I'm outta here.

You just said nothing.
No, stay. STAY.

It's way too depressing, not because I can't keep up, but because I used to be able to keep up! :P

Twenty years ago I would have owned this conversation but age and drink have turned me into a drooling moron and that's a hard reality to face.

You would have? Careful there, OneFiercePuppy is going to ask for your credentials.
By the way, impressive. How long have you been sitting on that one, or are you just firing it left and right? Anyway, first I've heard of it and I like it. You don't mind if I start using it myself? Maybe I'll sound smarter.

No, I wasn't arguing semantics. Here's what arguing semantics looks like:

semantics 1: the study of meanings: Semantics is literally the study of what something means. So yeah, I'll argue semantics, because I'm right.

If you're a photonics and optoelec wonk, then somewhere in your old stash you have literally hundreds of pages of equations where you've crunched numbers in i. You ever try to build an electrical circuit while telling i to go fuck itself? Nothing good happens.

You and I may never get our hands on a system that has anything other than a statistical distribution of negative temperatures (ie nearly none), but if you're postgrad, go find an astrophysics instructor or student and ask them how impossible negative Kelvins are. My old stash is full of equations of stellar entropy (and tears), and just like i, you see negative temperature by what it does.

Even if it is imaginary.

That's the whole basis of this argument. -0K (and negative temperature systems) are expressions, not palpable realities. -0K is not achievable. Do we not understand this?

Unlike all the esteemed gentlemen here I'm rather bad with science, and can't even claim to ever have been much better, but what the hell even is "-0"? What's a minus zero? It's a zero. It can't be either positive or negative. Am I wrong?

<sigh>

The square root of negative one is an imaginary number. Electronics don't work without taking into account an orthogonal plane, noted with i. Here's a good explanation on StackExchange if you'll accept that. If not, I'll find you another.

You're doing me a solid by having this conversation in English so I'm going to back off the attitude a little, but you are asking a question so basic that it tells me you don't remember any of your undergrad thermodynamics or chemistry.

Negative Kelvins are palpable realities in the same way that if you stick your finger in an electrical outlet, the work done in i helps stop your heart. You obviously don't trust me as a source (and got laughably butthurt about it), so next time you're in school, go track down an astrophysics student or a thermo instructor and ask for a two-minute tutorial. They'll spin you up right quick.
Short answer? Yes.

Because the more you know, the less you know you know. ;_;

But I understand what you're saying. I don't understand why you're saying it. When you first replied to me, it was about "absolute hot" (which is ONE theory, not THE ONE theory about maximum achievable hotness -- the Planck temperature. You coming back with negative zero K, which I guess to put it to scale is like counting to infinite, as the maximum ACHIEVABLE hotness makes you practically wrong.

OK.

To answer that implicit question, I have to answer one you didn't ask first. I need to know if you know about the textbook viridical paradox, Hilbert's Paradox of the Grand Hotel. I need to know if you know about that because it informs my discussion of infinities.

Typical "absolute hot" scales are based on things like molecular movement at relativistic speeds. Since you didn't even give me one source in this whole exchange, I'll assume that's what you mean. Because there's an upper limit, you have a countable infinite. This is an important concept.

Breaching into negative temperature takes you outside the realm of your countable infinites. The Grand Hotel no longer applies (though it's a beautiful paradox and I wish it did) because you're playing with a different infinity. So when you say "You coming back with negative zero K, which I guess to put it to scale is like counting to infinite, as the maximum ACHIEVABLE hotness makes you practically wrong." you're missing the point. I'm not counting to infinity. You claimed that absolute hot was as hot as things get, but that's just not the case. Absolute hot - if it's verifiable - is as hot as things can get before they get so hot they can't be measured by the same set of rules any more.

You said absolute hot is the hottest possible temperature. That is wrong, tautologically wrong. I've given you references (and I've checked their sources for you to make sure they're reasonable) to show you why.

That's why I'm saying it. Because you said (A is true) but in fact A is only true in special bounded cases. You think it's nitpicking. Go ask a thermo instructor why it isn't.
http://www.davedoyle.com/prof/pastProjects/Nerd/humor/drSeuss.html

An upper limit does not make a set countable.

Consider the set of real numbers between 0 and 1. That set has an upper bound, yet it is not countable. In fact, you can even take away every number whose base 3 representation contains the digit "1" and *still* have an uncountable set.

(Random note: It is undecidable (without adding an axiom) whether there's any uncountable set that is smaller than the set of real numbers.)

(Also, how did a topic about the weather turn into one discussing infinities?)

I'm not sure how an infinity paradox fits into this. I'm not even sure we're actually arguing or perhaps don't understand each other's meaning.
Let me guess. A mathematician.

Yeah, yeah. You're right. I should have said it's a bounded infinite. Still relevant to the two types of infinities Hilbert considers, and relevant to why a "wrap around" happens on a scale when it's not strictly a wrap-around in the physics.

Well, I *do* have a master's degree in that subject.

(Also, look at my avatar. (Either one, actually.) Notice the rotated Mandelbrot set in the avatar?)