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What happens when a team of world-leading ultra-low temperature physicists get together? They freeze Lego. At least, that's what happened at Lancaster University. And we're not talking about your regular old refrigerator that's been around since the previous two tenants in your apartment - we're talking about their world record-breaking dilution refrigerator.
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The ultra powerful freezing machine was made at the university, and it's the coolest refrigerator in the world, reaching 1.6 millidegrees above absolute zero (minus 273.15 Centigrade). That's 2,000 times colder than deep space.
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Another handy way to put it is, if one Lego brick represents the base temperature of the super fridge, or a milliKelvin, then the temperature of outer space would be represented by a 98 foot tall stack of Lego bricks (that's as tall as the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil). Room temperature would be a stack of Lego bricks around 9850 feet tall (1.8 miles). In other words, the fridge is colder than anything that exists in our universe. And that's pretty cool.
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But why exactly did a group of physicists put some Lego into the coldest fridge in the universe? It turns out that "the clamping arrangement between the LEGO blocks causes the LEGO structures to behave as an extremely good thermal insulator at cryogenic temperatures." So yes, scientists now want to build future machines out of Lego. Not exactly the Lego we all know and love, but something structurally similar.
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One contraption Lego-like structures might be useful for is a dilution refrigerator, which is a cryogenic device that provides continuous cooling down to low temperatures. Dilution refrigerators are crucial for physics and engineering, as well as quantum computers. The use of ABS plastic structures (which is what Lego is made out of), instead of the solid materials currently being used by the industry, could mean that any thermal insulator could be produced at much lower costs.
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Although it's early days, the work of one little Lego person (and a group of physicists) could bring about a whole lot of change.
Some Physicists Froze Lego In The Universe's Coldest Fridge
A group of physicists from Lancaster University froze some Lego pieces to below the coldest temperature in the universe. Because, science. They actually found out some pretty cool things. Watch the full video on YouTube. Interested in other cool things? Have a look at this article about how travel changed throughout the 2010's.
This article originally appeared on Phys.org.
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