Physicists have succeeded in cooling down molecules so much that hundreds of them lock in step, making a single gigantic quantum state. These systems could be used to explore exotic physics, such as by creating solid materials that can flow without resistance, or could form the basis of a new kind of quantum computer.
Physicists have been trying to realize BoseEinstein condensates of molecules for more than a decade. The research, published in Nature on 3 June, is the first to achieve this goal.
Quantum physicists predicted in the 1920s that, when cooled down to close to absolute zero, matter would start to behave in strange ways. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says that the more precisely a particle's momentum is known, the more uncertain its position is.
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