Where is the coldest place in the Universe?

--------- #1326 - The Boomerang Nebula

- Attachment: Nebula image

- Just when you get used to seeing what a supernova nebula looks like the Cosmos throws a boomerang at you. This one is really different. The Boomerang Nebula is located in the Constellation Centaurus the Centaur. It is just 5,000 lightyears away and considered the coldest place in the Cosmos. It is a young planetary nebula which are thermonuclear explosions, how can it possible be the coldest place in the Universe?

- A planetary nebula is a Sun-sized star that runs out of hydrogen-helium nuclear fuel and begins expanding before it expires and collapses into a White Dwarf star. White Dwarf stars are hot cinders and the expanding gas emitting from the star is extremely hot. The Cosmos surrounding stars in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation that is at 2.725 degrees Kelvin. Within less than 3 degrees of Absolute Zero. How can something be any colder than that?

- At one time science thought that empty space was the coldest place possible, at Absolute Zero, zero degrees Kelvin, where all atoms cease vibrating and are frozen still. The atoms at Absolute Zero have stopped all motion except that existing in random quantum fluctuations that always exist regardless. Absolute Zero degrees Kelvin is

-273.15 degrees Centigrade where all atoms stop motion.

- But, since 1960 science has learned that empty space is not empty. Rather the Cosmos is bathed is a Cosmic Microwave Background radiation that is 2.725 degrees above Absolute Zero. Not exactly warm out there but not zero either.

- The Boomerang Nebula is colder than that. It is 2.00 degrees Kelvin. The colder temperature is created in the bubble of expanding gas that is being expelled by the star at a furious pace. The expanding gas is like discharging gas in a can of whipped cream. The can gets colder as the gas escapes and expands. The same thing is happening around the star that is discharging a gas bubble into the space around it.

- The Boomerang Nebula does not stop being unusual with its temperature. Its shape is also mysterious. It is the shape of a Bow Tie, but, the first astronomers to discover it thought it looked more like a boomerang. Their name stuck. We see it in 2 dimensions, but the image in 3 dimensions is probably 2 cones connected at their vertices. The Boomerang Nebula is streaming out 10 times the amount of material normally expected from planetary nebula we have studied. This solar wind is blowing at 300,000 miles per hour.

- Such extremes in expanding gas and solar winds can not last for long. Soon the star will grow much hotter. The gas bubbles will become spherical, more representative of the other planetary we have seen. Planetary Nebula normally exist in the planetary phase for about 10,000 years.

- In the meantime it is one beautiful nebula. An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.

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707-536-3272, Wednesday, November 16, 2011