NASA is about to create the coldest spot in the known universe

[Judi Lynn]

The Cold Atom Laboratory launched this morning
By Mary Beth Griggs 6 hours ago

Beyond the bounds of our planet, the record for the coldest temperature is currently held by the Boomerang Nebula, a swiftly moving chill cloud of dust and gas that stays at a cool one degree Kelvin, or –458°F. Down here on the ground, physicists managed to surpass that last year, chilling an object to a stunning 0.00036 degrees Kelvin or -459.669352°F.

Both of those records are about to get smashed by an experiment, the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL), which just launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday, May 21 aboard a Cygnus spacecraft. Researchers hope that once it’s safely installed on the station, it will cool clouds of gas down to a stunning 0.000000001 degree Kelvin. That’s around -459.6699999982 degrees Fahrenheit.

Just for comparison, the background temperature of space is -455 degrees Fahrenheit, meaning that inside this box, temperatures will be much colder than the vacuum of deep space.

The Cold Atom Lab isn’t in it for the record though. It’s studying Bose-Einstein condensates, or clouds of atoms that have been cooled to near absolute zero, -459.67°F. Bose-Einstein condensates were predicted by the work of Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein in the early 20th century, but this state of matter was not proven to exist until 1995, a discovery that was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2001.

More:
https://www.popsci.com/coldest-spot-known-universe?dom=rss-default&src=syn

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Amazing...nt

[lapfog_1]

2. pardon me for not being a physicist

but at temperatures that close to absolute 0... do electrons slow their orbits around the nucleus of an atom?

[Snackshack]

4. No,

If electrons obeyed the laws of classical physics they would but they don’t much care for those laws so they made different laws to live by 😀.

“Near absolute zero, electrons "continue to whiz around" inside atoms, says quantum physicist Christopher Foot of the University of Oxford. Moreover, even at absolute zero, atoms would not be completely stationary. They would "jiggle about," but would not have enough energy to change state. ... It's energy is at a minimum.Apr 13, 2009”

[gordianot]

3. I read a sci-fi novel about that.

Of course there were strange unknown consequences.

[lapfog_1]

5. Larry Niven

early in his career, wrote a short story "The coldest place" (I think) that describes a person who was "frozen to near absolute 0" but who was aware of his surroundings every time the sun made a appearance, apparently to live like that nearly forever.

[gordianot]

6. This was different physical properties of matter changed drastically.

It was 50 years ago do not recall author or title.

[FiveGoodMen]

9. I think that's his short story "Wait It Out" (1968)

[Javaman]

7. they got hold of dick chaney's heart? nt

[SCantiGOP]

8. The really cool aspect of this is

It is another example of what Einstein predicted with paper and pen and his mind has now been proven by actual experience.