Dave Long <[email protected]> wrote: > > >>>I read recently about new theories of infinitely or nearly infinitely hot >>>plasma existing in the picoseconds after the big bang. I have a hard time >>>understanding what temperature even means in this >>>context, since I've >>>always thought of temperature as a measure of the wiggling around of atoms & >>>molecules ... But in the primordial plasma, there were no atoms or molecules. > >As you suspected, this is covered by what I wrote. Note that I was careful to >say "Temperature ... measures how the total energy in a system is divided up >among its parts"[-1]. Concretely, atoms and molecules are typical parts of >typical systems, and they store energy in their wiggling around[0]. >Abstractly, however, all that matters is defining the whole system and how it >is divided into parts[1,2]. >
I'm trying to remember if silk-list was the venue of a really fascinating discussion about zero-point energy a few years ago... Udhay? Does this ring a bell? cheers Divya
