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White House Floats Gun Control Proposals

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Kragar1/06/2013 8:25:21 pm PST

Scientists break absolute zero barrier

The implications of the new research suggest that engines could theoretically be more than 100 percent efficient. It also offers potential explanations for “dark energy,” the matter that may cause the universe to expand.

The researchers manipulated a gas in order to force most of the gas particles into high energy states, giving it the negative reading (objects at positive temperatures contain particles with mostly low energy states).

But the resulting gas was not colder than absolute zero — if you can wrap your mind around it. “Yet the gas is not colder than zero kelvin, but hotter. It is even hotter than at any positive temperature — the temperature scale simply does not end at infinity, but jumps to negative values instead,” researcher Ulrich Schneider, who is a University of Munich in Germany physicist, told LiveScience.