What’s Cooler Than Cool?

Driving through Montana on a recent visit to my family, my car’s thermometer hit a number I haven’t seen in years: 24 degrees… below zero.

As a Montana native, I’m no stranger to severe dips below freezing. But there are places where it gets even colder than my home state.

In the U.S., the coldest temperature recorded was minus 79.8 degrees Fahrenheit in the Endicott Mountains of northern Alaska. Worldwide, the coldest temperature recorded was in Vostok, Antarctica – minus 129 degrees Fahrenheit.

But that’s nothing compared to what physicist Wolfgang Ketterle has cooked up. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Ketterle and his team “created” the lowest temperature ever recorded: 810 trillionths of a degree Fahrenheit above absolute zero. (Absolute zero is minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit.)

(Source: LiveScience, InfoPlease, and SmithsonianMag.com)

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