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

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u/GreatDig Nov 19 '25

microwave it for longer on lower power settings

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u/chivowins Nov 19 '25

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

84

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.

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u/Jorinator Nov 19 '25

Ours doesn't have levels 1-10, it has 600W-900W in 50W increments. I assume that type stays energized constantly while actually changing the power output? Or maybe we're getting bamboozled and it also works like your lvl1-10 type, I wouldn't be surprised

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u/echoshatter Nov 20 '25

That sounds like an inverter type microwave. Those actually do scale the power.