Coldest Place in the Universe

Chris Gondek writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has an article on how NASA has released a high-quality image of the coldest place found in the universe. Five thousand light years from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus, the nebula, a gas cloud formed from a dying star, has a temperature of minus 272 degrees. It is only one degree warmer than absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature, when atoms cease to vibrate and radiate no heat whatsoever. This radiation is the remnant of the Big Bang, the explosion which forged the universe in trillion-degree temperatures. More than 11 billion years later, this heat has cooled to minus 270 degrees, but is still detectable."

Comments

Re:Grumble, grumble - absolute zero

[Tempest]

Actually, there is another method of cooling an object, you physically slow it's atomic vibration. It's been demonstrated down to at least 0.0000001 C above absolute zero (see NASA's site) using lasers and magnetic traps. Research utilizing the technique include Bose-Einstein Condensates and Superfluids.

~~~~~Chris Giorgi~~~~~

Re:Is everything going to cool down eventually?

[meringuoid]

Does this show that every body in this universe is untimately going to cool down and reach this near-absolute-zero temperature? Is this possible for our solar system? Where does all the enery go in such case?

This nebula is weird because it's _colder_ than the ambient background temperature of the universe; some process must be going on to cool it, apparently the rapid expansion of the gas.

Ultimately, yes, the Universe seems doomed to cool down indefinitely. The Universe is expanding, and it seems that it isn't going to stop; the galaxies end up spread out much further, the background radiation redshifts further and further down into radio noise, the stars start dying off... The future is a cold, cold place. No energy is destroyed, it's just spread out thinner and thinner over time.