this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
484 points (98.4% liked)
Technology
59323 readers
5426 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
They theoretically could, but the coefficient of performance would go below 1 long before you get close to zero Kelvin. That means it would cost more energy to pump the heat than is pumped, so you'd be better off using an electric heater.
Not to mention, you’d need a material to pump. R-32 which I believe is the most common at the moment, has a freezing temp of -132, meaning it would be useless at temps near 1K.
Ah yes... that's a very good point. I'm not about to learn a bunch of chemistry and physics and stuff.... but I'd be interested in reading about this theoretical optimization if electricity was free, there was no gravity, friction was 0, etc etc etc.