Part 2: The Race For Absolute Zero

The Race For Absolute Zero charts the intense competition between rival scientists as they attempt to plunge lower and lower down the temperature scale. This ultimate limit of cold was a Holy Grail as tantalising for physicists as the speed limit of light.

The film follows the fortunes of two front-runners, James Dewar, a professor at the Royal Institution in London and Heike Kamerlingh Onnes a Dutch scientist in Leiden as they liquefy different gases to reach within a few degrees of Absolute Zero. As scientists reach ultra low temperatures, bizarre phenomena emerge such as superconductivity (where all electrical resistance vanishes) and superfluidity (where liquids appear to defy gravity and flow out of containers.)

Ultra-cold research promises many innovations for the future from quantum computers to super-cooled quantum devices that can map the magnetic activity of the brain. Today we have reached to within a tenth of a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, uncovering many fundamental secrets of matter along the way. If our past was defined by our mastery of heat, perhaps our future lies in the continuing conquest of cold.

A Windfall Films / Meridian production