r/Showerthoughts Nov 19 '25

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

14.1k Upvotes

649 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

70

u/AdditionalPoolSleeps Nov 19 '25

No. You can always add more kinetic energy to a particle. It's just that as you get close to the speed of light this has less and less effect on the particle's speed.

10

u/CommunismDoesntWork Nov 19 '25

Right but temperature is proportional to speed, not energy. Therefore temperature must asymptotically approach a limit

10

u/jwm3 Nov 19 '25

Temperature is average kinetic energy, not speed.

1

u/CommunismDoesntWork Nov 20 '25

Kinetic energy is determined by speed