September 20, 2010 | Amy

I hate the cold. But I think this story is seriously cool: scientists have used lasers to chill molecules to near absolute zero – the unimaginably low temperature of –273 °C.

And here’s something even cooler: at extremely cold temperatures, molecules start behaving very differently because the weird and wonderful laws of quantum mechanics kick in.

Apparently, these super-cool molecules could eventually be used in quantum computers to perform calculations at lightning-fast speeds.

This research appears in the 19 September 2010 online issue of  the journal Nature (advance online publication).