Absolute Zero

I was watching an episode of Nova last night called "Absolute Zero". It was about the history of cold and the theories of what people thought cold was. For instance, some people believed cold was a thing that crept into objects like people, and when they warmed up, the cold was leaving. So one guy weighed a barrel of full of water, then put it in the snow to freeze, but it did not weigh more when it froze even though it had expanded. Then another guy with an R name said, and rightly so, that when particles sped up they created heat, and when they slowed down, they were cooler. But another guy, Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, proposed that heat was a matter called "caloric" that slipped in between particles and loosened them up, and when it left things cooled down. Anyway, the R guy disproved Lavoisier by showing that the friction created by boring out cannons could produce limitless heat if the friction was continuous. Not only did he disprove his theory, but when Lavoisier was executed for political reasons, the R guy married his widow, but only for a year, then he left her for science. Great story. But as the show continued and they began to discuss absolute zero, I fell asleep, so even if absolute zero could be reached, I would have missed it.