IKA S2020
4
–273.15°C is the coldest there is. At this temperature, nothing moves anymore. It is “absolute zero”, 0 Kelvin. No mass particle vibrates anymore. When it gets warmer, when mass particles begin to move, when mass particles vibrate excessively, that is heat. As we can see, temperature not only measures warmth, it can also be a measure of movement. Since the vibration velocity of mass particles can be infinitely high, heat can also become infinitely hot. There is no such thing as the hottest temperature. There is only the hottest temperature produced. It is man-made and was generated in 2010 in a particle accelerator of Brookhaven Laboratories in the United States by colliding gold ions. That temperature is 4,000,000,000°C (4 billion °C).1 By way of comparison: that is 250,000 times hotter than the core of our Sun, which comes to 16,000,000°C (16 million °C). The heat in the Sun’s corona reaches 1,000,000°C (1 million °C), its filaments measure 10,000°C, and its surface curiously has an earthly 6,000°C, corresponding to the heat in our Earth’s core. Liquid iron still has a temperature of 1,540°C,2 and the ignition temperature of paper – at least according to Ray Bradbury – is 233°C, or Fahrenheit 451.3
Our immediate environment is considerably cooler. In the summer of 2017, the administrator of the Vienna Imperial Palace gave a tour of the new conference centre. The rooms were icy cold, all of 18°C. Apparently, that is the temperature agreeable to a well-dressed Central European man in a three-piece suit in any place or season and at any time of day. As we can see, temperatures are controlled not only to make life possible, but also to assert a selective, formalized and sometimes fossilized lifestyle. Producing cold and heat means a command of temperature, lifestyle and culture, and moreover, in this case, a gender-specific hegemony over a space that was a political and cultural instrument of power even before climate control. As we can see, culture and temperature are also closely linked. Temperature can be a measure of culture. Heat and cold drive culture. In his “Cultural History of Climate”4, Wolfgang Behringer shows that cultures have their specific temperatures, and that any shift in temperature is a cultural shift. That was also the case at the beginning of the Holocene: “The transition from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic economy happened relatively quickly; it was induced by climatic upheaval”5 ... “Global warming meant an end to the previous human economic system” and “global warming is linked to a fundamental change in human culture…”6 Now, we could let these sentences stand as they are, a concise commentary on the beginning of the geo-
