An international group of scientists managed to reach, inside a laboratory on Earth, the lowest temperature ever recorded in the Universe: – 273ºC. It’s not just a great lab feat. The experiment paves the way for the development of new materials with unimaginable properties.
The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth was naturally -89.2ºC, in Antarctica. In some places on the Moon, it can drop below -200ºC. In the scientific experiment, researchers at Rice University in the United States and Kyoto University in Japan used laser beams to cool atoms until they reached a temperature of just one billionth of a degree above -273.15°C, absolute zero at Kelvin scale. At this temperature, the movement of atoms completely ceases.
One of the main authors of the work is the specialist in atomic physics Eduardo Ibarra García-Padilla, who recently completed his doctorate at Rice University and is now doing his postdoctoral work at the University of California. As the Mexican scientist explained, some states of matter are only reached at very low temperatures.
“Achieving these temperatures (and these states) will allow us to better understand physical phenomena such as superconductivity in copper oxides, which may have important technological applications”, justified the scientist.
At temperatures close to absolute zero, helium, for example, turns into a ‘superfluid’, characterized by the total absence of viscosity. This makes it able to pass through walls – even non-porous ones – and even “escape” from containers in which it is stored.
The best-known examples of strange behavior at low temperatures are superconductivity and superfluidity. Superconductivity occurs when a substance is able to transmit electricity without putting up any resistance. Superfluidity is the total loss of viscosity of a substance. Under these temperatures, virtually everything freezes except a few helium isotopes, which acquire superfluidity.
“As we reach lower temperatures, new exotic states of matter should appear,” said Garcia-Padilla. “And these can have completely different magnetic or transport properties than other materials.”
Source: CNN Brasil
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