Ultracold Reactions Probe the Frontiers of Quantum Chemistry

A new study shows that molecules cooled to have near-negligible collisional motion can still react chemically with one another. At just a few hundred nanokelvins above absolute zero, the researchers could even change the speed of the chemical reaction by tweaking the molecules' quantum states, paving the way for highly controlled chemistry using the tools of physics. (A nanokelvin is one billionth of a kelvin.) [More]

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