Word: zeroed
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Science speaks of few absolutes. One of the few is absolute zero: -273.16 centigrade. At this temperature, the haphazard motion of the molecules (the action called heat) is wholly stilled. Close to this point of death-still cold, matter acts in strange ways. Liquid helium climbs out of containers; the electrical resistance of metals disappears. Because scientists see stranger phenomena the closer they get to absolute zero, experimenters like to imagine working their way down to the very bottom of the temperature scale...
...current Scientific Monthly, Dr. John F. Allen of St. Andrews University, Scotland, tells how they are going about it. The common method of creating cold-compressing and expanding gases-works only as far down as about one degree above absolute zero. So the scientists turned to a cold-creating method based on the fact that atoms in certain crystalline salts act like little magnets...
...direction. The lining-up process warms the crystals slightly. Then the magnetic field is removed. The atom-magnets point at random again, and the crystals get colder than they were at the start. This method works fine down to about two-thousandths of one degree above absolute zero...
...atomic nuclei. When certain materials (e.g., lithium fluoride) are placed in a strong magnetic field, the nuclei of their atoms also line up. When the magnetism is removed, the lithium fluoride gets colder. This method promises to yield a temperature only one-millionth of a degree above absolute zero...
...such profound cold the molecules will be almost deathly still. Zero itself'will not have been reached. Ityis a will-o'-the-wisp game that physicists play: zero can be pursued and approached, but never actually captured...