Absolute Zero and the Black Hole

Disclaimer – This is a tale of fiction. The author is not an expert on astrophysics, but maybe this is a valid existential human risk that can be added to the pool with thermal nuclear weapons, super intelligent artificial intelligence, meteorites, etc.

As we ride upon our wave of time and gravity, it is easy to take both time, space, and especially gravity for granted. I recently heard a famous scientist say something along the lines that: “try to find books on gravity, you will find 2. Gravity- we got this one.” As if to say gravity is so well understood, and has no mystery to it. I think this is a form of hubris and misunderstanding that can create existential human threats, but scarier indeed, is the ability to stifle human curiosity and discovery with such orthodox thinking.

                                               ------- On with the show -----------

“Welcome to our little slice of heaven, within the heavens!”, Emma says, greeting the founder of her research company. She continues, “We are going to be starting the experiment shortly. I am really glad you could make it. The super cooling process has already started, with the hyper-cooling staged to start in 10 minutes Dr. Franks.”

Dr. Franks smiles as he looks around. He has been interested in absolute zero since he was a small child growing up on earth. As someone who was always pushing the limits on what was thought to be possible, here he was, yet again to witness something that many thought to be impossible to achieve.

“Great, thank you so much for everything you have done in making this project a success Dr. Smith.” Mr. Franks says as his smile grows large.

“Oh, you know to just call me Emma!”, Emma says with a smile. She never really felt the need to validate herself with fancy titles. She after all was one of the leading research scientists in the solar system.

“True, you know I always like to test your willingness for verbal promotion”, says Dr. Frank as they both chuckle. There is a mutual respect between the pair, as they both have extensive and diverse track records. This research station in itself offered a glimpse into their genius. Being several layers of graphene sheeting, separated by aerogel insulation, the ship offered a very energy efficient, but comfortable working and living environment. This efficiency is important since the test was going to be extremely energy intensive, and use up most of the energy cache.

The two scientists move closer to the main laboratory. Unlike most laboratories, it is located further out on the space station and its main orientation is to always be pointed away from the sun. They are already in the shadow of Mars to gain some additional cooling, but even when in open space, this part of the space station is extremely cold.

“I am guessing this is it?” Dr. Franks asks Emma, as they have entered a room looking onto the aft portion of the space laboratory.

“Yes, this is the observation deck. We are about 200 meters out from the laboratories, and laboratory 2 is going to be where absolute zero is reached today.” She points out laboratory 2 as being the closer lab on the left hand side. There are 4 labs in total, each set up a bit different, but all capable of performing today's operations with little or no modifications. Emma continues the brief, “We have already performed a thermal decoupling with laboratory 2 and are on the schedule you prescribed.”

“Great, thank you so much Emma.”

In the room there are about a dozen technicians making sure everything is running within prescribed and anticipated parameters. One of them, a young man named Peter calls out, “−272.05 Celsius, and falling.”

The last bit of the last degree is the hardest and most energy intensive part. Their goal is to reach −273.15 Celsius or 0 degrees Kelvin. They haven’t really started the hard part of the experiment, and everything so far is pretty routine. After all the temperature of their laboratories never exceeds -150 Celsius, so they are in an area that gets little warmth.

The excitement is high among the technicians and scientists in the observation deck. There is some talk amongst them as they speculate as to what will happen when the temperature hits absolute zero.

“-273.14 Celsius”, calls out another technician minutes later. They are close. Very close. The amount of sensors and instrumentation in laboratory 2 in astonishing. The observation room has outputs charted for most of the sensors, and the artificial intelligence system tracking the experiment also gives voice notifications as they approach critical levels.

“Absolute zero achieved”, chimes in the artificial intelligence tracking program. A round of applause goes through the observation deck. The euphoria is high as everyone is smiling and celebrating this achievement for humanity. This however is short lived as the scientists and technicians get back to collecting valuable data from this first time human achievement.

Dr. Franks looks pleased with the experiment. “Emma, has everything been put in place to sustain this temperature?”

She nods an indication that things are indeed in place, but is looking at all of the charting being created by the data pouring in from the sensors. “Yes, we can maintain this along with full life support for two weeks if needed”.

Since their station was out of the sunshine they had to store up massive amounts of electricity in the graphene power banks. Keeping something this cold simply used up an impressive amount of power.

                                    ------- 11 Days Later -----------

“That is different”, says Peter, with a bit of a concerned expression on his face, as he is monitoring the super cooled core. He continues to explain, “The energy needed to maintain this temperature is starting to fall slightly, by about 4%, but the size of the core is also shrinking… It looks like it just started happening a few minutes ago.”

Emma and Dr. Franks were intrigued. So the super cooling was beginning to take on a life of its own. One of the reasons for confining this experiment to space was to manage the overall risks of the project, balancing the unknowns.

“This is actually something that has been theorized before”, chimes in Dr. Franks. Continuing, but looking a bit sadder he says, “We may have to cut this experiment short. One of the fears with this experiment was that the sustained super cooling would eventually create a lack of internal kinetic energy of the mass.”

The technician interjects, “Not to be rude sir, but power to sustain just fell further. It is now taking 8% less energy to sustain the reaction, with the core size even smaller. I am working to get an accurate core size now.”

“Thank you Peter”, says Dr. Franks. He looks disappointed as he looks toward Emma. “Unfortunately we may have to shut down this operation Emma.”

Emma's disappointment is also visible. “Yes”, she says, “It is a shame the internal energy compression theory is true.”

“Peter, if you would be so kind, please shut down the cooling”, says Dr. Frank in a somewhat disheartened tone.

“Yes sir”, says Peter, who quickly starts the procedure to shut down the cooling. Moments later, when Peter has finished he returns, “Everything is shut down”.

Everyone is silent and quiet for a few minutes. They all knew that this was a possibility when starting the experiment. That when the atoms were cooled to such a lower temperature for so long, that they would lose all kinetic energy. Since matter is derived from energy this would effectively reduce the matter, but to what? They were soon to discover.

Twenty minutes after shutting down the cooling Peter reports an anomaly of the core, “Hey, I think something fishy is going on. The core size is actually still shrinking. The average temperature came up to -273.14 Celsius, but there are still spots that are at absolute zero. Any thoughts?” He asks, somewhat puzzled.

“Whoa...”, says another technician. Lisa looks shocked, and can barely voice her concern, “come take a look at this”, she says.

The group go over to her work station where there is a transmission from earth showing what looks like a black hole formation. A black hole formation emanating from where their research station is located.

“How is that even possible?”, asks Dr. Franks. “That is exactly where we are.”

“The weirdest part is the time stamp”, says Lisa. “It is from a week from now.”

“Oh no. Is there anyway we can stop this?”, asks Emma. She goes on, “It makes sense, by lowering the temperature for that long of a period, the atoms of the core began to collapse upon themselves. That is why the core appears to be shrinking right now. And the transmission from the future has more to do with time already slowing down for us relative to the other people in the solar system. Of course their time is relatively slower than people further out...”

Dr. Franks becomes more alert at this news. “Wow, so in our effort to study absolute zero, we have created a black hole…”, he looks at laboratory 2 in shock as he says this. “Ok, we need to do something about this. If we don’t everything we know and love will be destroyed.”

Peter reports in the new temperature and core size. “Well folks, this is probably not the news everyone is wanting hear right now”. He looks disheartened as he continues his report, “ The average temperature is actually falling. It was at -273.14 Celsius, but currently we are reading -273.144 Celsius. The core has also lost about 3% of its volume, but kept all of its mass.”

                                         --- 24 hours later ---

Despite the best efforts of the crew, nothing could be done to avoid what had been set in motion. As the wave of time emanating from the big bang moved forward their research vessel appeared to be planted in time. Time slowing down is a relative phenomenon, so the crew had no perception that they were slowing down their portion of the time wave relative to the whole time wave. The news from the solar system gave better indications as to their predicaments, but the entire solar system was on a slower moving time wave that was beginning to bend in towards the black hole.

Time had not stopped for the crew of the research station. In fact it seemed to continue on like normal. The issue of energy began to become more apparent. The crew was on minimum life support in order to maintain a cache of energy, but without any sunlight to recharge their energy banks, they were in dire trouble.

The cold from the core was also back to absolute zero. It literally sucked the heat energy out of the station, and surrounding areas. The size had reduced, but even this was starting to be questioned as the notion of relative size was thought about. Is the heat death of the universe just the transformation into black holes?