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Old 24-April-2004, 10:23 AM
dshan dshan is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Sydney, Australia
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The first problem with this idea is that it is impossible for any body to attain 0 deg Kelvin. Absolute zero temperature is something like the velocity of light, you can approach it ever more closely but you can never actually reach it.

The second problem is that temperature has nothing to do with time, so time would not stop at 0 Kelvin even if you could reach it (time passes just as quickly at 300 K, 273 K and 5 K though molecular activity will be much less at 5 K than 300 K. Temperature is after all just a measure of molecular motion, this is unrelated to time.)

The third problem is that the "uncertainty" in the principle is not due to some deficiency in experiments, it is a fundamental property of the quantum world and the equations used to calculate how matter behaves at that level. So no experiment can eliminate the uncertainty no matter how it is conducted. To quote John Gribbin's excellent "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat" (which I recommend for a good laypersons introduction to quantum theory):

"It is a cardinal rule of quantum mechanics that _in_principle_ it is impossible to measure precisely certain pairs of properties, including position/momentum, simultaneously."

Matter at the quantum level shows "wave particle duality" and depending on what properties you are measuring will appear as either waves or particles, but never both at once. Position is a particle property and momentum is a wave property, the more closely you measure the particle properties the less precisely you can determine the corresponding wave properties, like momentum, and vice versa.
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