Absolute zero was a discovery that had a very different flavor from Newton’s laws. Newton’s equations gave physicists power. They could predict the orbits of the planets and the motion of objects with great accuracy. On the other hand, Kelvin’s discovery of absolute zero told physicists what they couldn’t do. They couldn’t ever reach absolute zero. This barrier was disappointing news to the physics world, but it was the beginning of a new branch of physics: thermodynamics.
