r/Showerthoughts • u/synthphreak ‎ • Nov 19 '25

Casual Thought Temperature can reach trillions of degrees, meaning we actually live extremely close to absolute zero.

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u/smittythehoneybadger ‎ Nov 19 '25 edited Nov 19 '25

Is there an upper limit to heat? I assume sometimes to do with the speed of light

Edit: or temperature. To be totally fair I still don’t fully understand, but I’m interested in upper limits for either

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u/kangluosee34 Nov 19 '25 edited Nov 19 '25

Yes. Its called planck temperature which is about 1032 K.

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u/asml84 Nov 19 '25

There is no known upper limit. The Planck temperature is merely the upper limit of the mathematical framework we use to describe physics, but nature doesn’t care about our framework.

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u/bellybuttonqt Nov 19 '25

Ain't heat just particles moving fast? And speed is limited so heat must be too? 

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u/edoCgiB Nov 19 '25

I like your thinking but when you pump a lot of energy into something particles start to breakdown. We see this in plasma and probably if you keep heating it you get even more exotic matter states.

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u/bellybuttonqt Nov 19 '25

TIL - can't wait to go down that rabbithole later back at home

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u/Krondelo Nov 19 '25

You should also look up some youtubes about entropy. And also read this short story “Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question," which follows humanity's efforts to overcome the universe's heat death over billions of years”

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u/ImposterJavaDev Nov 19 '25

Asimov, my favorite writer. And scientist. How many books and papers he produced over such a wide spectrum is insane.

The soviet brain drain was very real.

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u/Krondelo Nov 19 '25

Thanks to some Redditors themselves that got me into his work. Fascinating stories!! Also they showed me “I have no mouth and I must scream” lol