Superfluid Droplets And Cold Noses

It's a funny thing, cold. It doesn't really exist, of course, except as a negative condition: a lack of heat.

Or, as my good friend Jay would surely correct me: A lackness of heat.

It's pretty cold here today, for Michigan. About 5 below zero and minus 20 wind-chill. Cold enough that all the schools are closed because our beloved salt no longer works and little hands and noses waiting for the bus are delicate.

Or, if you are into lawyer jokes: it was so cold that I saw a lawyer with his hands in his own pockets!

It's nowhere near as cold as it can get on our blue marble. My friend Ingrid lives in Minnesota and they have legendary coldness there that chills me just to hear about it.

The distinction of coldest place on Earth though goes to Antarctica. The chilliest temperature ever recorded there was -89.2 °C (-128.6 °F), which is cold enough to shatter steel.

There is a coldest temperature, did you know that? It's called "Absolute Zero", and corresponds to a complete lack of molecular motion, a "zero entropy configuration" where matter can form "perfect crystals". This coldest temperature sits way down there in the deepest trench of cold, at -273.15 Kelvins, or -459.67° F. It's a cold that is hard to imagine. Colder even than deep space, which is a relatively balmy 3 Kelvins "hotter". Weird things happen at temperatures close to absolute zero, including quantum effects such as "superconductivity" and "superfluidity" (the picture is a superfluid droplet of Helium-4 at 1.34 degrees above absolute zero...one cold-ass droplet).

It's a place I never want to visit, except maybe in my imagination. And even then I would wear a coat.