By Jonathan O’Callaghan
NASA/JSC
AN EXOTIC fifth type of matter has been created in one of the coldest places in the universe – a device on board the International Space Station (ISS).
The Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) was launched to the ISS in 2018 to investigate a strange kind of matter, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). This suitcase-sized device chills atoms of rubidium and potassium in a vacuum chamber, using laser light to slow their movement. Magnetic fields then contain the resulting cloud of atoms, which is cooled to nearly …
