Number 17 (Story #3), January 17, 1991 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein LOW-TEMPERATURE RESEARCH MAY BE HAMPERED BY COSMIC RAYS some day. According to Robert Richardson (607-255-6053), head of Cornell's Microkelvin Laboratory, the heat from cosmic rays, about 10 picowatts of heating per cubic cm in most metals, may eventually force low-temperature research into deep underground caves. That amount of heating becomes important if future refrigeration techniques can reduce the temperature of the electrons in the atoms of a metal sample to the nanokelvin range. Such a temperature has been achieved for nuclei at the Helsinki University of Technology (using a process called nuclear demagnetization) but not yet for electrons. (Mosaic, Winter 1990/91.)