heat, but I do not know the heat limit... There is no limit to how cold something can get either, unfortunately speaking. When a source of energy, such as an atom, gets near 0 kelvin... The energy itself is still there, unlike many scientists believe. Once it gets heated back up, the energy expands itself once more..

What is more, the colder than 0 Kelvin (In theory) the warmer an atom gets, and begins to vibrate and move freely once again. So, the cap of coldness is simply a threshold of how still an atom can get before moving once again. There is no temperature in which an atom completely stops moving. If there was, then you could bet that we would have disected an atom into its gravitons and photons by now.

Answer 3

There may well be limits to how hot something can get. We just happen to exist at the cold end of the temperature scale, and so can reach that end easier. To increase the heat of something, you need to add energy, which is relatively simple. To make something colder, you have to allow energy to escape from it to something else, which is difficult if you haven't got anything colder to start with. You could try reducing the energy overall by creating a sudden vacuum (V is inversely proportional to T), but there are limits to the hardness of vacuum possible to be produced. Some theorist predicted mathematically that there is a possibility of temperatures below absolute zero (sorry I can't remember source), but this is disputed, of course, and doubtful.

Answer 4

skepsi.... you are wrong, heat has a linear relationship. It takes as much energy to heat a unit of something from 40 to 41 degrees as it takes to heat it from 50 to 51 degrees as long as the matter does not change state (ice to water or the like)

I am not sure if scientists really know absolute zero. It is approached asymptotically during tests where one get very very close to the temperature we think represents absolute zero.

As for high temperatures there is no known limit. I guess if all the energy that exists in the universe was focused on one single atom there would be no more energy to bundle into the atom and so the top temperature would be reached.

Answer 5

There are actually limits on both ends of the scale.

Temperature is a measure of the amount of molecular motion in a substance. The minimum is when there is no motion at all and is, by definition, 0 degrees Kelvin.

The fastest anything can move, including molecules, is theoretically the speed of light, so there is a limit on the upper end. It is, however, impossible to get to that speed. As objects accellerate closer to the speed of light they increase in mass, approaching infinite mass as they approach light speed. At some point they reach a mass great enough that they collapse into a black hole making observations of temperature impossible. That happens at what's called the Planck temperature, which is about 2.5 x 10^32 degrees Fahrenheit.

Answer 6

Absolute Zero is the point at which atoms stop vibrating. There is simpy no more heat to remove. That is your lower limit. At the other end, you can always add more energy to something to make it hotter, but the hotter it gets, the more energy it takes to make it even hotter, and meanwhile, whatever is around it is tending toward equilibrium, pulling the heat away from it. There is a practical upper limit, if not an absolute one. And there may be an absolute one as well. Eventually an atom would vibrate to such a degree that it would disintegrate into quarks.

Answer 7

The temperature of an object is really a measure of how much heat energy it contains.

Absolute zero (0 Kelvins, approximately -459 degrees, approximately -273 centigrade) is the theoretical temperature where the object contains no heat energy at all. It can't have less than none!

On the other hand, if you grant the source of energy, you can keep adding more and more. Your object will eventually dissociate into subatomic particles if you add enough energy, almost as if the atoms are being shaken to pieces.

Answer 8

It is like why there is a limit to how empty a glass can be but not how full. When heat energy is removed it gets colder. When there is none left that is absolute empty (for heat, absolute zero).

As for hot, there is no hard limit like that, but atoms will break apart as thngs get hotter, changing from a gas state to a plasma state. To be picky, there is no limit to how hot a temperature you can get, but there is a limit to how hot you can get something, because when the atoms disociate it becomes nothing. (yes I know conservation, but if your brick turns into a bunch of disociated particles it is hard to call it something)

Answer 9

There is a limit to how cold something cant get--0 degrees kelvin; there is a theoretical limit to how hot something can get also, but I forgot how hot that is--it had something to do with quantum mechanics and relativity.

Answer 10

There is a limit to how cold something can get - it's -273 C, or 0 Kelvin. That's the lowest temperature. And we haven't gotten anything quite that low yet, but really really close (.000000001 K or something).