Thermal Dissonance: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"This platform, it should be red-hot, but it is cool to the touch."''|'''Aqualad''', ''[[Young Justice (comics)|Young Justice]]'' }}

Simply put, an object or person exhibits [[Thermal Dissonance]] when itsit's not the temperature it ''should'' be. It's true that some objects have a very low thermal conductivity, but these objects subject to Thermal Dissonance don't heat up or cool down no matter how long they spend in a hot or cold environment. They somehow seem able to defy conventional thermodynamics and ''choose'' what temperature they want to be, because of this the object can bethey're a piece of hyper advanced [[Phlebotinum]], an [[Ancient Artifact]] or stranger fare. When touched or held itthey isare either much warmer or colder than the ambient temperature would indicate, with no obvious reason for this temperature difference. A sufficiently powerful Thermally Dissonant object may also be able to change the temperature of its surroundings, freezing an active volcano or melting a glacier if dropped in.

* This is played both ways with the Slytherin Locket Horcrux in ''[[Harry Potter and Thethe Deathly Hallows (novel)|Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows]]''. It is described as being cold to the touch, yet at one point it burns Harry's chest, leaving him with yet another scar.

== [[Live -Action TV]] ==

* Aluminum foil can be safely touched and removed from a baking pan even though the pan itself may be too hot to touch - this is because the foil, being thin, can't store enough thermal energy to cause burns (that is, the foil is cooled fastso enoughquickly by ''your skin'' that it doesn't cause a burn).

** This is also why a meteorite that makes it to the ground is still more or less in one piece, rather than splashed. Iron-nickel alloys are the second worst (after titantitanium and its alloys) heat conductors among metals. While entering Earth's atmosphere does expose it to quite a bit of heat, its surface will melt and be blown away before much heat is transferred to the inner layers. Also, it comes in fast, so if it arrived from the night side, it probably came from outer parts of the system and is still cold, as it wasn't close enough to Sun for long enough to warm up. The impact eats the rest of kinetic energy and can easily produce enough of heat to melt sand into glass, but it's all on surface, too, and may dissipate out faster than in.