In 2018, a laboratory was launched to the International Space Station to study ultra-cold quantum gases in the microgravity environment. The facility is called the Cold Atom Lab. It was designed to study atoms at temperatures close to absolute zero while they are inside the International Space Station. The laboratory gives researchers access to conditions that cannot be maintained in the same way inside laboratories on Earth. It uses lasers to cool atoms and allows scientists to examine quantum behaviour. The experiments can also produce a state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein Condensate, or BEC.
