NOVA
Season 35 Episode 9 - Absolute Zero: The Race for Absolute Zero
Our mastery of cold is something we take for granted, whether it s air conditioning and frozen food or the liquefied gases and superconductivity at the heart of cutting-edge technology. But what is cold? How do you achieve it, and how cold can it get? This two-part NOVA special brings the history of this frosty fascination to life with brilliant dramatic recreations of high moments in low-temperature research and the quest for ever-lower notches on the thermometer. In the second hour, The Race For Absolute Zero dramatizes the titanic rivalry between Scottish researcher James Dewar and Dutch physicist Heike Onnes, who plunged cold science to the forbidding realm at which oxygen and then nitrogen turn into liquids. The race continues today as scientists pioneer super-fast computing near absolute zero the ultimate chill of -459.67° F where atoms slow to a virtual standstill.
Episodes in Season 35
Secrets of the Samurai Sword
55 min
Ghost in Your Genes
55 min
Marathon Challenge
55 min
Sputnik Declassified
55 min
Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial
55 min
Master of the Killer Ants
55 min
Missing in MiG Alley
55 min
Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold
55 min
Absolute Zero: The Race for Absolute Zero
55 min
Secrets of the Parthenon
55 min
Astrospies
55 min
Ape Genius
55 min
The Four Winged Dinosaur
55 min
Cracking the Maya Code
55 min
Car of the Future
55 min
A Walk to Beautiful
55 min
Lord of the Ants
55 min
