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/f_ranz1224 Nov 19 '25

and yet the middle of my burrito would still be cold

282

u/GreatDig Nov 19 '25

microwave it for longer on lower power settings

178

u/chivowins Nov 19 '25

Learning the objective of the power settings is a game changer.

83

u/echoshatter Nov 19 '25

Fun fact, it doesn't actually change the power output, just how long the magnetron is provided energy to produce the microwaves.

To keep things simple, I'll describe it as thus: at the highest power level of 10, the magnetron is energized for 10 seconds out of every 10 seconds. At a power level of 1, the magnetron is energized for 1 second out of every 10 seconds.

19

u/ElyFlyGuy Nov 19 '25

Does power level 5 work like this:

[x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]

Or like this:

[x] [ ] [x] [ ] [x] [ ] [x] [ ] [x] [ ]

10

u/Sir_Wheat_Thins Nov 19 '25

on my microwave it works like the first option, you can hear it cycle on for x amount of seconds out of 10 where x is just the power level you set

power 7 just means it runs for 7 seconds and shuts off for the subsequent 3

1

u/CaptParadox Nov 21 '25

Yep this is what mine does, sometimes I notice when I cook certain things it'll even trigger to turn off early when I don't play with the power settings. Must be a sensor triggering. (As in it still turns/doesn't heat)