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Science is awesome.
It’s literally the coolest thing in the universe.
And I literally mean literally.
Hey there cool cats, Julian here for DNews.
Winter is coming, and the North remembers that familiar chill as the temperature drops
and everyone bundles up and wishes that hot, sticky, uncomfortable summer would come back.
But you know where it’s been really cold for the last 15 days?
Italy.
Scientists at the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events, or CUORE, have cooled a 400
kilogram copper cubic meter to .006 degrees above absolute zero.
that’s negative 273.144 Celsius or what Canadians would call “chilly.”
They plan on using the block to detect rare radioactivity, including the as-yet theoretical
neutrinoless double-beta decay.
And how will they detect this radiation?
When it heats tellurium dioxide crystals of course.
Do you ever get the feeling scientists got into the field just so they could give things
bitchin’ names?
But while this is the closest something this big and voluminous has gotten to zero kelvin,
it’s not the coldest ever ever, not even close.
Researchers at Yale have used lasers on molecules suspended in a magnetic field to slow simple
strontium monofluoride molecules to .0025 Kelvin.
It’s the coldest a molecule has ever gotten.
That’s almost as chill as a bro named Chad wearing an upside down visor.
But nothing compares to what the YKI group in Sweden produced in 2010.
They also used magneto-optical trapping to cool rhodium to 100 piko kelvin, or .000 000
000 1 degrees.
It’s the current world record and for all we know, it’s the current universe record
as well.
They aren’t just doing this because it’s mind blowing and awesome, though that’s
all the reason I really need.
Matter at such low temperatures behaves in new and exciting ways.
Remember, temperature is literally how fast atoms are moving, with 0K meaning they stop
completely.
That’s theoretically impossible, but when they get close, instead of bouncing around
at random, some elements move all together as though they’re one giant atom.
It’s called a Bose-Einstein Condensate, and it’s a whole different state of matter
from gas, liquid, solid, or plasma.
BEC’s are useful because since they act as a giant atom they make it easier to observe
quantum effects, which helps test assumptions we make about quantum mechanics.
BECs also have been used to slow light itself down to a crawl.
A Harvard team has used a BEC of sodium to slow light, which travels at over a billion
kilometers an hour, to just 25 kilometers per hour.
So if anyone ever tells you science isn’t cool, they couldn’t possibly be more wrong.
Wanna hear some more mind blowing numbers?
How about a million.
As in DNews has a million subscribers!
As a special treat you can find out what Trace and Tara are like behind the scenes here.
What do you think is the coolest thing about science?
Figuratively obviously.
Let us know in the comments and I’ll see you next time on DNews.