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One of the coldest places in the universe is inside a quantum fridge at Colorado School of Mines

One of the coldest places in the universe is inside a quantum fridge at Colorado School of Mines
One of the coldest places in the universe is inside a quantum fridge at Colorado School of Mines 02:31

It's certainly been a cold week in Colorado, and the state was home to one of the coldest places in the universe. But people didn't feel it. Rather, it's in a quantum dilution refrigerator at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden.

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The quantum refrigerator at Colorado School of Mines in Golden.  CBS

Dropping below 400 degrees Fahrenheit, the fridge created by Maybell Quantum CEO Corban Tillemann-Dick, aims to advance quantum engineering.

"It kind of looks like a weird fridge, and, candidly, it is a weird fridge. It's a really special, weird fridge that gets, again, unimaginably cold inside," Tillemann-Dick said. "What we've done is we've taken that room size tangle of tubes and wires, and we've turned it into a couple 19-inch racks, a system you can roll through a door, plug in, turn on, and, suddenly, you have the coldest place in the known universe, just a few feet away from you."

The colder the fridge or closer the space can get to absolute zero the better for some quantum computing experiments. The high-tech work also makes the project that much cooler for School of Mines students such as Ian McGrath to learn from and help with.

"It feels like I'm working on a new revolution, honestly," McGrath said. "It feels like I'm right on the cutting edge of what the human race can do."

Quantum research -- including this million-dollar fridge -- can develop advancements in everything from AI, to weather forecasting, to healthcare.

"We can solve so many problems that we just we don't even know the questions yet. Quantum computing, it takes a whole new paradigm of computing," McGrath said.

As they're built, the fridges are sold to scientists across the world, with this first fridge heading to Canada. Still, it all starts at Colorado School of Mines.

"The skillset you learn at Mines, the ability to approach a tough engineering challenge and to bring in a diverse set of tools to solve it, they're essential to what we're building every single day," Tillemann-Dick said.

In McGrath's case, the challenge to develop this technology might just change his future. 

"It started with an expo, and I talked to them, and it sounded really cool, so I put them at the top of my list, and now I'm part of one of the greatest technological revolutions of our time," McGrath said.

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