Later this year, researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will attempt to create the coldest known point in the universe in a small box aboard the International Space Station.
Using lasers, they’ll cool atoms to a billionth of a degree above absolute zero — roughly minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit— or the temperature at which the particles stop moving.
This science could help expand our understanding of gravity, lead to the development of incredibly precise sensors for future space missions and unravel the mysteries behind theoretical physicists’ predictions.
“It’s only by making these measurements that we can understand the fundamental physics behind gravity, or how complexity arises in the universe,” said Anita Sengupta, project manager for the Cold Atom Laboratory.
Comparing degrees of cold
The ultra cold temperatures reached inside the science instrument are hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit colder than east Antarctica, which reached minus 136 degrees Fahrenheit in 2010. Space in Earth’s orbit, by comparison, is around minus 250 degrees, according to NASA.
Even Pluto is almost one hundred degrees warmer than the Cold Atom Laboratory’s target.
By plucking warm particles out of gases with lasers and radio waves, the Cold Atom Laboratory phases the gas into a fifth state of matter — the common states are solids, liquids, gases and plasmas — called a “Bose-Einstein condensate,” where atoms synchronize and move collectively as a sort of conga line or a wave.
The scientists at JPL in La Cañada Flintridge believe this state could even be manipulated into an “atom laser,” though such an idea is so theoretical they’re not entirely sure what uses an atom laser might have.
Eric Cornell, who shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in physics for first creating the condensates predicted by Satyendra Bose and Albert Einstein in 1924, is leading one of the Cold Atom Laboratory’s experiments, according to JPL. Two other Nobel laureates are also involved in the mission.
Why the science matters
Sengupta describes the Cold Atom Laboratory as a “pathfinder” mission, one where the most important discoveries could come from the unknown. No one has ever observed atoms at the temperatures the lab will reach. And thanks to microgravity, they’ll be able to study the atoms for longer than ever before.
On Earth, gravity forces the atoms to drop within milliseconds. In space, the Cold Atom Laboratory extends the observations to as much as five full seconds and will capture those moments using cameras within the instrument.
The experiments could lead to extremely sensitive detectors for studying gravity, inertia and time, all of which play into space-based navigation.
Sengupta said the holy grail would be breakthroughs in superfluidity or superconductors, the theories of moving liquid or an electrical current without losing energy to resistance. But she stresses the Cold Atom Laboratory is more likely the precursor, if it can accomplish its tasks, for many other more focused and precise experiments.
“If you understand the physics of how these things behave, you can harness that power for technology,” she said.
Getting to space
The Cold Atom Laboratory is expected to travel to the space station aboard a SpaceX rocket in August, almost five years after the team began working on the mission. The instrument is controlled remotely from JPL, but the space station’s crew will have to install it and keep it running.
Crew time is extremely valuable so not requiring an astronaut to carry out the experiments made it easier to secure a spot, according to Sengupta. The engineering team had to shrink a room-sized instrument into a box roughly the size of a mini-refrigerator and make it modular so astronauts could upgrade or fix it without needing lengthy training.
The Cold Atom Laboratory’s experiments will last three years.
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