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To: Casaubon who wrote (36476)	7/4/1999 10:19:00 AM
From: Zeev Hed	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116756

Casaubon, the question of extreme temperatures belongs to metaphysics rather than physics. The current definition of temperature involves particles not the energy/mass system (in relativistic physics the law of conservation of mass is expanded to the sum of mass and energy). Being a classical term, temperature is not a good description of the state of matter in relativistic terms, IMHO. At very high temperatures (in the millions of degrees), you get fusion processes, at extremely very high temperatures you can get neutron stars (in essence all the nuclides are converted to neutrons, and what hold these together is the gravitational forces. At temperatures equivalent to GEV (10^12 electron volts, or temperatures of 10^16 (I hope I got my constants straight), you should be able to create subatomic particles. By the way, the physics of fission (spliting of large nuclides into smaller nuclides is not so much a "temperature" process it is more a destabilization of heavy nuclides by injecting a smaller nuclide (like a neutron), you may have meant "fusion", the coalescence of larger nuclides from smaller one. Zeev

To: Casaubon who wrote (36476)	7/5/1999 6:43:00 AM
From: d:oug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116756

Casaubon, maybe the problem can be turned into a solution. <<particles with mass asymptotically approach the speed of light, never reaching it, the energy to accelerate the particle increases to infinity.>> Ok, so getting close to the speed of light is the easy part, and its that last 1% that looks likes two parallel lines close but not touching, but ever so littlest of little they are converging. Ok, we close to the speed of light, so time for us seems normal, but by Earth's view each day of this extremely small particle is a million years, so this particle can not get too bored as its velocity per second continues to increase, as the closer it gets, the lines "almost" touching, a million billion Earth years can pass before this particle is a year older. And remember the word infinity is really us humans in a quandary to understand this abstraction we call time, as Ron has pointed out I have trouble with abstractions. So as that saying "never say never", as in can't happen. <<seems like there is an upper limit to temperature>> << My intuition tells me, the answer to this question lies in the physics of fission. As the temperature of matter increases beyond a certain point, it would destabilize the forces required to hold the nucleus together. At that point, the nucleus would fly apart resulting in a release of energy, sub-atomic particles, and/or smaller nuclei.>> I think I heard that the Big Bang was quite a hot event. But noone was around to notice. doug