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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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You can dump energy into something by blasting photons at it, because photons carry energy. You can't do the reverse because you'd need to use particles with negative energy. Either that, or you'd need to suck photons out of the food, but it doesn't work that way; things radiate photons at a specific frequency and intensity (called blackbody radiation) depending on how hot they are, and you can't make them emit more energy except by getting them hotter.
Allow me to introduce you to this
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_cooling
Can I get an ELI5 of this principle? I read the Doppler cooling part but I can't connect the dots.
Heat energy is the amount of particle wiggling. With precisely tuned and oriented lasers you can clamp a particle in space, thus prevent it from wiggling.
No wiggling -> very cold.
It's like slowing cars by crashing another car into them. But it's photons instead from the exact opposite direction.