Science & Technology

Scientists have created the coldest temperature ever recorded

By T.K. Randall
November 12, 2026

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) Scientists have often suggested that if we could track down the coldest place in the universe, we would likely have found the location of an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization.

This is because such temperatures do not occur naturally, meaning that some sort of advanced technology must have been used to make it happen.

But it is not only alien civilizations that are capable of doing this - just recently an experiment in Earth's orbit managed to achieve what has been billed as the coldest temperature ever measured.To accomplish this, scientists aboard China's Tiangong space station took advantage of the microgravity environment to chill a cloud of atoms to just 9.7 picokelvin.

To put this temperature into perspective, it is a mere 9.7 trillionths of a degree above absolute zero, or to put it another way, it is 280 billion times colder than the average temperature of the universe.

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

Source: Mail Online

Tags: Cold