To keep things safely frozen, cooling systems have been installed in the ground.

ECONOMIST: Tibet is linked to the rest of China

Dr Cirac and Dr Romero-Isart therefore propose putting the virus inside a microscopic cavity and cooling it down to its state of lowest energy (ground state, in physics parlance) using a piece of apparatus known as a laser trap.

ECONOMIST: An old thought experiment may soon be realised

Dr Duif rules out a third explanation, too: that cooling of the Earth's crust due to the eclipse shadow causes the ground to tilt slightly, and thus distorts the results.

ECONOMIST: Gravitational anomalies

The waste heat is converted into cooling capacity, and the small heat surplus is dumped into aquifers 300 m below ground level, where it is stored and recovered in winter.

CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia