{"id":135178,"date":"2022-02-04T04:22:24","date_gmt":"2022-02-04T12:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/scientists-create-coldest-temperature-ever"},"modified":"2022-02-04T09:26:23","modified_gmt":"2022-02-04T17:26:23","slug":"scientists-create-coldest-temperature-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/scientists-create-coldest-temperature-ever","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Create \u2018Coldest Temperature Ever\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As far as we can tell from modern science, there\u2019s no upper limit to temperature. There sure is a lower limit, though. We call that absolute zero, measured as −273.15 \u00b0C (−459.67 \u00b0F). Scientists have yet to reach that limit in any experiment, but they\u2019re getting close. A team of physicists in Germany has gotten closer than ever before, reaching a temperature of 38 trillionths of a degree from absolute zero, according to New Atlas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This news might sound familiar because it is \u2014 scientists have inched closer to absolute zero on numerous occasions. A few years ago, MIT created what was at the time the coldest spot in the universe with sodium and potassium atoms<\/a>. The International Space Station has also conducted experiments<\/a> within a fraction of a degree of absolute zero. The problem is that no matter how well insulated your testing setup is, a tiny amount of energy always sneaks in from the environment. When that happens, you can\u2019t reach absolute zero and halt all atomic motion.<\/p>\n

The team from the University of Bremen broke the record once again by dropping the experiment (above) from the top of a very tall tower. Yes, really. They started with a cloud of 100,000 rubidium atoms, which were confined inside a magnetic field. When cooled, the atoms clump together and form a mysterious state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. In this state, the atoms act like one giant atom, making quantum effects visible at the macroscopic scale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As far as we can tell from modern science, there\u2019s no upper limit to temperature. There sure is a lower limit, though. We call that absolute zero, measured as \u2212273.15 \u00b0C (\u2212459.67 \u00b0F). Scientists have yet to reach that limit in any experiment, but they\u2019re getting close. A team of physicists in Germany has gotten [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1617,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135202,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135178\/revisions\/135202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}