[thedoc (OP)]

Sydney Shangombe asked the Naked Scientists:
   
Hi Chris
 
Shooting straight to the point.  Has the opposite of a microwave been invented?  As in, you take a warm beverage like a beer - put it in a microwave like machine..  And voila! after ten seconds or so, it's ice cold. If not, is this kind of invention possible?
 
Regards,
 
Sydney Shangombe

What do you think?

[Mazurka]

No.  Microwave Ovens use a principle called dielectric heating - which is where the bonds in polar molecules (such as water) are excited by bombarding them with high frequency electromagnetic radiation (microwaves).  The extra energy in the molecules manifests itself as heat. 
Unfortunately the reverse is not true - we cannot make the molecular bonds radiate heat away from the liquid.

[CliffordK]

There is a Laser Cooling or Doppler Cooling which uses light to cool specific atoms or molecules.

[BishopE5]

They can, but they aren't marketable.

[BioChemSFC]

Not really. The increased rotational vibration of H2O by microwave radiation causes heat. Maybe if you had a sample that was being exposed to microwaves you could reduce the amount of heating with another source that caused cancellation. But that is reduction of heating and not cooling. Thermodynamics was useful for something I guess . The microwave is only adding to rotation of H2O and since the water molecules don't have a direction specific rotational vibration it would be impossible to reduce movement by causing more vibration.

[janesi87]

it's really sound strange for me with "a cooling microwave". I think that it will be similar with the refrigerator. So who will buy it???

[lmanifold]

Actually, it just has been invented. It cools in 5-10 seconds.

[product name removed] uses a “start stop rotational sequence” to create a Rankine vortex, which essentially keeps a drink in its original state while quickly bringing down the temperature.

Link to <reverse-microwave> removed; due to the description being misleading (bloomin' journos!).

Lorraine

P.S. I think people, and especially scientists, should never claim something is impossible.  There is no limit as to what the human brain can invent and find.  Flying to the moon was considered impossible. Sending a message to someone on the other side of the world in 2 seconds was considered impossible..... 

[peppercorn]

This is the trouble when one journalist comes up with a tagline and other articles simply parrot the same 'message' (I expect it's a lot more prevalent in the age of online media).

From another site describing the product:
"a new 'microwave cooler' based on Rankine vortices instead of microwaves to chill multiple items in record time"
- This appears to have nothing to do with microwave energy from what I've seen.  I expect the comparison to a microwave is simply because the device uses a rotating plate which changes direction, a bit like in a microwave oven.

“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” ― Carl Sagan