NASA is going to create the coldest spot in the entire universe. The Space agency would send a box-sized freezer to International SpaceStation(ISS) that will become the house of coldest spot in the universe. That device would freeze atoms to less than 1 billionth of a degree, just above absolute zero.
The research team of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s(JPL) Cold Atom Laboratory(CAL) has developed a box that contains a vacuum chamber, LASER, and an electromagnetic knife. The Vacuum chamber would slow down the movement of atoms. The EM-knife will help to cut down the hottest atoms and rest of the atoms will cool down even further.
Project scientist of Cold Atom Lab at NASA's JPL, Robert Thompson said,“In a sense, it is very similar to blowing on the top of a hot cup of coffee. When you blow on the top of a cup of coffee you are helping the hottest atoms to escape”. According to Space, the LASER will create the absolute zero (Just few fraction of a degree above) like environment in the box. The temperature will be 100 million times colder than the coldest place of deep space.
The Boomerang Nebula is the coldest place in the Universe ever discovered, the average temperature of that place is just above the absolute Zero. This experiment is impossible to perform at earth because of Gravity, that’s why the team is sending the rig to ISS this August. At the temperature of absolute zero atoms change their behavior, as CNBC reported.
This experiment will help physicists to understand properties matter, gravity, dark matter and dark energy deeply. An atom can act both like a particle and wave. Normally gas atoms act like particles and bounce off one another in all directions but, in the special condition like in extreme freezing temperature, they behave like the wave.
In space, Physicists can hold their wave properties for 5-10 second. Such duration may seem like a very short time but it is enough to gain an unprecedented amount of knowledge. Researchers have already achieved these amount freezing temperatures on Earth but it stayed only for a fraction of a second. Earth’s gravity won’t let the atoms to stay in this condition.
This experiment will help scientists to develop new sensors, atomic clocks, and quantum supercomputers. The current model of Universe suggests that only five percent of the universe is visible and rest of the part is split between dark matter (27 percent) and dark energy (68 percent). CAL is now at under development under NASA’s JPL. It is scheduled to fly on August with SpaceX’s Dragon space probe.
