What happens at absolute zero is a mystery; I remember my cosmology/cosmogony classes in college (oy, things have changed in 25 years though) where there was some pretty serious conflict over what happens down there. Would electrons "fall" out of their orbits, lacking any energy to "orbit"? Would all that empty space in an atom go away, as the atom sluggishly contracts upon itself?
As Mr. Henslowe would say, "I don't know! It's a mystery!"
A delicious one.
I seem to recall (from my dabbler's perusal of scientific journals that write in words rather than formulae; I lack the patience to learn the necessary maths) that we've gotten closer than .1C to absolute zero in labs on the surface; chilling a spacecraft at L2 to that degree is a marvel of engineering. Just the control and observational technology to record anything from the instruments would threaten to raise the temperature, so it's being compensated for as well.
I love living in an age when this stuff happens.
I have a question about the dangerous subject of punctuation.
If you have an exclaimed question, is it better form to use both punctuation marks. "What the frak is wrong with you?!" or use just the punctuation mark which you want to emphasize the most. "What the frak is wrong with you!" I'm leaning to the latter, but I'm unsure. Is it just a matter of personal opinion?
Use lots!
What the frak is wrong with you?!?!?!?!?
I would use both marks, but that might be just me.
All this astronomy talk reminds me--while watching Jeopardy yesterday, I found out I had completely forgotten that Mars has two moons! How did I forget that?! I felt like such a dunce for thinking that Earth was the only one of the inner planets with a moon.
How did I forget that?!
Well, they are pretty small.
I'm a fan of the interrobang!??!?!?!!! but I have no idea how widely accepted it is among professional grammarians.
Would electrons "fall" out of their orbits, lacking any energy to "orbit"? Would all that empty space in an atom go away, as the atom sluggishly contracts upon itself?
Wouldn't they just be in their lowest energy states? They don't really orbit.
I have a question about the dangerous subject of punctuation.
Is this in the WIP, Gud? With dialogue, I'd use a question mark and then either use a dialogue tag to add the emphasis (like "he yelled,") or, since that's not actually one of my fave techniques, I tend to prefer adding emphasis to a word within the sentence with italics:
"What the frak is wrong with you?"
To me, that gives the impression of an exclaimed question. Generally, I think using both punctuation marks is frowned upon. But that's just me. YPMMV
