Exploring Advanced Cooling Technologies

They look like there are two of them. These are from our lab in Burnaby in British Columbia

From the outside. They look like giant black monoliths

big metal boxes about 10 feet on a side 12 feet tall and

They are powered the they have a fridge inside them a refrigerator that cools these chips to almost absolute zero

Just a wisp a fraction of a degree above absolute zero

hundreds of times colder than interstellar space

Amongst the coldest and most isolated and extreme conditions that humans have ever been able to engineer

These fridges interestingly enough, which are called pulse tube dilution refrigerators have a thing called a pulse tube which emits a sound

Roughly once per second, which sounds eerily like a heartbeat

So if you're staying you have the opportunity to stand next to one of these machines

It is an awe-inspiring thing at least for me. It feels like an altar to an alien God if they really are

impressive machines

At the heart of this big box is a tiny chip