A forthcoming neutrino detector will require temperatures
approaching absolute zero.
In an underground laboratory in Italy, an international team
of scientists has created the coldest cubic meter in the universe. The cooled
chamber—roughly the size of a vending machine—was chilled to 6 milliKelvin or
-273.144 degrees Celsius in preparation for a forthcoming experiment that will
study neutrinos, ghostlike particles that could hold the key to the existence
of matter around us.