WE GET to grips with temperature at an early age. Parental rites ensure a baby's room is stiflingly warm, its bathwater "just right", and that some things are "Hot! Don't touch".
As we grow older, we begin to associate numbers with temperature sensations. We learn that at 0 °C water freezes, that 20 °C describes a warm day and that 37 °C is a biochemical Mecca. At some point in our growing awareness, perhaps at school, we may even come across a temperature far beyond our everyday ken: absolute zero.
Absolute zero is the ultimate in cool, an ideal, unattainably perfect state of coldness. Even so, since the concept first emerged in the mid-19th century, many careers have been devoted to getting ever closer to it. What might seem a quixotic quest – noble, but pointless – is in fact far from it. This year marks the 100th anniversary of ...
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