NASA Is About to Create the Coldest Place in the Known Universe

NASA is about to launch the coldest place on Earth - the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) - into orbit, where astronauts will use it to create never-before-seen conditions with temperatures 100 million times colder than the depths of space.

The Cold Atom Lab will hitch a ride on a SpaceX rocket to the International Space Station, where it's hoped the super-chilled box will reveal strange new physics when atoms are cooled to a mere billionth of a degree above absolute zero.

The plan is to fill the Cold Atom Lab with gas particles aboard the International Space Station, where the unique microgravity environment will allow researchers to observe never-before-seen quantum phenomena that are impossible to detect on Earth.

Of particular interest is the exotic form of matter called Bose-Einstein condensate - a 'superfluid' state where atoms morph into mysterious waveforms that have never been observed at Cold Atom Lab temperatures. 

Because this state has zero viscosity, atoms are able to move without friction, as if they were a single, solid substance, NASA explains.

NASA

Source: ScienceAlert