NASA's Atomic Fridge Will Make the ISS the Coldest Known Place in the Universe (vice.com) 98
An anonymous reader shares a report: Later this year, a small part of the International Space Station will become 10 billion times colder than the average temperature of the vacuum of space thanks to the Cold Atom Lab (CAL). Once it's on the space station, this atomic fridge will be the coldest known place in the universe and will allow physicists to 'see' into the quantum realm in a way that would never be possible on Earth.
In a normal room, "atoms are bouncing off one another in all directions at a few hundred meters per second," Rob Thompson, a NASA scientist working on CAL explained in a statement. CAL, however, can reach temperatures that are just one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero -- the point at which matter loses all its thermal energy -- which means that this chaotic atomic motion comes to a near standstill.
CAL uses magnetic fields and lasers traps to capture the gaseous atoms and cool them to nearly absolute zero. Since all the atoms have the same energy levels at that point, these effectively motionless atoms condense into a state of quantum matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate. This state of matter means that the atoms have the properties of one continuous wave rather discrete particles.
In a normal room, "atoms are bouncing off one another in all directions at a few hundred meters per second," Rob Thompson, a NASA scientist working on CAL explained in a statement. CAL, however, can reach temperatures that are just one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero -- the point at which matter loses all its thermal energy -- which means that this chaotic atomic motion comes to a near standstill.
CAL uses magnetic fields and lasers traps to capture the gaseous atoms and cool them to nearly absolute zero. Since all the atoms have the same energy levels at that point, these effectively motionless atoms condense into a state of quantum matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate. This state of matter means that the atoms have the properties of one continuous wave rather discrete particles.
Missing from summary (why in space) (Score:5, Informative)
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Thank you. I figured it was probably something like that, but it's a rather critical detail to have been left out.
Re: Eat it, Crystal Skull haters (Score:3, Funny)
True. "Close to absolute zero" refers to the rotten tomatoes score.
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FTA: One ten-billionth of one degree. I'm assuming Kelvin.
Re:"10 billion times colder"?!? Who writes such sh (Score:4, Informative)
FTA: One ten-billionth of one degree. I'm assuming Kelvin.
You're assuming the "average temperature of space" is 1K? I believe in interstellar space it's closer to 3K and near earth it's much higher. So maybe a closer estimate is 8x10^-9K. Of course I could be wrong.. please correct me.
Why the hell they couldn't just type the number instead of wearing out everyone's 0 key?
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please correct me
I'm not assuming anything about the average temperature of space. FTA:
CAL, however, can reach temperatures that are just one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero...
Re: "10 billion times colder"?!? Who writes such s (Score:2)
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You're assuming the "average temperature of space" is 1K?
No one said anything about the average temperature of space. The coldest place known in the universe (outside of a lab) is the Boomerang Nebula [wikipedia.org], and it does indeed have a measured temperature of 1 K.
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Obviously the average temperature of the vacuum of space is some value, let's call it T_v.
If the temperature of the atomic fridge - let's call it T_f - is 10 billion times colder than T_v, then:
T_f = T_v - 10,000,000,000 T_v
The summary also states that the atomic fridge "can reach temperatures that are just one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero".
So, assuming they're talking in Kelvin (or a system with the same scale but a different offset), T_f = 1/10,000,000,000 degrees Kelvin.
1/10,000,000,000
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The parent thinks that the article should have said 99.99999999% colder. Maybe "10 billion times as cold" would be acceptable too. Parent makes fun of the consequences of "10 billion times colder".
Cold does not exist per se; it is the absence of heat. What does 10 billion times the absence of something even mean? The sentence should have read that space is 10 billion times as hot as the fridge or that the fridge is one ten-billionths as hot as space. Oh, and remember than when talking temperatures, always convert to kelvin before doing the math (273 C is about twice as hot as 0 C).
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What are you on about? X times smaller means "divided by X" in pretty much every context I've ever encountered. Is it linguistically logical? No. But very little about language is. Is it unambiguous anyway? Yes.
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Well, no I suppose that's not *quite* true. "X times smaller" is the inverse of "X times larger", and there is some slight ambiguity there. 3x larger almost always means 3x as large as the reference size, but the words technically indicate 1+3, or 4x larger than it began. That hardly ever comes up though, unless there's a pedant around trying to stir up trouble. And as the scale increases the relative difference diminishes. It doesn't really make much functional difference if 10,000,000,000x colder is
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What are you on about? X times smaller means "divided by X" in pretty much every context I've ever encountered.
My point is exactly how that is bullshit.
X is Y times as big as Z.
X is Y times as small as Z.
X is Y times Z.
X = YZ
X is Y times bigger than Z.
X = Z + YZ
X is Y times smaller than Z.
X = Z - YZ
X is one Yth as big as Z.
X is one Yth as small as Z.
X is one Yth Z.
X = Z/Y
X is one Yth bigger than Z.
X = Z + Z/Y
X is one Yth smaller than Z.
X = Z - Z/Y
Some things to note:
Terms like "big" and "small" aren't very useful, so you can say things are "as small as" or "as big as" each other and mean the same comparison. These
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Certainly "big" and "small" are useful terms - they're just *qualitative* rather than *quantitative* - they perform much the same role as a negative sign for addition - indicating the (one dimensional) vector direction in which quantities are interpreted.
The caveat of course being that we're talking proportion(multiplication) here rather than addition, so the inverse is division rather than subtraction. And likewise, the degenerate(identity) value is 1 rather than 0.
When you say "as big as" or "as small
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X is Y times bigger than Z.
X = Z + YZ
X is Y times smaller than Z.
X = Z - YZ
No-one uses that notation. "X is Y times bigger than Z" is synonymous, to any normal human, with "X is Y times as big as Z."
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Saying "X times lower", "X times smaller" and "X times colder" is common in English, and everyone knows what it means. "Times" means multiplication. You can multiply by 10 to make X ten times bigger. You can multiply by 1/10 to make X ten times smaller. If you make X ten times bigger, and then make it ten times smaller, you end up right back where you started, which is what you would logically expect. Stop nitpicking.
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The point is, unlike lengths or weights, multiplying temperatures makes no goddam sense.
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Think of all the times you thought you were being smart. You're living a lie.
Re:"10 billion times colder"?!? Who writes such sh (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not? You have an absolute reference point for length - 0m, against which all scaling takes place so that it makes sense, right?
You also have an absolute reference point for temperature - absolute zero, the temperature at which there is no more thermal energy to remove, even in theory, against which temperature scaling makes just as much sense. It['s only in the completely arbitrary Celsius and Fahrenheit scales that it appears nonsensical - but those don't get used in scientific calculations for exactly that reason (outside of chemistry and thermal flow, which are mostly interested in temperature deltas and critical event temperatures, neither of which care where zero is)
You can't even compute heat-engine efficiency using C or F them without getting completely bogus results, because they're completely bogus scales - as though we arbitrarily said the "zero point" on a ruler was actually 213.7meters from the beginning, so that a sheet of paper was approximately -213.7 meters thick - which would similarly make scaling lengths pretty much nonsensical.
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It's literally ambiguous, but consistent in practice.
"10x as high" is completely unambiguous. 10x higher is used to mean the same thing, but *is* technically ambiguous the words literally mean 10x+1 = 11x, but that's almost never how it's used (the exception generally being with percentages for some reason, probably because they're usually used for fractional changes).
"10x lower" is the inverse function. Make something 10xhigher, then 10x lower, and you get back to the original state. intuitively obvious
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Yep, it might confuse engineers and pedants, though everyone else would understand it perfectly. The exact opposite of what good technical writing is supposed to accomplish, right?
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Yep, it might confuse engineers and pedants
It would confuse neither. An engineer would not say it that way, but would know what it means. Pendants also understand, but object anyway, because that what pedants do.
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Take "ten times lower" that a hilltop. Is that 1/10th the altitude of the hilltop, or is that 9 times the hilltop altitude below ground which makes 10 times after adding the hilltop, or does it mean ten times the hilltop altitude below ground?
You could make the exact same objection to "ten times higher". You need to have a common reference point going up or down.
TFH is unambiguous because the reference point is obviously zero Kelvin.
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Exactly. Here it's described with cats:
segmeowtationfault.com/13 [segmeowtationfault.com]
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Yep. And the coldness of space is something like a couple degrees Kelvin, which measures from absolute zero, the theoretically coldest temperature achievable, at which all heat has been removed from the system. And the only thermal reference point from which you can meaningfully determine thermal ratios, such as needed for thermodynamic efficiency calculations, or saying Thing A is X times hotter or colder than Thing B.
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His issue is not with "X times as low as" but with "X times lower than." He thinks these are different. I don't think anyone else would assume they were.
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Seems the whole world is getting more and more tolerant of sloppy expression.
"One million times colder" is absolute semantic drivel. If it's logically valid, then what on earth does "one time(s) colder" mean?
It's on the same level as "this beer tastes five times lousier". Anyone who uses it ought to be totally ashamed at their lack of expression skills and take up speaking Inuktitut or something.
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Same as for "hotness" or any other colloquial term for equilibrium latent heat energy, a.k.a "temperature" - Kelvin (Celsius is arbitrary bullshit unsuitable for measuring anything other than temperature deltas, in which case the delta is the same as if measured in K)
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It doesn't matter what the units are as long as there is an absolute zero on the scale. Luckily, in this case, there is. It's even called "absolute zero"! What are the chances?
Can of beer? (Score:2)
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I don't know - cryogenics is in large the art of cooling things off fast enough that ice crystals don't form and expand (as that ruptures cell walls). And this thing is so cold it makes typical cryogenic temperatures look positively balmy in comparison.
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They'll toss you out the airlock for making a mess in the lab.
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As if gas wasn't making it stinky enough, now they wanna add beer-and-salami burps?
Re:Can of beer? (Score:5, Funny)
What would happen to a can of beer if I put it inside that "fridge"?
You could turn a Beck's Beer into a BEC beer.
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Coldest? Are you sure? (Score:5, Insightful)
this atomic fridge will be the coldest known place in the universe
They are clearly all single. Otherwise they would know the coldest place known to man is a woman who's mad at you.
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reading this thread, i was disappointed that no one made the comment "coldest place in the universe, other than my ex-wife's heart" or something similar. but yours was close enough.
Disappointed in you slashdot, up yer game.
"Known Place in the Universe" (Score:2)
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Cold spots are dark - any heat would cause some detectable radiation.
So a large cold spot would be detectable from the absence of anything detectable. Kinda like the Bootes void: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], but even more void-ish.
So we can be reasonably sure a large cold spot doesn't exist. Obviously small cold spots could exist, but you'd expect things to mix well enough that it would be more than 0.000000001 K.
Question (Score:2)
Assuming it were possible to drop the temperature to absolute zero, would an atom in this state be able to be observed, including its constituent parts? Could it be moved in one piece like a piece of matter?
Or would the fact it is at absolute zero cause it to fall to pieces (no pun intended)? How would quantum mechanics come into play in this scenario?
Famous last wo~ (Score:1)
What if this triggers some run-away process or black hole that destroys our planet?
Slim chance, I agree, but not zero.
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How is the chance of that happening any greater than your Slashdot post accidentally leading to a black hole?
After all, it would be a slim chance, but not zero.
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But that's already tested: I've made hundreds of bad/trolly posts before, without ending Earth.
Not been tested at all (Score:2)
But that's already tested: I've made hundreds of bad/trolly posts before, without ending Earth.
Each post is an independant test of the theory your posts may produce a black hole. Since the chance is as small as the orbital experiment producing a black hole, the fact you have posted hundreds of times provides no evidence.
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No. If tests X, Y, and Z are similar to each other, but not to test A; then the probability of X triggering the same effect that Z does is greater than it triggering the same effect that A does.
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No. They are not similar, each post has different text, going through a different conjunction of network traffic which would be the source of the black hole forming (or possibly the disk storage array reaching critical mass from a charged particle slightly altered in course from the traffic from the post), each post is obviously an independent trial with no effect on the probability of any others.
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They are far far more similar than space-freeze. Your logic is bad, admit it. ...uh, why the fuck am I arguing about this?
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Well, a basic knowledge of physics would tell you that 1) black holes only form with ridiculous amounts of mass, which is a different unit than temperature, and 2) the normal effect of removing temperature from a thing and then stopping the experiment is that the temperature just comes back to average.
cosmic background radiation temperature is 2.7 K (Score:3)
Anyway, one ten billionth of a degree over absolute zero is not 10 billions times colder than the average temperature of the vacuum of space. We really need journalists to have at least passed grade 9 science before writing about science.
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Go back to 9th grade. [wikipedia.org]
Has to be done: (Score:2)
Coldest?! Cool!! (Score:2)
How many beers can this atomic fridge store?
Meaningless Drivel... (Score:2)
"will become 10 billion times colder than the average temperature of the vacuum of space"
That is a meaningless statement. Temperature doesn't work that way mathematically.
If a scientist or engineer says something like that then shame on them.
If a journalist says something like that then "oh, hum" because they make stupid statements on a pretty frequent basis... *sigh*
Is A Precise Description Too Much To Ask? (Score:2)
10 billion times colder...
is an utterly ridiculous, nonsensical phrase. Room temperature is measured ultimately in Kelvin, and is so many degrees above theoretical absolute zero.
Even "the vacuum of space", which is not a complete vacuum, is also not at absolute zero, and is a positive temperature. It isn't "cold".
"Cold" is a human-centric term. Something that is far below the freezing of water, for example, most people consider to be pretty damned cold.
But "cold" can only be measured as compared to normal human ambient or b
this is hard (Score:2)
Building and maintaining a system like this is very hard! Astronauts are often good scientists, but these laser cryogenic system require some deep specialization to keep running day to day. The impressive part of this to me is that in a few decades we went from 4-5 people in the world being able to build such systems and get them to work (once a month, maybe) to being able to strap a system to a rocket and have someone from a completely different field operate it in an environment where spare parts are at