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Absolute Zero: Temperatures
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At very low temperatures in the vicinity of absolute zero, matter exhibits many unusual properties including superconductivity, superfluidity, and Bose-Einstein condensation. In order to study such phenomena, scientists have worked to obtain ever lower temperatures. As of 2001 the lowest temperature ever acheived was 20 nK (20 billionths of a degree above absolute zero). This record-setting low temperature was achieved in 1995 by scientists working for NIST in Boulder, Colorado. The work is described in the July 14, 1995 edition of the journal Science.
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Negative temperatures notwithstanding, the third law of thermodynamics states that the absolute zero of temperature cannot be attained by any finite number of steps. The lowest (and hottest) temperatures that have been achieved are on the order of a picokelvin (10−12 K). These are spin temperatures of nuclei which are out of equilibrium with the lattice vibrations and electrons of a solid. The lowest temperatures to which the electrons have been cooled are on the order of 10 microkelvins in metallic systems. See ... Low-temperature physics.
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Rutgers University physicists have performed computer simulations that show how electrons become one thousand times more massive in certain metal compounds when cooled to temperatures near absolute zero. The models may provide new clues as to how superconductivity works and how new superconducting materials could be fabricated. Full story
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At very low temperatures in the vicinity of absolute zero, matter exhibits many unusual properties including superconductivity, superfluidity, and Bose-Einstein condensation. In order to study such phenomena, scientists have worked to obtain ever lower temperatures. As of 2003, the lowest temperature ever achieved was 450 pK, or 4.5 ×10-10 K. This was performed by Wolfgang Ketterle and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (A Leanhardt et al. 2003 Science 301 1513). [1]
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Values of this order for the absolute zero were not... universally accepted about this period. Pierre-Simon Laplace and Antoine Lavoisier, in their 1780 treatise on heat, arrived at values ranging from 1,500 to 3,000 below the freezing-point of water, and thought that in any case it must be at least 600 below. John Dalton in his Chemical Philosophy gave ten calculations of this value, and finally adopted −3,000 °C as the natural zero of temperature.
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It is generally believed to be impossible to obtain a temperature of absolute zero. Environments of absolute zero don't occur naturally in the present-day universe. The coldest natural location yet discovered is in the Boomerang nebula, 5000 light years away. It has a temperature of just 1 degree K, and is the only known area that is actually colder than the residual background radiation from the Big Bang.
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