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Scientists Using Lasers To Cool Molecules
An anonymous reader writes "Ever since audiences heard Goldfinger utter the famous line, 'No, Mr. Bond; I expect you to die,' as a laser beam inched its way toward James Bond and threatened to cut him in half, lasers have been thought of as white-hot beams of intensely focused energy capable of burning through anything in their path. Now a team of Yale physicists has used lasers for a completely different purpose, employing them to cool molecules down to temperatures near absolute zero, about -460 degrees Fahrenheit. Their new method for laser cooling, described in the online edition of the journal Nature, is a significant step toward the ultimate goal of using individual molecules as information bits in quantum computing."
Who the hell uses Fahrenheit for anything remotely connected to science? I can understand translating 0K to -273.15C, then 1K is -272.15C -- but how meaningful to anyone is -459.67F?
Ian Ameline