• Question: What is the coldest part of the universe?

    Asked by Holly Reece to Hannah, Lucy, Phil, Stephen on 14 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Lucy Kissick

      Lucy Kissick answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      The vacuum of space itself is the coldest thing in the Universe at around -270°C: only a degree or two over as cold as cold can physically be.

    • Photo: Phil Sutton

      Phil Sutton answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      The coldest temperature that isn’t natural is actually on Earth in the entire universe, that we are aware of. Experimental physicists have managed to get down to temperatures only a fraction above absolute zero 273.14K. This temperature is not predicted to be able to exist in naturally in the universe.

    • Photo: Hannah Sargeant

      Hannah Sargeant answered on 15 Mar 2017:

      5,000 light years away in the Centaurus constellation, is the Boomerang Nebula, a cloud of gas being expelled from a dying star. Here, within the gas streaming outwards, astronomers have found that the temperature drops as low as half a degree above absolute zero (about -273.5°C). It is, as far as anyone knows, the coldest place in the universe, apart from the experiments run in our labs here on Earth.

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