Mondo Knows Facts
The Boomerang Nebula is the coldest natural place
Its gas measures about one kelvin, colder than the cosmic background Radio observations of carbon monoxide in the Boomerang Nebula, about 5,000 light years away in Centaurus, show gas at roughly 1 kelvin, or minus 272 degrees Celsius. That is colder than the 2.7 kelvin glow left by the Big Bang. The chill comes from a fast wind of gas expanding outward and cooling as it goes, a process astronomers call adiabatic expansion. It sits in Mondo's records & extremes collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Tags: nebulae, cold, astronomy
The Boomerang Nebula is the coldest natural place: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Its gas measures about one kelvin, colder than the cosmic background. The figure is taken from NASA, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a records & extremes fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Records & Extremes shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.