In an experimental physics lab in 1995, scientists manufactured an abode that would feel at ease in the twilight zone. This is a curious place where temperatures are so cold the human body cannot fathom (one billionth of a degree above the coldest conceivable level, absolute zero). And in this insufferable cold, matter, as we know it, transforms into something radically new and perplexing: the Bose-Einstein condensate.

In our everyday lives, we encounter matter in three states: solids, liquids, gases. At different temperatures, matter can exist in one of those forms. Take water, for example. At room temperature, approximately 70 degrees Fahrenheit, water flows out of the tap. But if you fill up an ice tray and place it in the freezer, where the temperature is 32 degrees Fahrenheit or colder, the water slowly crystalizes into solid cubes of ice. Or, if you fill up a pot and put it on the stove, the water heats up. At 212 degrees Fahrenheit, boiling starts and molecules evaporate into a gas—that is, steam.

These three states of matter share a basic property: their atoms always take up space. For example, you cannot fit two ice cubes into the same hollow of an ice tray. There is simply no room; the ice cubes would somehow have to overlap in space for this to work.

And matter overlapping in space is impossible, right? Well, maybe not.

At super low temperatures near absolute zero, – 460 degrees Fahrenheit, atoms of matter can lose their identity. This means the atoms start overlapping each other in space, forming a single uniform glob—a superatom. At this point, matter is not a solid, gas, or liquid—it is a Bose-Einstein condensate.

The condensate was originally dreamed up in the 1920s, when quantum physicists received a jolt. (Quantum physics is the study of how very small things work, from atoms on down.) The physicists had been working off an incorrect assumption—that light and matter particles were similar enough to warrant modeling them using the same mathematics.

But matter takes up space, and light does not. Particles of light, called photons, can overlap in the same space and even pass through matter, such as a piece of glass. This is why two light beams can pass through one another but two pieces of wood cannot.

It took an unknown Indian scientist with full cheeks and round glasses to spot the faulty logic in 1924. Beyond simply finding the error, Satyendra Nath Bose offered a solution: he devised a unique math for modeling light.

Without any previous introduction, Bose brazenly forwarded the manuscript of his new model to the premier physicist of the time, Albert Einstein. Impressed with the math, Einstein translated the paper into German and submitted the work for publication with Bose’s name. The paper was well received.

But Einstein’s participation did not end there. With Bose’s mathematical equations whipping around his brain, Einstein explored the radical notion that material particles themselves could also act like light. Could two ice-cubes ever share the same space in an ice tray?

Turns out…no. Ice cubes, like many other solids and liquids, cannot change in that fundamental way because their atoms are too tightly packed together. The atoms are locked into a fixed structure.

This limit does not apply to all the elements, however, under special conditions. Einstein knew this and theorized that if cooled to sub-artic temperatures, certain atoms would “condense” into each other forming a new state of matter. In other words, the individual atoms would cease acting like distinct particles. Instead, the atoms would overlap like light particles. According to Einstein, the controlling factor is atomic spin, which reflects the ratio of an atom’s three components (electrons, protons, and neutrons).

Due to the constraints of technology, Einstein never lived to see this new form of matter, later named the Bose-Einstein condensate, with his own eyes. If only Einstein had lived to the age of 114.

The first observation of the condensate was a Frankenstein affair: a material made at the hands of scientists, not nature. The matter-defying lab experiment was conducted in 1995. University of Colorado researchers Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman, and colleagues cooled rubidium atoms to temperatures lower than those observed in the far reaches of the universe and voila! The condensate appeared, as predicted, and they even snapped a quick photograph. Less than a year later, a research team lead by Wolfgang Ketterle from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology formed a condensate using sodium. Both research groups jointly won the Nobel prize in 2001.

Since that first breakthrough, lab-generated Bose-Einstein condensates have become so common they are approaching the blasé. At MIT, for example, an entire hallway of labs are committed to super-cooled particles.

With the condensate in hand, this nascent field of research is growing and diversifying fast. Labs are testing condensate and non-condensate particles interactions, using condensates as a model for traditional forms of matter, exploring how condensates can block, even capture light, and the list goes on.