Biggest Chill: MIT Team Achieves Coldest Temperature Ever
MIT scientists have cooled a sodium gas to the lowest temperature ever recorded -- only half-a-billionth of a degree above absolute zero. The work, to be reported in the September 12, 2003 issue of Science, bests the previous record by a factor of six, and is the first time that a gas was cooled below 1 nanokelvin (one-billionth of a degree).
"To go below one nanokelvin is a little like running a mile under four minutes for the first time," said Nobel laureate Wolfgang Ketterle, co-leader of the team. Ketterle is MIT's John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics.