| Boomerang Nebula seen at submillimeter wavelengths with the ALMA telescope in Chile. With these observations, astronomers also have a better understanding of the shape of the Boomerang Nebula, which previously was thought to be reminiscent of a bow-tie. The image below is the result of those new observations. ThatвЂ™s even colder than the faint afterglow of the Big Bang, which is the natural background temperature of space: colder than space itself.ДЄstronomers announced today (October 24, 2013) that they have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile to take a new look at this object. TheyвЂ™ve learned that its temperature is one degree Kelvin (minus 458 degrees Fahrenheit). Astronomers say the Boomerang Nebula is the coldest known object in the universe. It once was a star much like our sun, but now itвЂ™s near the end of its life, and it has sloughed off its outer layers. This object is located some 5,000 light-years away. We're also on Facebook & Google+.Meet the Boomerang Nebula вЂ“ a young example of what astronomers call a planetary nebula, although it has nothing to do with planets. 1, 2018, to include the latest results from the Cold Atom Laboratory.ДЇollow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter llmysteries. JPL has the Cold Atom Laboratory, which launched to the International Space Station in 2018 and has already produced the coldest known object in space, and could soon produce the coldest known object in the universe.Д®ditor's note: This story was updated at 11:02 a.m., Aug. Many teams of scientists have continued to work on making gases even colder. That's a lot colder than the Boomerang Nebula, but only because the scientists used lasers to cool individual atoms of sodium and potassium.Д¬ambridge won't be the coolest forever, though. In 2015, a team of physicists there chilled atoms to the coldest temperature ever: 500 nanokelvins, or 0.0000005 kelvins (minus 459.67 F or minus 273.15 C). Students at MIT will be happy to know that their school is - so far - the coolest. (The smaller sphere is the sodium atom and the larger sphere is the potassium atom.) (Image credit: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT) MIT researchers chilled a gas of sodium potassium 500 nanokelvin. Raghvendra Sahai, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, thinks the Boomerang Nebula is even colder than other expanding nebulas because it's throwing off its mass about 100 times faster than those dying stars, or about 100 billion times faster than the sun ejects mass. Because the gases in the Boomerang Nebula were thrown off by the central star at such a great speed, a lot of heat energy got zapped away in the blink of an eye. Some of the energy to make the gas expand gets taken from the heat energy in the aerosol can. You can observe the same phenomenon when you use an air can to clean a computer: The can of air gets colder when you spray, because the pressure on the gas inside is decreasing rapidly.

The faster the molecules, the hotter the gas.) (Temperature is basically a measurement of how quickly molecules are moving. This happens because expansion causes pressure to drop, and a decrease in pressure slows gas molecules down. And this is why the nebula is so cold - even colder than the cosmic background radiation left over from the Big Bang (which is about minus 454.7 degrees F, or 2.76 kelvins). That gas expands very rapidly, moving outward at speeds upward of about 363,600 mph (585,000 km/h). (The name is a misnomer, dating from the first sightings in the 18th century, but it stuck.) The light from the white dwarf star illuminates the gas, and the result for Earthlings is a gorgeous planetary nebula.

As the collapse happens, the outer layers of the star get left behind, because the red giant is so large that its grip on its outer layers is tenuous. At that point, the star turns into a white dwarf, which is basically the burned-out, superdense core of the star. More massive red giants will then start fusing the helium into heavier elements, but that process has limits too, and that's when the central layers of the star collapse. Eventually, the giant burns through its hydrogen completely.

Boomerang nebula