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Probably a stupid question, but will we ever have something like a microwave to make things cold? Is there a reason this can't exist?
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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yeah, not only microwave but heater in general... but reversed, i asked myself that question for a long time, i mean we pump an electricity into the wire and we get heat, why not reverse? why we can "magically" get heat from electrons but to get something cold we need to pump the heat elsewhere, like microwave basically make atoms vibrate generating heat, would be cool to be able to generate some field that makes atoms stop
You cannot just destroy energy. When you "make atoms stop" the energy from atoms have to go somewhere.
Usually atoms radiate heat away.
Heat is energy release, your start with stored energy and release it. To make something cold you either have to capture energy (hard) or move it away (heat pump / refrigeration)
Laser setups that can cool individual atoms exists but they're not trivial whatsoever and they cool them by canceling atomic movement by hitting them with lasers opposing their current momentum to slow them down (cooling). It can not be scaled up in any practical way.