Chinese scientists cool atoms to coldest temperatures ever observed in record-breaking space station experiment

Scientists have cooled atoms to the coldest temperature ever recorded, using a laser trap aboard China’s Tiangong space station.

Tiangong included an experiment in which atoms were cooled to 10 picokelvins, which is barely above absolute zero, the coldest theoretical temperature possible in physics. Absolute zero is minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius) and the threshold at which all particles in an object are believed to stop moving.

Scientists hit the mark using “optical tweezers,” known more formally as an optical-dipole trap (ODT), which hold atoms in a laser beam,” the scientists reported Nov. 5 in the journal Science.

The team placed 20,000 rubidium atoms in the trap in order to restrict their motion. This reduced motion, along with the weightlessness induced by the low-gravity environment aboard the space station, caused the cloud of atoms to cool to much lower temperatures than are possible on Earth.

The experiment’s results could help improve future space-based research, the team said.

“This record-low temperature could stimulate a new generation of ODT-based experiments in quantum simulation and precision measurements in space,” the researchers wrote in the paper.

How low can you go?

Despite this achievement, it’s doubtful that scientists could ever hit absolute zero. One interpretation of the third law of thermodynamics, which looks at how systems behave when they approach absolute zero, is that the particles would always have a bit of entropy (disorder) associated with them, making absolute zero unachievable.

“One version of the third law states that it would require an infinite number of steps to reach absolute zero, which means you will never get there,” Saibal Mitra, a professor of physics at Missouri State University, told Live Science in a 2024 interview.

The second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy always increases, would also be violated if scientists could reach absolute zero, he added. “If you had a heat sink at absolute zero, then you could build a machine that was 100% efficient,” Mitra said.

That said, space makes it easier to get close to absolute zero because microgravity allows atoms to “float” and become more efficient at cooling, Science News reported. The researchers took their weightless collection of atoms and created a quantum state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, in which very cold atoms clump and create a “fifth state” of matter as they behave akin to a single atom.

Tiangong’s very cold clump follows similar experiments on the International Space Station that reached 52 picokelvins and from a weightless fall induced by a drop from a tall tower, in which atoms hit 38 picokelvins, Science News added.