Some fluids have no friction (Image: Don Farral/Getty)

CHILL them enough and some atoms creep up walls or stay still while the bowl they sit in rotates, thanks to a quantum effect called superfluidity. Now molecules have got in on the act.

Superfluidity is a bizarre consequence of quantum mechanics. Cool helium atoms close to absolute zero and they start behaving as a single quantum object rather than a group of individual atoms. At this temperature, the friction that normally exists between atoms, and between atoms and other objects, vanishes, creating what is known as a superfluid.

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