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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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'projecting' energy is kinda easy... 'sucking' energy is difficult
Cold doesn't exist, it is merely the absence of heat. Easier to insert heat than remove it, same reason why you can put on warmer clothes in the winter, but you can't make yourself cold in the summer.
a can of soda can cool faster in the freezer for ~30 min.
some people suggest adding an insulated sleeve.
i also use freezer to cool down coffee quickly.
< deleted. pls find info on fb/yt > ..
Given how much about science we still have to learn, I would say it is a distinct possibility. If you want something cheap and easy to use like a microwave to do this though, I highly doubt we'd see that possible for the next 30-40 years at minimum.
I've been wondering this for my entire life
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
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.
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i would think not. unless waves can be tuned to cancel out background radiation, but that would only stop it from heating up more.