The greatest triumph of civilization is often seen as our mastery of heat. Yet our conquest of cold is an equally epic journey from dark beginnings to an ultra cool frontier. In the last 100 years, cold has transformed the way we live and work. Imagine supermarkets without refrigeration or frozen food, skyscrapers without air-conditioning, hospitals without MRI machines or liquid oxygen. We take for granted the technology of cold, yet it has enabled us to explore outer space and the inner depths of our brain. And as we develop new ultra cold technology to create quantum computers and high-speed networks, it will change the way we work and interact. By the late 19th century, the ultimate extreme of cold had a number, -273 degrees Celsius, and a name..."Absolute Zero." A frontier so enticing that rival physicists from all over Europe began a race towards this absolute limit of cold. It was a high-stakes pursuit, one that continues even now as we explore a strange quantum world where fluids appear to defy gravity and electricity flows freely without resistance.