Overview
- The experiment, reported Monday, November 9, 2026, produced a rubidium-87 Bose–Einstein condensate aboard China’s Tiangong space station whose measured expansion corresponds to an equivalent temperature of 9.7 picokelvins.
- Scientists trapped roughly 20,000 atoms in the Cold Atom Physics Rack and used laser cooling, evaporative cooling, a magnetic-field gradient to let energetic atoms escape, transfer to a wider optical trap, and then release the cloud to track its expansion.
- The team detected the atoms for seven seconds after release, and they inferred the record-equivalent temperature from how slowly the cloud spread, with a reported measurement range of about 7.0 to 12.9 picokelvins.
- The value is an 'equivalent temperature' based on expansion energy rather than a direct thermometer reading, so the result is presented as an inferred estimate rather than an absolute thermometer measurement.
- This space-capable, all-optical platform extends free-evolution time for atom interferometry and quantum simulation and could improve tests of fundamental physics such as the equivalence principle while building on prior low-temperature work including the 2021 Bremen drop-tower result.