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[Music]

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[Cold Atom Lab]

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[The Coolest Experiment
in the Universe]

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[Dr. Eric Cornell] We are
dominated by the very small.

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We don't even
think about it.

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We take our phone
out of our pocket,

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we don't think of our
phone as being that small

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but there are
billions of things-

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of transistors
inside your phone.

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We're used to high-tech
always moving

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smaller, smaller, smaller.

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But we're running up
against some limits

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and those limits are that as
things get smaller and smaller,

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the physics that
controls how things act;

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the underlying science-

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instead of being the
old school physics,

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which is called
“classical physics”,

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which you can think
of as pool balls

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rattling around
on a table

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and clacking
into each other.

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As you get very, very small,

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instead of acting like
these little balls,

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they act more and
more like waves.

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And the underlying physics is
not called “classical physics”,

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it's now called
“quantum physics”.

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Where things start
getting complicated

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and harder to understand

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is when you have
collections of atoms

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or collections of electrons,

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bouncing off each other, passing
through each other

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on their way through our
tiny little transistors,

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to turn on and off the ones and
zeros in our tiny computers.

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These problems are
hugely more complex.

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And so often times we have to do
experiments to understand them.

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That's where the ultra-cold
temperatures come in.

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[Dr. Nicholas Bigelow] If
you cool atoms down

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to some of the coldest
temperatures you can imagine,

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colder than any other place
in the natural universe,

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the atoms are moving
very, very slowly.

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And if you're going to
make some measurements

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about their properties, if
they're moving slowly,

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you can make that
measurement

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a lot more precisely.

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[Dr. Ethan Elliot]
If all the atoms

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in this room right now

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are moving around at
770 miles per hour,

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the speeds that
the atoms are moving,

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once they're cooled,
is slower than

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1/1000th of a
mile per hour.

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A cold atom is a
controllable atom.

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You let them out of the trap
and they just float.

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[Dr. Jason Williams] We are
cooling the atoms down to

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a fraction of a
billionth of a degree

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above absolute zero.

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And at temperatures
so low,

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we can easily see these
atoms for tens of seconds

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and study and see
their dynamics

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and how they interact
with each other.

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[Dr. Ron Walsworth] To do that
we have to be in space.

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We have to take
quantum matter

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and quantum technologies
into space.

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And we have to
work hard to learn

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how to use quantum
technologies in space.

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And the Cold Atom
Laboratory is the first

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dedicated laboratory
that'll allow us

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to do this
sort of work.

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[Dr. Brian Demarco] These
types of experiments

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are the most challenging
table-top experiments

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that take
place on Earth.

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So to take this up to
the space station

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is a whole new level where
we'll have to operate remotely

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and have a robust
working instrument.

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The Cold Atom Lab
will also allow us

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to free those type
of experiments

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from the constraints of gravity

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that plague researchers
on the ground.

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Gravity always drags atoms

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to the bottom of the
traps that we use

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and the Cold Atom Lab, we
don't have that problem.

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[Dr. Wolfgang Ketterle]
When we discovered

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Bose-Einstein
Condensation in 1995,

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the experiment was
complicated and difficult.

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I would have never imagined
that it is possible to

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do such experiments now
on the space station.

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With Bose-Einstein Condensates,

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we'll reach nanokelvin
temperatures,

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so all the atoms have an
extremely low energy.

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So therefore, going to
micro-gravity eliminates

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a number of limitations
for the experiments.

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[Cornell] Ultra-cold acts
like a magnifying glass.

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It expands the effects of
quantum mechanics.

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That's really
the power of these

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very low temperatures of the
Cold Atom Laboratory

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as we can learn
about these things,

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as we get colder
and colder yet.

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[LOGO: NASA Jet
Propulsion Laboratory