Absolute Zero

The Magnet Lab is proud to be a national sponsor of Absolute Zero, a campaign to teach people about how the mastery of cold has transformed our lives.

Television Special

Ever wonder how low-temperature physics affects your daily life? Probably not, but the things we now know about the nature of “cold” were once a mystery to philosophers, scientists and engineers.

That mystery is revealed in an Absolute Zero NOVA special. This two-hour program, which originally aired in January 2008, can be viewed online (divided into 10 chapters) at the Nova: Absolute Zero Web site. The program is based on the book Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold.

The PBS series highlights the work of such low-temperature pioneers as Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, portrayed above.

Absolute Zero features the struggle over four centuries to understand the nature of cold. Along the way, scientists created cold technologies that have transformed the way we live, and gained insights into the nature of matter itself. NOVA brings this subject to life using a combination of colorful historic recreations and insightful interviews with science historians and Nobel Prize winners.

Part 1, “Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold,” begins with 17th century court magician Cornelius Drebbel, who successfully created the world’s first air-conditioning system. Other memorable characters include Daniel Fahrenheit and Anders Celsius who created the first thermometers; Frederic Tudor who became one of the richest men in America simply deciding to sell ice; and Clarence Birdseye who made his name with frozen food.

Part 2, “Absolute Zero: The Race for Absolute Zero,” tells the gripping story of the decades-long scientific race between Scottish physicist James Dewar and Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, as the two men fought to reach the coldest temperature. Their discoveries opened the door to the modern era of refrigeration and air conditioning. Absolute Zero’s final chapter climaxes in the Nobel-winning breakthrough, the production of a new form of matter that Albert Einstein predicted would exist within a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero. (Absolute zero, which is 0 on the Kelvin temperature scale, -273 degrees on the Celsius scale, and -460 degrees Fahrenheit, is the point at which absolutely no heat is left and atomic motion is at a virtual standstill.) This is a temperature so cold that the physical world as we know it transforms completely, electricity and fluids flow without resistance, and the speed of light can be reduced to 38 miles per hour.