Does Time change over temperature?

Question

I am not a physicist, I am just an engineer.

But I dared to ask whether the temperature changes the perception of time.

Let's consider a particle that "stops" at absolute zero. I was thinking as a hypothesis, that our perception of time changes and the particle actually does not stop at all.

Because of QM particles don't stop near absolute zero. What stops time in a thermodynamic sense is that the heat transfer in the universe slows to a crawl and at some point it becomes impossible to build working clocks, which means that the only operational definition that we have of "time" loses its value. — CuriousOne, May 20 '15 at 22:40

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered May 20 '15 at 21:07

Your idea does not seem to work if you have two particles at different temperatures. Assume you "stop" one of them but not the other. Then does the time slows down for only one particle and not the other? or how would you explain that?

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 21 '15 at 07:45

0

No. In fact the official definition of the second is:

The duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom at absolute zero.

So time is still alive and kicking at absolute zero.

edited May 21 '15 at 07:45

seldon

465
6
12

answered May 20 '15 at 21:15

Señor O

7,580

2

That isn't the definition of time, that's the definition of the SI unit second. – Kyle Kanos May 20 '15 at 22:31

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 20 '15 at 22:58

If everything were at zero temperature you probably* would not be able to distinguish between the past and future. Mathematically time would still exist, in the same way that spatial directions still exist on a completely featureless plane, but since it would not be measurable (even if there were something around that could do a measurement!), it is debatable whether it could be considered physically meaningful.

However, this has nothing to do with being at zero temperature itself. The world would also be time-symmetric if it were in equilibrium at a finite temperature. It is the fact that you are at equilibrium that makes time become unimportant, not at which temperature this equilibrium occurs. There is a fascinating history of theories about the relation between being out of equilibrium and time's arrow, summarized up for example in the popular account From Eternity to Here by Sean Carroll.

*It's not completely clear that this is true, actually. Google around for 'time crystals,' a proposal by Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek. I'm not sure of the current status of this proposal.

Does Time change over temperature?

3 Answers3