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The Hottest Place and the Coldest Place in the Universe are the SAME PLACE

2023-10-02 · explainer · Hank · 6:35 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature · mode: Curiosity & trivia · tags: calendar ritual, self promotion, community lore

Hank shares his favourite cocktail-party fact: as far as we can tell, both the coldest place (a laboratory at 38 picokelvins) and the hottest event (a particle accelerator at 7 trillion Kelvin) in the universe have happened on Earth; he ends unsure whether this makes humans insignificant or uniquely significant, and plugs Pizzamas shirts.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting and Pizzamas shirt plug before the topic

  • ★★ Hank shows a Pizzamas shirt and says the shirts are available only until the end of this week (week of 2 October 2023). — 00:00:00 · Pizzamas

00:00:28 — Cold: the Boomerang Nebula, the 38-picokelvin Earth lab, and whether black holes count as colder

  • ★★★ Hank says that, as far as we can tell, the hottest and the coldest place in the universe are the same place, though it sounds like a riddle. (hedged) — 00:00:28
  • ★★ Hank says the Boomerang Nebula, the second coldest known place, is 1 Kelvin, while the universe averages 2.7 Kelvin. — 00:00:28
  • ★★ Hank explains the Boomerang Nebula cools by expelling matter: the most energetic matter leaves more easily, much as sweating cools you when hotter water molecules evaporate. — 00:00:28
  • ★★ Hank says the lab record is so much colder than anything natural that, apart from other intelligent systems, it is probably the coldest any matter in the universe has ever been. (hedged) — 00:01:28 · Earth
  • ★★★ Hank says the coldest place in the known universe is a laboratory on Earth (labs trade the record): the coldest we have made something is 38 picokelvins, against the Boomerang Nebula's 1 Kelvin. — 00:01:57 · Earth
  • ★★ Hank says black holes emit Hawking radiation; counted as heat, a Sun-mass black hole would be warmer than the German lab's record, but the biggest black holes would be colder. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Hank rejects calling black holes the coldest thing: dividing emitted radiation by mass is not what we mean by cold. — 00:02:26

00:03:19 — Heat: the Sun's core, supergiants, supernovae, and the 7-trillion-Kelvin particle accelerator; sunglasses aside

  • ★★ Hank says the core of the Sun is 15 million Kelvin, about 30 million degrees Fahrenheit. — 00:03:19
  • ★★ Hank says a supergiant's core may exceed a billion Kelvin, and a supergiant going supernova could in some areas exceed 100 billion Kelvin. (hedged) — 00:03:48
  • ★ Hank worries Katherine will be mad about sunglasses he left outside; editing three days later, they are still there. (playful) — 00:03:48 · Katherine Green
  • ★★★ Hank says the hottest thing in the universe since the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago, happened on Earth: particles in a particle accelerator reached 7 trillion Kelvin. (hedged) — 00:04:26 · Earth
  • ★ Hank allows that unknown events may be hotter, and that billions of years from now the expanding universe might become colder than the German lab. (hedged) — 00:05:02

00:05:31 — Conclusion: the hottest and coldest things happened in one tiny corner of the universe, us

  • ★★★ Hank concludes that the hottest and coldest things ever happened in one tiny corner of the universe in a short time, temperatures unlikely to exist naturally anywhere else: that's us. (hedged) — 00:05:31 · Earth
  • ★★★ Hank says that sometimes humans seem clearly insignificant on the scale of the cosmos and sometimes nothing seems more significant, and he is really not sure which it is. (unsure) — 00:05:31

00:05:53 — Hank unsure whether humans are insignificant or significant; sign-off and Pizzamas plug

  • ★★ Hank says Pizzamas products are available now at pizzamas.com or the Pizzamas app, and the shirts only this week (week of 2 October 2023), never again. — 00:05:53 · Pizzamas

In the description and comments

  • ★ In a channel comment replying to a viewer, Hank accepts the viewer's suggestion as a contender for the hottest thing. — creator comment

Humor (significant)

  • Hank imagines the Boomerang Nebula being 1.7 degrees colder than the rest of the universe. — 00:01:07

    “They must be there being like, brr, but you can't hear them because it's in space.”

  • After the 38-picokelvin record, Hank cheers for humans. — 00:01:57

    “Humans! Like, let's see a goose do that!”

  • Hank says black holes need no external validation and only care what they think of themselves. — 00:02:55

    “So that's cold.”

  • Listing the universe's most energetic events: stars, supernovae, black holes hitting neutron stars. — 00:03:19

    “There's Barbie and Oppenheimer coming out on the same day in the middle of summer.”

  • Hank asks how many degrees above absolute zero 100 billion Kelvin is. — 00:04:26

    “Every degree got together and had a party, and it was at the core of a supernova.”

  • Hank inverts scale: the small thing is a supernova core, the big thing a particle accelerator. — 00:05:02

    “It's just a particle accelerator going faster and furiouser here on the planet Earth.”

  • Hank worries about the sunglasses he left outside, then cuts in while editing. — 00:03:48

    “They're still right there. This is three days later, and I still haven't brought them inside.”

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Earth · universe

Also: People: Katherine Green

Projects: Pizzamas

Works: Barbie (film) · Fast & Furious (“faster and furiouser”) · Oppenheimer (film) · Pizzamas app

Terms: Pizza John

Concepts: absolute zero · Big Bang · black hole · expansion of the universe · Hawking radiation · heat death of the universe · particle accelerator · star · supernova

Places: Boomerang Nebula · Germany · Sun (star)

Only in the description or credits: Ben Acker

Also centred on universe: How Big is the Universe? · The Universe is Weird: A Song · Thoughts From the Universe - Woah · Why Do Things Exist?

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