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NASA's Atomic Fridge Will Make the ISS the Coldest Known Place in the Universe (vice.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Later this year, a small part of the International Space Station will become 10 billion times colder than the average temperature of the vacuum of space thanks to the Cold Atom Lab (CAL). Once it's on the space station, this atomic fridge will be the coldest known place in the universe and will allow physicists to 'see' into the quantum realm in a way that would never be possible on Earth.
In a normal room, "atoms are bouncing off one another in all directions at a few hundred meters per second," Rob Thompson, a NASA scientist working on CAL explained in a statement. CAL, however, can reach temperatures that are just one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero -- the point at which matter loses all its thermal energy -- which means that this chaotic atomic motion comes to a near standstill.
CAL uses magnetic fields and lasers traps to capture the gaseous atoms and cool them to nearly absolute zero. Since all the atoms have the same energy levels at that point, these effectively motionless atoms condense into a state of quantum matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate. This state of matter means that the atoms have the properties of one continuous wave rather discrete particles.
In a normal room, "atoms are bouncing off one another in all directions at a few hundred meters per second," Rob Thompson, a NASA scientist working on CAL explained in a statement. CAL, however, can reach temperatures that are just one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero -- the point at which matter loses all its thermal energy -- which means that this chaotic atomic motion comes to a near standstill.
CAL uses magnetic fields and lasers traps to capture the gaseous atoms and cool them to nearly absolute zero. Since all the atoms have the same energy levels at that point, these effectively motionless atoms condense into a state of quantum matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate. This state of matter means that the atoms have the properties of one continuous wave rather discrete particles.
Although Bose-Einstein condensates have been made in labs on Earth, gravity causes the particles to sink to the bottom of the device. Yet in the microgravity of low earth orbit, the Bose-Einstein condensate can hold its wave form for much longer—up to ten seconds—which allows researchers to better understand its properties.
love is just extroverted narcissism
True. "Close to absolute zero" refers to the rotten tomatoes score.
FTA: One ten-billionth of one degree. I'm assuming Kelvin.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
They'll toss you out the airlock for making a mess in the lab.
See that "Preview" button?
And for wasting beer.
What would happen to a can of beer if I put it inside that "fridge"?
You could turn a Beck's Beer into a BEC beer.
The point is, unlike lengths or weights, multiplying temperatures makes no goddam sense.
FTA: One ten-billionth of one degree. I'm assuming Kelvin.
You're assuming the "average temperature of space" is 1K? I believe in interstellar space it's closer to 3K and near earth it's much higher. So maybe a closer estimate is 8x10^-9K. Of course I could be wrong.. please correct me.
Why the hell they couldn't just type the number instead of wearing out everyone's 0 key?
this atomic fridge will be the coldest known place in the universe
They are clearly all single. Otherwise they would know the coldest place known to man is a woman who's mad at you.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
please correct me
I'm not assuming anything about the average temperature of space. FTA:
CAL, however, can reach temperatures that are just one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero...
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Why not? You have an absolute reference point for length - 0m, against which all scaling takes place so that it makes sense, right?
You also have an absolute reference point for temperature - absolute zero, the temperature at which there is no more thermal energy to remove, even in theory, against which temperature scaling makes just as much sense. It['s only in the completely arbitrary Celsius and Fahrenheit scales that it appears nonsensical - but those don't get used in scientific calculations for exactly that reason (outside of chemistry and thermal flow, which are mostly interested in temperature deltas and critical event temperatures, neither of which care where zero is)
You can't even compute heat-engine efficiency using C or F them without getting completely bogus results, because they're completely bogus scales - as though we arbitrarily said the "zero point" on a ruler was actually 213.7meters from the beginning, so that a sheet of paper was approximately -213.7 meters thick - which would similarly make scaling lengths pretty much nonsensical.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Yep, it might confuse engineers and pedants
It would confuse neither. An engineer would not say it that way, but would know what it means. Pendants also understand, but object anyway, because that what pedants do.
A vacuum has no temperature since temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy of the particles. In deep space we consider the temperature to be the equilibrium temperature an object will eventually reach, which is the temperature of the cosmic background temperature.
Anyway, one ten billionth of a degree over absolute zero is not 10 billions times colder than the average temperature of the vacuum of space. We really need journalists to have at least passed grade 9 science before writing about science.