Team of researchers from MIT has explained the behavior of molecules when cooled to exceptionally cold temperatures.

The researchers cooled sodium potassium gas molecules (NaK) near absolute zero. At low temperatures, molecules come to an almost complete halt and tend to exhibit strange, exotic states of matter, which is not observed in the usual physical world.

Firstly, the team of MIT physicists led by Martin Zwierlein applied a magnetic field to the cooled sodium and potassium atoms in order to fuse them together to create Na-K gas molecules.

These molecules were then subjected to optical cooling where powerful lasers push the molecules in an out-of-tune manner.

The researchers noticed that the molecules were relatively stable and long-lived and didn’t react through usual collisions on the other molecules. The molecules lasted for a very short time in the normal chemical world, only for about 2.5 seconds.

They also behaved as electric dipoles (positive-negative electric charge pairs) with very strong moments (or strong electric interaction with other molecules).

Zwierlein said the molecules have been effectively stilled regardless of normal molecules having high energies with much vibrations, rotations, and translations in space.

According to him, this kind of system might already be exhibiting quantum mechanics, the laws of physics governing small-scale, atomic-sized systems.

He added, “We are very close to the temperature at which quantum mechanics plays a big role in the motion of molecules. So these molecules would no longer run around like billiard balls, but move as quantum mechanical matter waves”.