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Weekend


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December 6, 2002

Strange But True!

  • A weekly column of incidental information, off-the-wall observations and other random facts about the world.
    • By BILL SONES and RICH SONES, Ph.D.
    Special to the Journal

    Q. How cold is outer space? Can anything be colder?

    A. There's something much colder--brrrr!--than outer space's 2.7 Kelvin (-270 degrees Celsius), which is the average temperature far from any stars, says Duke University physicist Henry Greenside. Scientists have attained about 0.00000000001 Kelvin (100 billionth of a degree) for a cloud of atoms trapped inside laser beams. By comparison, outer space is a heat wave.


     
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