- Who
- National Institute of Standards and Technology
- What
- -273.14964 degree(s) Celsius
- Where
- United States (Boulder)
- When
Using laser beams configured in a unique manner, a team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, USA, cooled a miniscule aluminium drum to a staggering 360 microkelvin (-273.14964°C, which is near Absolute Zero or -273.15°C), or 10,000 times colder than the vacuum of space! This is colder than anywhere in the universe, so even taking a standard drum kit and playing it in the vacuum of space (not that you would hear anything!) would mean that this drum was way cooler. The only problem is that the drum is only 20 micrometres wide and 100 nanometres thick.
The effect of cooling the drum is to stop even the atoms of the drum vibrating as they would normally, so this is also the quietest drum ever made.
The results were announced in January 2017.
