By Anupum Pant
Where do you think is the coldest spot in the universe. Like many would have guessed, somewhere in the deepest places in space, the temperature would be coldest than anything else. After all, space being so massive, the probability that happening is so high outside of Earth. Probably the Boomerang Nebula is the coldest. At least that is what Google says:
At a positively frigid one Kelvin (that equates to –458 degrees Fahrenheit or –272 degrees Celsius), the Boomerang Nebula in the constellation Centaurus is officially the coldest known place in the entire Universe. It’s even colder than the background temperature of space!
No!
Behold, the coldest temperature ever recorded anywhere in the universe is in a laboratory, here on Earth – at MIT! It is extremely close to what the coldest temperature can be theoretically.
They call it the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). and the temperature reached has held a record since the year 2003 and in numbers, it is 10 trillionths of a degree F above absolute zero.
And the process ironically involves heating up to 700 degrees celsius to obtain a lots of free sodium atoms. Then, ironically again, they are hit with a laser to make them move lesser. And finally a special kind of evaporative cooling is done to reach nano-kelvin levels. That is how, extremely cold temperatures are reached.