Absolute Zero & Extracting Energy

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]This is Dalton. Hey, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice. Greetings from Huntsville, Alabama. I was watching Huntsville, Rocket City.

[00:00:06]>> Rocket City, >> which Trump officially named, well, by the it was always named Rocket City, right? And then Trump decided to >> I'm going to officially name it Rocket City. Uh, not to be CONFUSED WITH LITTLE ROCKET MAN.

[00:00:20]>> That's like coming to New York and I'm going to rename New York the Big Apple, >> which he would do that by the way.

[00:00:26]>> Anyway, that's so funny. Uh, greetings from Huntsville, Alabama. I was watching an old explainer on absolute zero and why it's impossible to reach it. If it is impossible by quantum physics to have a particle become completely stationary, then would it not be possible to extract infinite energy from it in the form of heat? In doing so, violating the first and second laws of thermodynamics, it seems a bit paradoxical to never be able to reach absolute zero since you seemingly can always have something colder.

[00:01:01]But that I don't know why you would say you seemingly could have something.

[00:01:05]>> No, it's it's a he's he's what this is Dalton. He he's merging a classical brain with a a quantum brain. Okay.

[00:01:15]right?

[00:01:15]>> In terms of his capac his his interest in answering the question, right?

[00:01:20]>> So, just let me talk you through this.

[00:01:23]>> All right.

[00:01:24]>> Talk you off the ledge, dog.

[00:01:26]>> It's going to be okay.

[00:01:27]>> Talk you off the absolute zero ledge.

[00:01:29]All right. So, let me just remind people that there's no such thing as cold, >> right?

[00:01:35]>> You can't like put cold in something.

[00:01:37]>> That's where I was going when I said it's >> If you could do that, >> right?

[00:01:40]>> Then you can make something like infinitely cold. Just add more cold.

[00:01:44]cold.

[00:01:44]>> So what we sense as cold is just the absence of heat, >> right?

[00:01:48]>> So you start pulling heat out, >> right?

[00:01:50]>> This is what your refrigerator does, >> right?

[00:01:52]>> It pulls heat out of your food, >> right?

[00:01:54]>> We don't think of it that way.

[00:01:56]>> You put in something that's room temperature, it takes the heat out, >> right?

[00:01:59]>> If you take heat out of something, what happens to its temperature?

[00:02:02]>> It goes down.

[00:02:02]>> And you take it out, where does that heat go?

[00:02:05]>> It's got to go somewhere.

[00:02:06]>> It's got to go somewhere. You ever go around back of refrigerator?

[00:02:08]>> The back of your refrigerator.

[00:02:10]>> You ever go around back >> as hell back there?

[00:02:11]>> You ever go around back? Those coils are dissipating coils to to send out the heat. It not only radiates the heat, but it's in touch with air. So, the air will conduct heat away as well, >> right?

[00:02:23]>> Okay. By this is a major issue with spacecraft.

[00:02:26]>> Okay.

[00:02:27]>> Because if you're in space and you have machines that generate heat, >> right?

[00:02:30]>> How do you get rid of the heat? Got to dump the heat somehow.

[00:02:33]>> Okay.

[00:02:33]>> So, you can't just have Well, you can have radiators, yes, but each radar radiator has to be pointing away into space. Mhm.

[00:02:41]>> They can't point to each other. You can't have a battery of radiators.

[00:02:45]>> Right. Not not a literal battery, but like an array.

[00:02:49]>> An array of radiators that are like if they point to each other, nothing.

[00:02:53]>> It just feeds each other the same heat.

[00:02:55]>> I'll heat you, you heat me.

[00:02:57]>> Exactly. So, they all have to face space, but it doesn't have the benefit of air whisking away the heat. It can only radiate it away. Whereas on Earth, you can release heat both ways.

[00:03:09]>> Okay? It can radiate away and you can you can convect air around it and it just takes it takes it away. Very efficient, >> right?

[00:03:16]>> When you have a medium such as an atmosphere to do that. All right. So >> cool breeze.

[00:03:22]>> Yeah. A cool breeze will cool you down faster than just you radiating heat. Okay. Right. That's is slightly different. The cool breeze is forcing your sweat to evaporate and the evaporation takes energy out of you. But so let's get back to the absolute zero.

[00:03:40]So I keep taking heat out and the temperature gets lower and lower and lower.

[00:03:43]>> You reach a point where quantum phenomena dominates and you can no longer use classical reasoning. This by the way Daltton is not alone in this in this uh intersection this troubled paradoxical intersection between classical physics and what we call modern physics. Okay. So you get down there and you try to take more heat out and you can't because the and by the way taking heat out means that particles are moving slower slower right >> okay the heat is vibrational energy typically okay so you take that out and there's a regime where the quantum fluctuations prevent it from ever stopping its motion All right.

[00:04:33]>> Okay.

[00:04:34]>> So, you're saying, "Let me that means there's energy there, >> right?

[00:04:38]>> Let me pull that energy up.

[00:04:39]>> Pull that energy. Let me utilize that energy."

[00:04:41]>> I think I'd have to confirm this with our cosmology trio.

[00:04:45]>> Brian and Brian and Jana.

[00:04:47]>> Janna. Brian Cox, Brian Green, and Brian Cox, of course, is in the UK, but he comes through and he's a good friend.

[00:04:53]>> And then sometimes Sean, >> Sean Carroll, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:56]He's a good guy, too. when we speak of 0 point energy of the vacuum of space, >> right?

[00:05:03]>> I think that's what they're referring to. The energy below which you cannot go, >> okay, >> cuz it's zero point, but it's not really zero, right?

[00:05:11]>> But >> if you try to get to zero, that's what you're stuck with. And that's quantum fluctuations. And you you I don't think you can extract energy out of that lowest energy fluctuation because it needs a to take energy out. You need a lower energy state to land in >> right >> and you can't >> right cuz that's it. You >> who was that guest we had in another show a biologist who said the universe is just electrons looking for a place to rest.

[00:05:38]>> That's it.

[00:05:39]>> Yeah. That was >> Bul from University of Madison Wisconsin.

[00:05:44]Yes. be tool. Uh, the universe, everything that happens in the universe is an electron looking for a place, >> looking for looking to hang its hat.

[00:05:52]>> And so, >> honey, I'm home.

[00:05:58]>> A hard day in the circus.

[00:06:04]>> U, so yeah, but people are imagine that you could tap this zero point energy and make like rockets out of it and travel through space. And I don't have problems people imagining that. It doesn't seem likely to me though based on what we know of the behavior of quantum physics.

[00:06:20]Got. So there you have it.

[00:06:21]>> All right, Dalton. Way to go, brother.

[00:06:23]Uh hope that keeps you from uh you know, >> keep on the ledge >> from jumping off the ledge. All right.

[00:06:28]This is uh Rachel Ambrose. Rachel says, "Rachel here from Austin, Texas. Photons have to be literally everywhere all the time, even in a dark room. If I can see, then there's photons hitting my eyeballs. I feel like people don't talk about this enough. They are filling every inch of space all the time.

[00:06:50]They're everywhere. Furthermore, somehow photons from the Big Bang are still here right now in the form of cosmic microwave background radiation. Neil, can you please speak to this?

[00:07:03]>> Yes. Muhammad Ali said it best.

[00:07:06]>> Mhm.

[00:07:06]>> Okay. H I'm pretty. That's right.

[00:07:10]Howard, look at me. I'm pretty. Howard >> or Howard Coell?

[00:07:13]>> Howard Coell. I'm so fast. I'm so fast.

[00:07:16]I turn off the lights and I'm in bed before the room get dark.

[00:07:20]>> That's the one I'm talking about.

[00:07:21]Really?

[00:07:21]>> Yeah.

[00:07:23]>> That's the one I'm talking about.

[00:07:24]>> Yeah.

[00:07:25]>> So, he's he knows that photons have to go, you know, >> right?

[00:07:31]>> Well, he's thinking that dark is penetrating the room, but light is exiting the room when you turn off the light. There's no the light gets absorbed and it's gone. Your eyes are not the ultimate arbiter of whether there are photons in the room, >> right?

[00:07:43]>> Because your eyes only see red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.

[00:07:47]>> Roy G. Biv.

[00:07:48]>> Yeah. Oh, sorry. Indigo violet. Indio.

[00:07:49]You got to get the biv going there.

[00:07:51]Yeah.

[00:07:51]>> You know, Isaac Newton put in the the eye.

[00:07:54]>> Did he?

[00:07:54]>> Yeah.

[00:07:55]>> Cuz he was fascinated mystically fascinated by the number seven.

[00:07:59]>> Ah, spectrum can't have six colors.

[00:08:01]>> It can't have six colors.

[00:08:02]>> You got Yeah. kind of animals do has sex colors.

[00:08:08]>> What a stupid universe would that be?

[00:08:09]>> Universe would that be? Throw some indigo in there.

[00:08:13]>> Yeah.

[00:08:13]>> No, but if he if he got deeply religious, he could have said, "Well, the universe was created in six days, >> right?"

[00:08:18]>> You know, there you go. Not seven days, six days. People forget it was six days.

[00:08:22]>> Six days. Seventh day he rested.

[00:08:23]>> He rested.

[00:08:24]>> Which I'm just saying, what kind of God is this?

[00:08:26]>> He needs to take a break.

[00:08:27]>> God, God, me is so damn hard. Oh me is hard.

[00:08:33]>> Oh me.

[00:08:36]>> Oh my me.

[00:08:37]>> Oh my me. It's so hard to make the universe. I need a rest. Oh lord. I can't do no more. DID I SAY LORD? WHO AM I TALKING TO?

[00:08:47]Lord me is hot in this. I'm so tired.

[00:08:52]Anyway, okay.

[00:08:56]>> But >> now I forgot what we were talking about.

[00:08:58]photons everywhere, >> right? So, anything that is at any temperature at all, >> right, >> is radiating photons.

[00:09:06]>> There you go. That's what I was going to say. Cuz if you're a Predator, you see photons all the time.

[00:09:11]>> You mean the the movie character?

[00:09:12]>> Yeah, that the little Yeah, the monster with the dreadlocks.

[00:09:15]>> Yeah, he had dreads.

[00:09:16]>> Yeah, >> he had dreadlocks. So, Predator I didn't appreciate.

[00:09:19]>> Uh could see in infrared, >> right?

[00:09:21]>> Okay. Exactly. Now, you know what's interesting? Go ahead.

[00:09:24]>> Just a little fact. I think about movies all the time.

[00:09:26]>> Okay. So that was only cool because the infrared was the shadowy shape, >> right?

[00:09:35]>> That means he has low resolution infrared cameras, >> right?

[00:09:39]>> Yeah.

[00:09:39]>> We got better cameras than that today.

[00:09:41]>> We do.

[00:09:42]>> High resolution. You see the full person there. Depending on your temperature, it will determine what kind of light you're >> predominantly going to emit.

[00:09:51]>> Emit, right?

[00:09:52]>> So at our temperature, we emit primarily infrared. So we'll show up in infr. We reflect visible light, >> right?

[00:09:58]>> But we emit infrared.

[00:10:00]>> Your walls are room temperature.

[00:10:02]>> So they emit a little less infrared.

[00:10:06]>> Mhm.

[00:10:06]>> Cuz they're not as warm as we are.

[00:10:08]>> All right.

[00:10:09]>> You keep dropping the temperature. Uh what's on the other side of infrared?

[00:10:13]Microwaves.

[00:10:14]>> Okay.

[00:10:14]>> And then radio waves. So the colder it is, the further down the spectrum it shifts. So that when you're only three degrees Kelvin, three degrees above absolute, >> you're giving off microwaves.

[00:10:26]>> That's it.

[00:10:26]>> And that's the cosmic microwave background, >> right?

[00:10:28]>> That's it.

[00:10:29]>> Happens. Cosmic microwave background. So So yeah, and it could be dark for you.

[00:10:34]No problem.

[00:10:37]Not many people have been in complete total darkness in in their life.

[00:10:41]>> True.

[00:10:42]>> Do you know how to get it? I uh I'm going to say um blindfold and uh that can help and then bury yourself alive.

[00:10:51]>> Okay.

[00:10:51]>> I was thinking of other ways for that.

[00:10:54]>> If if you go uh spelunking >> Oh, you mean to a cave that's you go deep into a cave, make a few turns >> so there's no light getting in at all.

[00:11:04]>> Turn off your flashlight, you cannot see the >> anything. Yeah. See now, and no disrespect to anybody, but that's some white people stuff.

[00:11:16]>> No black man ever died.

[00:11:17]>> Never find a black man dead in a cave with no light at all. First of all, I'm not going in there because even with a flashlight be like, "Where'd Chuck go?"

[00:11:26]I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it.

[00:11:29]Okay, these are jokes. Don't write.

[00:11:32]Don't write. All right, we better I'm going to stop. Let's move on.

[00:11:37]All right. So, there you go. Uh, there you go, Rachel.

[00:11:41]>> So, but I like the Muhammad. So, give me the Muhammad Ali comment.

[00:11:44]>> That's right. I'm so I'm so fast. I turn off the light. I'm in the bed before the room get dark.

[00:11:49]>> Yeah, that's good. That's a really good one.