Photoassociation, assembling molecules from atoms using laser light, is limited by the 
low density of atom pairs at sufficiently short interatomic separations. Here we show 
that nonresonant light with intensities of the order of 10¹° W/cm2 modifies the thermal 
cloud of atoms, enhancing the Boltzmann weight of shape resonances and pushing 
scattering states below the dissociation limit. This leads to an enhancement of 
photoassociation rates by several orders of magnitude and opens the way to significantly
larger numbers of ground-state molecules in a thermal ensemble than achieved so far.