I watched a great doco last night called “Absolute Zero” – produced by BBC4.
If you get a chance to see it (maybe search for the .torrent) make sure you do.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/absolute-zero.shtml
This two-part scientific detective tale tells the story of a remarkable group of pioneers who wanted to reach the ultimate extreme: absolute zero, a place so cold that the physical world as we know it doesn’t exist, electricity flows without resistance, fluids defy gravity and the speed of light can be reduced to 38 miles per hour. Each film features a strange cast of eccentric characters, including: Clarence Birds Eye; Frederic ‘Ice King’ Tudor, who founded an empire harvesting ice; and James Dewar, who almost drove himself crazy by trying to liquefy hydrogen.
Absolute zero became the Holy Grail of temperature physicists and is considered the gateway to many new technologies, such as nano-construction, neurological networks and quantum computing. The possibilities, it seems, are limitless.
Very interesting history, and the discoveries of the predicted ‘Bose-Einstein condensate‘ are amazing – i found my mind had exploded by the time I’d finished watching the doco!