NASA will soon create the coldest spot in the universe — and forge a bizarre form of matter inside it
NASA Cold Atom Laboratory may solve deep mysteries of the cosmos
•SpaceX is launching a NASA experiment called the Cold Atom Laboratory.
•The device will use lasers and a "knife" of radio waves to cool gases into superfluids.
•The superfluids will be just a billionth of a degree above absolute zero.
•A zero-gravity environment will help scientists better study superfluids and mysteries surrounding gravity and the expansion of the universe.
The void of space is cold — very, very cold. With a temperature that floats around -457 degrees Fahrenheit (just 3 degrees above absolute zero), it’s hard to imagine anything more frigid.
But physicists hoping to probe the universe’s deepest mysteries are trying to create a spot that’s even colder.
A potentially revolutionary NASA experiment may break low-temperature records this summer. What’s more, the experiment will fly aboard a SpaceX resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS), where astronauts will install it in their laboratory.
The goal of the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL), as the box-shaped experiment is called, is to chill puffs of gas to a mind-boggling one-billionth of a degree above the coldest temperature possible.
Under those conditions, gases should form what’s known as a Bose-Einstein condensate (yes, it’s named in part after Albert Einstein): a form of matter that is totally alien to the human experience.