Absolutely Below Zero

Shouldn't I be devoting my full attention to NFL playoff games?  I am, but in the background in case you were wondering.

Found this interesting piece from Nature on Rob's twitter feed.  Anybody who took chemistry or physics in high school should remember the 3 Laws of Thermodynamics.  Let's review, class.

1) Energy in a system is always conserved
2) The entropy (disorder) in the universe is constantly increasing
3) Entropy is zero at the absolute zero temperature.

The last of those 3 laws is the focus of this article.  Absolute zero (approx. -273 degrees Celsius or -460 degrees Fahrenheit) is the theoretical temperature at which all kinetic energy in matter ceases.  Note the word theoretical in that last sentence.  You see, it has never even been achieved.  That is a practical impossibility.  However, if you read this piece from Nature you would see that this group of scientists from Germany are using mathematical models to compare the relative energies of molecules to their actual temperature (temperature itself is defined as the measure of kinetic energy of molecules of matter).  This group is basing their research that the energy of molecules is not necessarily uniform.  In any group of particles, a few particles (but not the majority) will have more energy than others. 

What this group did was use a magnetic field to revert the energies of these particles (potassium atoms at temperatures near absolute zero) so that the majority of them now have HIGHER energy than the rest.  This worked because under normal circumstances, the electron clouds of atoms repel (like charges repel right?).  This close to absolute zero, however, the atoms have such little energy to begin with that this magnetic inversion would in fact cause the atoms to ATTRACT instead of repel.  This attraction would lower their entropy beyond what absolute zero would predict, and thus would make the temperature go below 0 K. 

While this is fascinating research to be sure (and I'm just an armchair scientist), I have a very simple question.  Does this work now mean we have to redefine temperature?  In all my years of science education, I've been taught that absolute zero is it.  No kinetic energy, no temperature, no exceptions.  Well, now we have an exception.  Granted, this exception is just billionths of a degree below absolute zero, it was always just assumed it would be impossible to simply REACH absolute zero let alone go below it.  What does this mean for the Laws of Thermodynamics?  Now I'm not foolish enough to think that these laws will NEVER be broken.  Newton's Laws of Motion were proven technically invalid thanks to Einstein's relativity theory.  Science is always about disproving "laws" and "theories."  As I teach my students, it is so much easier to prove something invalid than it is to prove it correct.  That being said, since we have broken the absolute zero barrier, I'd be curious to see where this goes.  Essentially, how low can you go? 

All the way to the floor?

But what is the floor?

There is no floor...........(try pondering that one)