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Space Science

Coldest Place in the Universe 361

Posted by CowboyNeal from the star-trek-episode-ideas dept.
Chris Gondek writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has an article on how NASA has released a high-quality image of the coldest place found in the universe. Five thousand light years from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus, the nebula, a gas cloud formed from a dying star, has a temperature of minus 272 degrees. It is only one degree warmer than absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature, when atoms cease to vibrate and radiate no heat whatsoever. This radiation is the remnant of the Big Bang, the explosion which forged the universe in trillion-degree temperatures. More than 11 billion years later, this heat has cooled to minus 270 degrees, but is still detectable."
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Coldest Place in the Universe

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  • Damn That's Cold.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21, 2003 @04:10AM (#5350946)

    Almost as cold as Hillary Rosen's heart 8^)

  • If only... (Score:2, Funny)

    by blindcoder ( 606653 )
    I could cool my Jolt with that one :)

    • Re:If only... (Score:4, Funny)

      by mauthbaux ( 652274 ) on Friday February 21, 2003 @05:06AM (#5351132) Homepage
      I can just imagine all of the overclocking freaks trying to figure out a way to use the nebula to keep their processors at a reasonable temperature.... Imagine computing life without heat-sinks or fans!
      of course, all those flaming processors would end up creating enough heat to send the whole nebula boiling away, and we'd be back searching for the ultimate cooling solution once again....
      • If you could float your processor in the depths of space where the ambient temperature were a degree above absolute zero, your processor would probably perform worse than in your office- a vacuum makes a pretty good insulator, and all that heat would just kind of float there with it, charging up. There'd be nothing to carry the heat away.
    • No you would take out the carbonization after it would freeze. Not that I have left a few Redbulls in the freezer for to long or anything....

  • I thought I found that last month... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21, 2003 @04:11AM (#5350951)
    You mean it's *not* my ex-girlfriend's soul?

  • Coldest place in the Universe? (Score:4, Funny)

    by FungiSpunk ( 628460 ) on Friday February 21, 2003 @04:11AM (#5350952)
    My bosses office at pay review time...

  • Grumble, grumble - absolute zero (Score:5, Informative)

    by altairmaine ( 317424 ) on Friday February 21, 2003 @04:14AM (#5350957)
    As it turns out, absolute zero is not the "coldest possible temperature". It is impossible to attain absolute zero, as a little basic quantum mechanics tells us. Particles will ALWAYS retain some amount of energy, the "Zero Point Energy", which cannot be removed. More accurately, we can say that absolute zero is the lower bound on the range of possible temperatures - but is not included.

    • Re:Grumble, grumble - absolute zero (Score:5, Informative)

      by JohnFluxx ( 413620 ) on Friday February 21, 2003 @04:26AM (#5351013)
      I just thought... one way to perhaps show that you can't reach zero is that to cool something you either need:

      *) Something colder, to cool it - but you can't get colder than 0.

      *) A bigger space to put the nonzero heat it - but trivally if you expand something with non-zero temperature into an finite space, then the result is still going to be above zero.

      *) If it radiates/conducts/etc heat away, then it must be into an area that has a non-zero heat, so that will (instinctively) also radiate an equal or greater amount of heat back again. Hmm, thinking about it this means you can't have a one-way heat shield, or something that absorbes without emitting. (Unless a material stops radiating/conducting below a certain temperature.)

      There's probably some other cases I missed - I don't know anything about this field. :) Is there any other way to cool something other than these cases?
    • Yeah, but you try finding a satisfactory explanation of an asymptote to put in an article meant for the general public.

    • Re:Grumble, grumble - absolute zero (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21, 2003 @04:44AM (#5351083)
      yes. the zero point energy is correct... but not to be a pest, atoms cannot vibrate as is suggested in the original post. only molecules may vibrate. the zero point energy comes into play for molecules because the energy, E, of a simple harmonic oscillator (simplest approximation) will be:

      E = nu ( v + 1/2)

      where v is the vibrational quantum number and nu is related to the force contant. nu is positive, and v is always a non-negative integer, so even when v is zero the energy is nu/2. freshman chemistry students are told that this is to accomodate the heisenberg uncertainty principle in that a particle that is not vibrating would have a definite position and momentum.

      another poster hinted on what has been stated eloquenty for hundreds of years and restated by homer: in this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics! the third law states:

      "if the entropy of every element in its most stable state at T=0 is taken as zero, then every substance has a positive entropy which at T=0 may become zero, and which does become zero for all perfect crystalline substances, including compounts"

      WTF? an alternate statement has more meaning in our context:

      "it is impossible to reach T=0 in a finite number of steps".

      thus, as altairmaine suggests, it is impossible to reach absolute zero. other posters suggested that it is only possible to cool things by contact with a colder substance. for those people i would suggest doing a google search on the term "adiabatic demagnetization". research into bose-einstein condensates work with clusters of atoms at fractions of a kelvin, and it is not because they have a super-secret stash of a zero-kelvin heat sink. :)

      reference: "Physical Chemistry" by Peter Atkins. 5th ed.
      • "it is impossible to reach T=0 in a finite number of steps".

        A bit out of my league, but isn't it also impossible to reach absolute zero because of the uncertainty principal? As I understand it, a molecule can "borrow" energy and exist in a given space for a bried period of time, including this "absolute zero" area.

        As I understand it, the uncertainty principal is what determined that black holes "do have hair" (sorry Steven H.) and thus can dissipate, but at a rate that exceeds the entire history of the universe. In theory, this would prevent any given space from maintaining a mean temperature of exactly 0 for any given time, or more properly, it means that a given area with a temperature of 0 has a probability of not being 0.

        Of course, I could be completely wrong....
    • ...that's not so important anyway, since minus 272.99999C would be just the same as -273C for almost any practical means.

      We now know how low IS temperature in some place: -272C . We have to take it simply as is, a new record and a proof to the very possibility to reach such temperatures in nature.

      BTW, is there any proof to that "Zero Point Energy can't be removed" theory?
      • As absolute zero is actually closer to -273.15deg.C, -272.99999C and -273C are still some way off (relatively), but I know what you mean and I'm just being really pedantic.
    • Absolute Zero is not the lowest possible temperature, nor is it the lower bound of the range of possible temperatures. It is actually possible [ucr.edu] to attain temperatures BELOW absolute zero, as any student of statistical thermodynamics will know.

      • Sorry, but negative temperatures are ABOVE absolute zero (and above all positive temperatures) in the temperature scale. +infinity and -infinity are the same temperature, but -0 and +0 are not the same temperature.

        from cold to hot:

        0K...100K..1000K..+infinity/-infinity..-1000K... -1 00K..-0

        How can we be sure? A negative temperature system will transfer heat energy to a postive temperature system when the two systems are in thermal contact. Heat flows from hot objects to cold objects, so negative temperatures are hotter.

        To summarize the link you provided, negative temperatures only can be realized in systems which have an upper bound to their energy. In practice, this means that one is looking at a restricted set of degrees of freedom of a larger system as a system in isolation from the larger system. For instance, consider just the spins of atoms or nuclei, as separate from the spins+kinetic energy of the atoms or nuclei. As the spins of nuclei are often weakly coupled to the kinetic energy (i.e. collisions or atomic vibrations do not easily flip nuclear spins), this is a good approximation. In reality, if you put the spins into a negative temperature state, the energy of the spins will eventually dissipate, cooling the spins, while slightly increasing the kinetic energy in the system.

        (The mathematical reason for this is that temperature is actually the reciprocal of a microscopically meaningful property.)

  • I Apologize in Advance (Score:5, Funny)

    by dupper ( 470576 ) on Friday February 21, 2003 @04:14AM (#5350962) Journal
    from the star-trek-episode-ideas dept.

    Most frigid place in the universe? They've already shown Janeway's quarters.

    Ba-dum-ch-OW! That hurt!

  • Article contradicts itself... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by $$$$$exyGal ( 638164 ) on Friday February 21, 2003 @04:26AM (#5351012) Homepage Journal
    The article contradicts itself:

    NASA has released a high-quality image of the coldest place found in the universe ...

    But then says:

    Man has produced yet chillier temperatures. In 1995, American researchers cooled rubidium atoms to less than 170 billionths of a degree above absolute zero.

    I see the point they are making, but still.

    --sex [slashdot.org]

  • Needs to be qualified (Score:5, Interesting)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Friday February 21, 2003 @04:27AM (#5351019) Homepage Journal
    Note that this is the coldest known place occuring naturally. It is difficult to find places this cool because of the cosmic background microwave radiation. But man-made objects have been far cooler. Using Bose-Einstein condensation a few atoms of rubidium have been cooled to as low as 1.7 * 10^(-7) K! (excerpt [nist.gov]). One of the scientists who achieved this condensation said "If there is anything in the universe cooler than this, it exists in a laboratory of some alien civilization".

    It is also possible that there are cooler regions farther out in the universe than we can currently study.

    • Re:Needs to be qualified (Score:4, Informative)

      by GammaTau ( 636807 ) <jni@iki.fi> on Friday February 21, 2003 @05:21AM (#5351172) Homepage Journal

      Using Bose-Einstein condensation a few atoms of rubidium have been cooled to as low as 1.7 * 10^(-7) K!

      As far as I am aware, at HUT Low Temperature Laboratory [boojum.hut.fi] they currently have the world record with 100 picokelvins [boojum.hut.fi].

    • Absolutely correct regarding natural versus man-made cold. I had the good fortune of meeting the man who achieved that low temperature. One day, he will win the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work- the knowledge of that fact made him some what of an arrogant SOB (and that's being nice, though I suppose he just rubbed me the wrong way). I highly doubt that there are cooler temperatures than a B-E condensate found naturally in the universe, though there is still a lot of physics we don't know.

      I guess the best thing we can say is that knowing the physics we know now, we cannot predict that there will a be a naturally occuring region of the universe with a sub milli-Kelvin temperature. But we could be wrong- I fill in 'e', not enough information to answer.

  • What is interesting for astronomers is that the nebula is colder than the microwave radiation which pervades all of space.
    i'm just curious, but can anyone give a definition of temperature, that adds some sense to the above statement?

    temperature is defined by the movement of atoms, right? how can microwave radiation have temperature?

    if i got my physics right, radiation just induces movement of atoms... ?-)

    • Re:cold radiation?? (Score:3, Informative)

      by dpp ( 585742 )
      temperature is defined by the movement of atoms, right? how can microwave radiation have temperature?

      It's because the cosmic microwave background has the spectrum of a blackbody with the given temperature (2.7K).


    • Remember that EMR travels both as waves and particles, just NOT electrons, neutrons and protons. So while there is very little in EMR there is still some mass to EMR.

      Light is just microwave radiation we can see and has been proved to be distorted by gravity.

  • No its not - Brighton is. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Hittite Creosote ( 535397 ) on Friday February 21, 2003 @04:34AM (#5351043)
    As the article admits at the end, it's only the coldest natural place in the universe. Scientists have produced lower temperatures in the lab, less than a few 100 billionths above absolute zero. Last time I checked, which appears to be later than the journalist who wrote the article, the coldest place in the universe [bbc.co.uk] was actually Brighton, England.
    • the coldest place in the universe [bbc.co.uk] was actually Brighton, England.


      Correction: Coldest place in the known universe. How do you know that there are no ultra-advanced cililizations out there that have got even closer to absolute zero?
  • The extremely cold gas is streaming outwards so fast it pushes the background radiation out of the way? What does this mean exactly?

    What is driving the movement of the gas?

    I may just be stupid, but this article seems to raise a lot more questions than it answers. Can someone expand this beyond newspaper-level pop science?

    • and what iluminates it? It's bright enough to see with a telescope, but it's -272? So is it also the coldest fusion around?

      • Re:Someone please explain (Score:3, Informative)

        by dpp ( 585742 )
        and what iluminates it? It's bright enough to see with a telescope, but it's -272?

        From the article:

        "One can say the Boomerang acts as a refrigerator," said astronomer Lars-Ake Nyman, who measured its temperature using the European Southern Observatory radio telescope in Chile. He did this by comparing signals received from carbon monoxide in the nebula with signals from the background radiation.

        So it was done with a radio telescope, possibly SEST [eso.org], by looking at molecular lines from CO. It sounds like they found that the CO was absorbing some of the background radiation. So it wasn't "seen" with a telescope in the way that you're thinking.

  • New Project (Score:5, Funny)

    by WoTG ( 610710 ) on Friday February 21, 2003 @04:53AM (#5351111) Homepage Journal
    ... and all of a sudden, 1000 Overclockers wonder, "How do I get my Athlon to Centaurus?"
    • .. and all of a sudden, 1000 Overclockers wonder, "How do I get my Athlon to Centaurus?"

      Pity silicon doesn't semi-conduct below about -90 C or thereabouts.

  • Vibration (Score:4, Informative)

    by 4lex ( 648184 ) on Friday February 21, 2003 @05:02AM (#5351129) Homepage Journal
    The lowest level of energy ("fundamental" energy level of a quantum system), which we can equate to absolute zero, because there is no allowed state with less energy *does* have energy, including vibrational energy. Atoms *cannot* "cease" to vibrate, because by doing so they would violate Heisenberg's indetermination principle (they would have an exactly determinate position _and_ moment).

    I hope someone corrects me if I am wrong :)
    • Energy does not have a fixed reference. If you choose to make the ground state of the system be E=0, then there is zero energy in it (that's your choice, and you should stick with it.)

      If you wish to put the zero of energy at the lowest energy you would expect the corresponding classical system to have, then the ground state of the true quantum system will be higher. That said, there isn't any lower quantum state the system can be in, so its energy isn't going to get any lower (unless you change the system, modifying the ground state).

      When you say that atoms cannot cease to vibrate, it all depends on what you mean by "cease." You can argue that they aren't "moving" (it starts in the ground state, it stays in the ground state, nothing is changing) but the position is also (by the uncertainty principle) not a fixed mathematical point of zero extent. (You can say where an atom is located only by describing its statistical distribution, which might be well-localized if the atom is in an atomic lattice or some kind of potential well.) "Not fixed" is not the same as "moving" or "vibrating", unless you choose to define it that way.

      That choice only affects the manner in which you view the quantum motion using classical terminology, so it is physically meaningless (there is presumably no such physical thing as a classical system, although we might be able to use an accurate classical model) and potentially misleading (you will get potentially wrong answers by arguing classically).

      What matters thermodynamically is that the system is in its ground state. An atom in the ground state is at zero temperature.

  • Houston we have a problem here (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cvmvision ( 245679 ) on Friday February 21, 2003 @05:17AM (#5351162) Homepage
    Did I miss something in my science class?

    The temperature of the microwave background radiation is 3K. This means that unless something is shielding an object (or large gas mass) it will be irradiated (heated) to this temperature. And because of the nature of blackbody radiation - the thing doing the shielding would need to be colder than 3K - else it would be a source of 'hot' radiation itself.

    And then how do you take a picture of something that is only 1K? This object would emit less radiation than the 3K background - thus it would be a dark spot. It could reflect light - but not all the light is reflected (or is it due to some cool QM effect that I don't know about)? Anyway the absorbed light from other stars would most likely over years - heat the gas mass to a temperature between the 3K background and temperature of the star surface (5000K). Probably something in the neighborhood of 4K.

    Conclusion - unless there is some sort of active cooling, nothing can cool down to less than temperature of the background radiation (3K). Is this an early April fools joke - or state schools worthless?

    • Re:Houston we have a problem here (Score:5, Informative)

      by Xilman ( 191715 ) on Friday February 21, 2003 @05:42AM (#5351211) Homepage Journal
      Conclusion - unless there is some sort of active cooling, nothing can cool down to less than temperature of the background radiation (3K).

      Correct.

      There is active cooling in this case, and it works the same as a domestic refrigorator. Both systems cool down because gases are expanded, thereby doing work. That energy has to come from somewhere and it comes from the heat content of the gas: it cools in other words.

      At the center of nebulae like these is a star which is driving off the remnants of what was previously its outer layers. That is, its atmosphere is expanding. If the heat loss through expansion is greater than the heat input from the rest of the universe, the gas will cool.

      Paul

  • She's as cold as ice.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdot@spamgoe ... c a l u m . org> on Friday February 21, 2003 @05:44AM (#5351214) Homepage
    In 1995, American researchers cooled rubidium atoms to less than 170 billionths of a degree above absolute zero.

    I know a girl like that....
  • Are we that desperate for the ultimate cooling method for our computers that we need NASA to find somewhere that freaking cold? ;)
  • Call your local quantum mechanic. She'll tell you they don't cease to "vibrate": it's called zero point energy.

  • Confusing quote (Score:2, Informative)

    by Brane ( 210649 )

    People who don't read the article (and let's face it, that's most of us, right?), are certain to be confused by the quoted text. The submitter apparently left out this important sentence:

    What is interesting for astronomers is that the nebula is colder than the microwave radiation which pervades all of space.

    The microwave background radiation is "this radiation" the next sentence refers to.

  • -272 degrees Celsius is 1.15 degrees Kelvin and -457.6 degrees Farenheit.

  • Your average Bose Einstein condensate, made in a lab of your choice, is somewhere between one billionth and one millionth kelvin above absolute zero. So the coldest place in the universe is probably in those labs.
  • Could not be the coldest place in the universe where there is no matter at all? far away from any galaxy atom density should be very low... taking a cube with no atoms big enough you can say perfectly that is the coldest place, maybe it could count as a perfect 0 kelvin degree.
  • This image (and a much better description) were the APOD on the 20th. The image is from 1998.
    Apod [nasa.gov].

    I think Slashdot should have a box on the right with the APOD (astronomy picture of the day.) Of course, then it might get slashdotted... maybe someone nice could setup a mirror.

    M@
  • If the entire universe will enventually reach this state .... does this mean hell is finally going to freeze over?
  • Absolute Zero is not the lowest possible temperature, nor is it the lower bound of the range of possible temperatures. It is actually possible to attain temperatures BELOW [ucr.edu] absolute zero, as any student of statistical thermodynamics will know.

  • If it's nothing... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Frobozz0 ( 247160 )
    Some have been disussing a way to reach absolute zero. While I am not a physics major, I do love reading Hawking, Barbour, et. al. It's very mind expanding. I've ultimately decided you can not reach absolute zero wihtout cirumventing the laws of the universe and the means that we observe them... as we know it.

    Okay, so I got thinking... if the space you're measuring was contained by a magnetic field and contained nothing, could it reach absolute zero? Theoretically I would think so. But there's 2 problems with this, right?

    The first is simply the observation of "nothing." If I'm not mistaken, you can not measure or observe "nothing" because if it could be observed in any way, it would be "something". Even if you could somehow detect the abscense of "something" you'd be effecting "nothing" and making it into "something." Correct?

    The second would be how do we define "nothing?" If I am to define it as something that does not contain matter in any form, then how do I contain it? Is it a matter of containment, or a matter of exclusion? If I am to exclude "something", philosphically this is far different from containing "nothing."

    Anyway, I've got a headache now and it's 10 AM EST. Thank you slashdot for another wonderful morning ...

  • Chillier temperatures (Score:3, Funny)

    by ehiris ( 214677 ) on Friday February 21, 2003 @10:02AM (#5352264) Homepage
    "Man has produced yet chillier temperatures. In 1995, American researchers cooled rubidium atoms to less than 170 billionths of a degree above absolute zero."

    We're so cool!

  • Note from mom (Score:5, Funny)

    by andy@petdance.com ( 114827 ) <andy@petdance.com> on Friday February 21, 2003 @10:03AM (#5352284) Homepage
    Be sure to wear a sweater.

    Love,
    Mom

  • That theory was disproved long ago.
  • I never thought place colder than Fargo could exist outside of purgatory, but I'll be damned if they didn't find it.

  • Image of Nebula (Score:2, Informative)

    by LeftNose ( 48066 )
    For those who are interested, the "high" quality image of the nebula can be found here at the Astronomy Picture of the Day [nasa.gov] for Tues. 2/20/03.

    Click on the image and you'll get the enlarged verson.
  • The article summary is made of sentences quoted exactly from the article, strung together as if they were logically connected, even though they're from different paragraphs talking about different things.

    I have to conclude that this submission came from Microsoft Word's "AutoSummarize".
  • They haven't met my ex-girlfriend yet.

    More than 11 billion years later, this heat has cooled to minus 270 degrees, but is still detectable."

    After only 2 of dating years I think she'd made it well past absolute zero.....

  • You are WRONG (Score:2, Interesting)

    by winnjewett ( 652509 )
    The coldest place in the universe is in 2001 Nobel Prize winner Carl Weinman's Lab in Boulder, Colorado. Temperatures as low as 3nK (3 billionths of a Kelvin) have been achieved.

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