With help of lasers, NASA hopes to create the 'coldest spot in the universe'
From CSMonitor
While space has long been described as “the final frontier,” different scientists want different tools for mapping it out. Astronomers crave more powerful telescopes; planetary scientists have a long “wish list” of orbiters, landers, and rovers.http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/Spacebound/2017/0308/With-help-of-lasers-NASA-hopes-to-create-the-coldest-spot-in-the-universeBut quantum physicists, who study matter and energy on a subatomic scale, want near-zero temperatures and microgravity. An experimental chamber set to be installed aboard the International Space Station this summer will deliver both.
Dubbed the “Cold Atom Laboratory,” the ice-chest-sized facility is designed to use a vacuum chamber, lasers, and an electromagnetic “knife” to slow down gas atoms until they’re almost motionless, bringing temperatures inside to a billionth of a degree above absolute zero – what NASA describes as “the coolest spot in the universe.”
Observing atoms at such low temperatures, in the near weightlessness of space, could drastically change our understanding of matter and energy.
“Studying these hyper-cold atoms could reshape our understanding of matter and the fundamental nature of gravity," said CAL project scientist Robert Thompson in a Jet Propulsion Laboratory statement.
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