Question: When atoms move, or vibrate, they exist. At absolute zero ( About -273 degrees celcius). Does the mass and existence of atoms rely on movement. If so, would nothing exist if you stopped time?

Joseph Cook answered on 18 Jun 2010:

This is kind of a series of questions. There are some interesting points in there.

1) Absolute zero is arguably not a reachable temperature. The closest scientists have got (as far as I know) is something like one billionth of a degree above absolute zero. But it’s pretty much impossible to get all the way down to absolute zero. So that makes this kind of hypothetical.

2) Mass does not rely on movement. So something can have mass but not be moving, as it theoretically would at absolute zero.

3) How would you stop time? This is also hypothetical because you can’t stop time. You could argue that things only exist in the way that they do at any one instant in time. On a molecular or sub-atomic level, everything is constantly changing. I would say that, if you stopped time, things would exist in the same way that they would at absolute zero, but only in the way that they did at the point you stopped time. Stopping time at a different point would give a different result. So things could exist at one time and not another.

This is kind of where science meets philosophy – there is a philosophical concept that “you can never step into the same river twice”, because the second time you do, the water has flowed on from where it was the first time, and everything has changed.

Some universities offer degrees where you study both philosophy and physics, and many have courses in philosophy of science as part of other degrees. Cool ideas like these would almost definitely be covered.