Comment on Does that mean it's harder to tell where something is if you know its temperature?
xkforce@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The more precisely momentum is known, the less precisely is its position known and vice versa. As for how temperature affects these measurements, the velocity of atoms and molecules isnt a sharp peak but a probability distribution.
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
IIUC extremely cold substances turn into so-called Bose-Einstein condensates because their temperature (hence speed) is so tightly controlled that their location becomes more “spread out” in terms of probability. And you can’t fix its location without raising the temperature.
xkforce@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Sort of. It has to do with certain matter (they have to be neutral bosons i.e particles with integer spin and no overall charge) being so cold that there arent really any higher energy quantum states for things to be in. So everything is essentially in the same state and functionally indistinguishable. Which is why not everything can form a bose einstein condesate.
Natanael@slrpnk.net 11 months ago
It is a combination, if the particles’ positions don’t overlap then you don’t have a condensate, but at low enough energy and close proximity these particles will overlap