Antarctica is the coldest place on earth. The lowest temperature ever recorded on earth was −89.4 C (−129F) recorded in 1983 at the Russian Base Vostok in Antarctica. This is still greater than the minimum temperatures achieved in cryogenic labs.

In 1904 Dutch scientist Kamerlingh Onnes created a special lab in Leiden to get to lower temperatures than anyone had done before. In 1908 he managed to lower the temperature to less than one degree above absolute zero, which is −273.15° degrees below the freezing point of water. Only in this exceptional cold will helium turn into a liquid (at −269 C). Onnes achieved this feat first. He received a Nobel Prize for his efforts.

Modern experimenters achieve temperatures measured in hundred billionths of a degree above absolute zero.

See also timeline of low-temperature technology.