Before you continue, let me ask you: What do you think is the coldest temperature in the Universe? When thinking of "cold", most of us imagine the interstellar space - as there's nothing there. Well, nothing by our earth's standards. The interstellar space is populated by atoms, molecules and dust exposed to cosmic radiation and rays. The radiation heats the interstellar gas and the coldests parts of the Universe - the Boomerang Nebualae? - are still probably warmer than one Degree Kelvin - that is one Degree above the absolute zero.

Scinetists in the laboratory - here on earth - have recently figured out how to cool atomic and molecular gases to temperatures of about 0.0000001 Degrees Kelvin - which is more than a million times lower than the lowest temperature in the interstellar space.

What's most appealing to us - chemists - is that (1) chemical reactions at such low temperatures proceed, strangely enough, very efficiently and (2) even tiny perturbations exerted by electromagnetic fields are larger than the kinetic energy of ultracold atoms and molecules. We think, therefore, that chemical reactions at ultracold temperatures can be easiliy controlled with electromagnetic fields in the laboratory and one major goal of our research is to find mechanisms for controlling dynamics of collisions and dissociation of molecules at temperatures below 1 Kelvin with electric and magnetic fields. Our studies take us into the strange world of quantum dynamics and help us understand the fundamental basics of the Universe - the phenomena like quantum coherence, resonances and matter-field interactions.