FROZEN UNIVERSE
In the Northern Hemisphere, we’re currently feeling temperatures drop. But while it certainly feels pretty cold, we’d hazard a guess that the temperature hasn’t dropped as low as the-93.2 degrees Celsius (-199.8 degrees Fahrenheit) recorded across Dome Fuji, Antarctica, in 2010. A visit there would require the thickest of coats and a vacuum flask topped up with a steaming-hot beverage. Yet imagine venturing somewhere even colder than that – a journey to the coldest place in the universe, in fact. You’ll need to crack the secret of a very long life and some clever scientist will have to work out how to travel at the speed of light, but a cold welcome awaits nonetheless.
Should you be up for the challenge, your destination will be the Boomerang Nebula, a reflecting cloud of dust and ionised gases and the coldest known place in the universe. This preplanetary nebula with a dying star at its centre is located some 5,000 light years from Earth in Centaurus, and it’s so utterly freezing that if you ever did make it there, you’d be unlikely to ever come back, regardless of its name. To give you an idea of how cold
