Is there an absolute zero number with relation to heat or can it always continue to get hotter?
As presented by Cecil at The Straight Dope. There is a limit, sort of, but it’s so inconceivably large that nobody but high energy physicists talks about it (although as I think about it absolute zero doesn’t exactly qualify as breakfast table chatter either). The highest possible temperature, called the Planck temperature, is equal to 10^32 degrees Kelvin. For comparison, the center of the sun bubbles along at 15 million degrees K (15 x 10^6); silicon can be created by fusion at 1 billion K (10^9). In short, the Planck temperature is very toasty indeed. Some scientists believe that we, or at least our universe, have already experienced the Planck temperature, although it went by so quickly you may have missed it. It occurred at 10^-43 of a second after the Big Bang, the great cataclysm in which the universe was born. (10^-43 of a second, in case you’re not hip to the notation, is an incredibly tiny fraction of time. Time enough to create the universe, but not, as a University of Chica
