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 Originally Posted by NightGizmo
Is "Heat Death" the new name for "Big Chill"/"Big Freeze"?
As far as I can tell, yes.
There may be some subtle distinction, but I didn't come across one in a quick search of both terms.
Originally Posted by OngBonga
Where is the heat going? If the atoms are cooling, what is warming?
I think this is my fault for poor word choice. The atoms aren't cooling, so much as they are all so spread out that they no longer interact with each other. So whatever temperature each one happens to be is locked in forever.
BUT (just in case it's not ONLY my poor word choice)
Maybe you're confusing heat and temperature.
Consider a piece of metal and a piece of wood, both at room temperature. You can use a thermometer to verify that both are the same temperature. If you touch the metal, it feels colder than if you touch the wood. Therefore heat and temperature are not the same.
Heat is the flow of temperature. Meaning that no matter what temperature a thing is, if it is not changing temperature, then it is neither giving off nor receiving heat (or the sum of the heat in and heat out is 0).
The universe is cooling (not the atoms) because the increasing volume means reduced pressure means fewer particle collisions... to the limit of no more particle collisions. So whatever temperature the atoms are, they're stuck there, because there is no particle to interact with.
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