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Nobel Prize In Physics For Bose-Einstein Condensate
LMCBoy writes "The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics today. The award went to scientists who managed to construct a Bose-Einstein condensate from Rubidium and Sodium atoms. The process involves cooling the atoms to about 20 nanoKelvin. From the press release: 'A laser beam differs from the light from an ordinary light bulb in several ways. In the laser the light particles all have the same energy and oscillate together. To cause matter also to behave in this controlled way has long been a challenge for researchers. This year's Nobel Laureates have succeeded - they have caused atoms to "sing in unison" - thus discovering a new state of matter, the Bose-Einstein condensate.'" This is the same reasearch that Hemos recently posted about.
Biznitch!
When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
He ought to take more credit! After all, he was the first to post a story on this topic. :-)
Ok, so how does this help prevent my At[a]hlon from melting? Sure beats kryotech.
heyitsme
I'm going to get both the first and second post!
Propz to all my troll bretheren!
When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
Excellent work keeping the FP away from those homo ACs.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
They did the research on this several years ago. Nice to see them getting official recoginition.
So does this put us closer to getting transporters?
I know more than a few folks I'd want to reduce to simple energy.
Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
As I recall, I was able to create the Bose-Einstein condensate in my kitchen sink once. Man, all that hard work, and THESE guys get the Nobel for it... Well, better them than me, leaves me more time for programming...
information is immaterial
Just imagine all the cool speakers they will be selling soon, with nobel prize winning scientists working for them!
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Jeez... now I have yet another state and a crapload of equations to memorize. What's the enthalpy? The spontaneity?
We need a short form name. Solid, liquid, gas and Bose-Einstein condensate really just... doesn't work out that well in the naming scheme.
Hun? Someone want to explain to me how this is worthy of a nobel prize? I understand that it is neat... but how does it better our society? A cure for AIDS would be much more worthy, even if it isn't as technically challenging IMHO... Wasn't the prize supposed to be about the best scientific discovery that helps society???
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
From the Physics department here at the University of Colorado, I consider myself lucky to work with folks like Dr. Weiman (one of the Nobel recipients) and others in the field, and congratulate all the Nobel winners for this year.
On that note, you can read all about Bose-Einstein Condensate and more at Physics 2000, our award-winning interactive journey through modern physics! The site is here:
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000
Our Bose-Einstein Condensate section is one of the most popular, check it out and learn more!
Ryan Bruels
Technical Consultant
Physics 2000
Center for Integrated Plasma Studies
University of Colorado, Boulder
"All your base are belong to this file I send in order to have your advice."
Unfortunately, I don't know enough about this stuff to know if the difference is profound, or just semantic...
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Matter that oscillates in unison would have near zero resistance, thus would probably the best superconductor yet. This truly is a giant leap in superconductor research (regardless of it's actual intentions).
You're ruining Slashdot! This used to be my favorite website, but now it just sux because of all you damn Trolls and crapflooders.
I wish CmdrTaco would do something about it. Damn, that would be great, to see all you Trolls BURN IN HELL!! I lie awake at night dreaming about it. Then Slashdot could go back to being News for Nerds, Stuff that matters, along with the old style of actual intelligent comments!!
Did you ever think of that, Trolls?!? Huh, didja? Use your brains for crying out loud!!
Oh, that's right God didn't give you any!
*sheesh* Yes, I feel better now.
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And I don't just mean what you can do with it. ;)
Any ideas what products may result from this eventually, or is it currently just a "neat thing involving lasers"?
Last post!
...being the programmer I am.
:)
But they better watch out before the religious zealots of the world insist we should outlaw these Bose-Einstein thingamajiggers because the scientists are 'playing god' with them.
"It's unnatural, I tell you! We'll end up with millions of rogue Bose-Einstein cumulonimbus thingamajiggers that want to overthrow humanity!"
A maser is Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation and have nothing to do with Bose-Einstein condensates. You are probably thinking of so called "matter lasers" which are related. The B-E condensate is only a component of that.
Particles that can all have the same EXACT state, in quantum mechanical terms, are called bosons. They fill and occupy available states in a certain way, described by a Bose distribution. An example of bosons are photons, or light, which can all be in the same state at the same time, hence making the maser and laser possible. Opposite to these are fermions, e.g. electrons, which cannot occupy the same state and are subject to Fermi-Dirac statistics.
What makes B-E condensates cool, no pun intended, is through cooling and laser pumping all the atoms can be made to be in the exact state. This allows all kinds of neat things to happen. Such as the "matter laser" or the actual slowing down and stopping of light (I'm to lazy to look up the link but check out Scientific American's website).
Pretty neat stuff.
"It's comin' back around again..." -RATM
You should really get Harmon-Kardon, Rockford-Fosgate, or even Cerwin-Vega! Anything but Bose-Einstein!
We should make a clone of Einstein. All most every physicist in the last 50 years has used his work as a basis. If we made a few dozen more of him, think of the technology we could have in another fifty years.
Check out the hardware that they apparently used for this. I assume its what they used to control the device.
I guess its just a reminder that sometimes slow and simple out weighs fast and new. It'd be interesting to know just what sort of hardware and software they used to create this. The article on the Colorado page give some details, saying that diode lasers were used and that the apparatus was simple and inexpensive. It's neat to think not all cutting edge physics needs super expensive and complicated devices like cyclotrons.
_sig_ is away
Rubidium and sodium have the intresting property that, when combined, they condense at around 35 kilojoules, very close to the famed Velhany constant.
However, it is also very difficult to find these two atoms in a pure form. The only good way to do it is to spin basic molecules containing these two elements through xeon gas within a 20 megagauss accellerator, of which there is only two in the world. Once you have them, it is very hard to keep them from combining with other elements again. You must immediatly cool them to around 3 Kelvin or you'll have to start all over again.
To actualy produce temperatures like 20 nano Kelvin, you can't use other materials (such as liquid nitrogen). The best way is to use two large magnets and a laser. If aligned properly, the magnets will actualy bend the laser around the atoms, producing a sort of barrier that will not allow energy in, but will allow it to escape. The magnets have the secondary effect of helping suck energy out of the material.
(Yes, I made all this up. I want to see how many people slashdotters flame me for all this BS when they haven't read this far down. Yes, I have karma to burn.)
Not a typewriter
...that with all this high energy physics discussion going on lately that I don't see some Lexx jokes here somewhere!
News for Nerds? Um, Guys? You're letting me down! ^_^
I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...
first post!
I just invented the Cranberry Mango concentrate. What do I win?
Masers were the predecessors to lasers, producing microwave wavelength radiation instead of visible light. And saying that the research was done years ago is putting it mildly - IIRC masers were largely developed in the 50's, gas lasers in the 60's. They have absolutely nothing to do with this recent research.
That said, it's possible that some reporter with absolutely no technical background abbreviated "matter laser" to "maser," but that would be a mistake since it causes immense confusion to anyone who remembers the original definition. If you meant "matter laser," then say so.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
This year's Nobel Laureates have succeeded
More like "had succeeded", really -- the condensate was achieved in 1995. Nobel prizes are usually bestowed several years after the achievement itself in order to give plenty of time for independent verification and to demonstrate relevance to the greater body of research and knowledge.
That's what high school science doesn't explain properly. Energy is a mathematical property...
There's not really any such thing as 'pure energy'.
WOO HOO! AC ruleZ! ARE j00 afraid of me??? f33r me j00 l1ttl3 bitchez! WHWEEEJHHUHJHE I AM THE STRAIGHTEST MAN ALIVE!!!!!
I thought the big deal about Bose-Einstein condensates was their indeterminate size. Since cooling matter down to nearly absolute zero halts motion, and since zero motion is a very measurable quantity, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle means that the actual location of the electrons becomes indeterminate, and therefore the size of the atomic shell grows bigger. Not sure what implications this fact has, though, but it's kinda neat. If anything ever were to be cooled to absolute zero, it would be of infinite size.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
Don't have mercy with the weak.
- Dead Nietzsche
A-one, and a-two...
Cumbayah, My Lord, Cumbayah.
Cumbayah, My Lord, Cumbayah.
Oh, Lord, Cumbayah.
Someone's splitting, My Lord, Cumbayah.
Someone's splitting, My Lord, Cumbayah.
Oh, Lord, Cumbayah.
Someone's fusing, My Lord, Cumbayah.
Someone's fusing, My Lord, Cumbayah.
Oh, Lord, Cumbayah.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
What a laugh. I doubt Timmy has even a faint clue about this subject. If Timmy even passed high school algebra with a grade higher than a C minus I would be surprised. Heck, I'd be surprised if he passed high school algebra at all.
Does anyone know if a BEC maintains a mass consistent with the sum of its pieces, and how much comparative space it takes up?
Bose-Einstein matter was predicted decades ago. But the experimental cleverness to reach absolute zero and this state was only reached a few years ago. The prize is for this cleverness.
Second, not all othe the phenomena of this state were predicted by the theory, so new things were learned.
It's very easy to imprint little goatse images in a Bose-Einstein condensate.
Due to the quantum resonance and multidimensional flow coupling these images can be transported at super light speed.
The only problems are the rather small spatial scale of the transmission (about 1nm) and the large Tachyon flows induced by the super light speed.
These often cause space-time distortions which might even evole to little black or grey holes.
However, modern technology never comes without any risks, and these discoveries might start a new century of trolling.
(Note that B-E condensate resonace refractions can directly imbedded into brain waves.)
It sounds like one of the theorists (B)
and it looks like other (E).
It behaves very strangely compared to other matter.
The Matrix 4: Trolls Trolling Trolls
Neo: "Just how far does the rabbit hole go?"
Morpheus: "You must always remember: there is no honor among Trolls."
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I just heard on Swedish television that this could possibly be used in microchips in the future... at 20 nK I doubt it... Did the journalists find that out themselves, or has anyone else heard any more details?
Now I can find something to cool my beer.
Salon also has an article on the topic. It discusses the condensate in terms of a new "state of matter" (to go along with solid, liquid, gas, plasma?). It also mentions the most obvious applications are for precision measurement and nanotechnology.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
"On November 27, 1895, a year before his death, Alfred Nobel signed the famous will which would implement some of the goals to which he had devoted so much of his life. Nobel stipulated in his will that most of his estate, more than SEK 31 million (today approximately SEK 1,500 million) should be converted into a fund and invested in "safe securities."
The income from the investments was to be "distributed annually in the form of prizes to those who during the preceding year have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."
The Nobel Foundation is a private institution established in 1900 on the basis of the will. The investment policy of the Foundation is naturally of paramount importance to the preservation and, if possible the augmentation of the funds and, thus, of the prize amount. According to the original 1901 investment rules, the term "safe securities" was, in the spirit of that time, interpreted to mean gilt-edged bonds or loans backed by such securities or backed by mortgages on real estate. With the changes brought about by the two World Wars and their economic and financial aftermath, the term "safe securities" had to be reinterpreted in the light of prevailing economic conditions and tendencies. Thus, at the request of the Foundation's Board of Directors, in the early 1950s the Swedish Government sanctioned changes, whereby the Board for all practical purposes was given a free hand to invest not only in real estate, bonds and secured loans, but also in most types of stocks.
From 1901, when the first prizes (SEK 150,000 each) were awarded, the prize amounts declined steadily. But with this freedom to invest, along with the long-fought-for tax-exemption granted in 1946, it was possible to reverse this trend and, on average, even keep pace with increasing inflation. The real value of the prize amount in SEK terms was finally restored in 1991. The amount of the 2001 Nobel Prize is SEK 10.0 million, an increase of around 11 per cent compared to the 2000 Prizes.
The investment capital at market value as per December 31, 2000, amounted to SEK 3,894 million (approx. USD 409 million). Foreign and Swedish assets accounted for 52 and 48 per cent, respectively."
link...
There's also a table there breaking down the investments in more detail, but it was too big a PITA to get it to post correctly.
Don't you find it a bit scary that during experiments like this, we're cooling matter to a temperature that's a billion times colder than the background ratiation of the universe (3K), creating, for a brief period of time, what is likely to be the coldest matter in the entire universe? Who knows what weird physics we could unintentionally unleash!
that was because it was some dumbed down version of IIS that limited the connections to 10, and no one around here cares enough about windows to figure out the right registry settings (me neither).
so instead of fixing it i downloaded apache and configged it in about 5 minutes. maybe less.
since then it appears that web browsing has been a bit smoother. i checked the web log, which is normally about 200k on any given day, but by 4pm today is had grown to 17 MEGABYTES. ha! at it's peak we were serving around 10 megabytes per minute in pdfs, jpegs, etc. we have served 1.7 gigs so far today. whew.
so now that it's fixed, come on in and check it out. go to ketterle, then research, and especially check out rubidium.
and while i'm here, let me just say that wolfgang ketterle is one of the nicest people i have ever worked for. he, and everyone else here at MIT just kicks ass. wolfgang had gone to bed at 2:30am last night, and was awoken at 5:30am by some strange swedish dude...
later,
muerte
You can see it on my website, www.SHHHH.com.org
CU in da house!!!!
...Representing CU
Great. They're playing with the Boss-Einstein particles. We're a Type 13 planet (according to those from The Light Universe), and we're only a few experiments away from that earth-shrinking Boss-Higgins experiment. Somebody should really stop these people.
When the guys in Colorado first pulled this off a few years ago I happened to live in Denver.
About a month after the fact, Stephen Hawking was in town, and gave a speach. Afterwards, various people got to ask Mr. Hawking questions - one of those was regarding the then-recent proof of this phenomenon.
I don't recall the exact words, but with his usual brevity Hawking basically said that since this was known for 30+ years, it wasn't news. This was in front of an auditorium packed with some of the people responsible for the experiments. The hall was quiet for a moment there...
Hawking's comments in no way detract from the difficulty and novelty of the experiments. It was just interesting to see the difference between the people who predict reality vs. those who prove the predictions.
Jan
The basic requirement of superconductance is that electrons go bosonic, whereby a huge number of them can reach the same quantum state. So in a way there is B-E condensation in superconductors, but only that of electron pairs, not entire atoms as in the 1995 experiment.
BEC of atoms is not terribly exciting news for superconductance, unless you want super-transfer of atoms instead of electrons.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I listened to CNN sporadically today. Several times, I heard the CNN talking heads report on this Nobel award. Each time they only reported the names of the winners and that it was for "research in low temperature gases".
In each case, the 2nd news-reader (don't call these clowns reporters, please) turned to the 1st news-reader and made some lame comment about "boy is THAT way over my head (wink wink giggle)". They didn't mention the term "Bose-Einstein Condensate" nor did they attempt to explain WHY the BEC work would be worthy of a Nobel Prize.
Is it any wonder why the level of science illiteracy in the USA is so high?
IV
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
Satyendranath Bose was a Indian Physicist.
Bosons (named after him) are particles that can be in the same quantum state.
The consequence of that is they can be in the same location.
While Fermions (such as electrons) cannot be in the same location (unless they are in Cooper pairs, which is how superconductors work, but I digress).
This is why electrons must exist in ever increasing shells around an atom -- they can never be in the same "location".
Einstein's contribution (at least I think this was his contribution), is to propose the following:
As well all know
To explain: If a particle is at location 'x', think of a Gaussian function centered at 'x', where the height of the function determines the probability that the particle is at that location.
A particle that is very well localized is traveling very fast, and vise versa.
And as the particle slows, the particle is less well localized, and it's wave function (that Gaussian) widens.
As Bosons (of the same type, say Rubidium atoms) cool, they slow down.
As they slow down, their wave functions expand.
At some point, their wave functions will overlap.
Now here is the cool bit. The atoms are in different quantum states and different internal energy levels to start with, but as soon as their wave functions overlap enough, they ALL immediately drop down to their ground state (which is the same for all of them), and you can no longer distinguish which atom is which!
The analogy would be to imagine an orchestra.
They are all tuning their instruments, but because they are all moving very fast, they cannot hear each other, and all the instruments are (or can be) in a slightly different tune.
When they all slow down (in the same room), they can hear each other, and suddenly they all become in tune with each other.
Not a very good analogy, I know.
Oh! I almost forgot. To cool the sample down to 20 nanoKelvin(?), this is what they do:
Of course once the condensate forms you can't measure it, b/c as soon as you try the damn thing evaporates!
So you have to observe it using other means....
"You have the option of insanity. I do not. And that makes me crazy!" - Brian to Angela, My So-Called Life
This is the same reasearch that Hemos recently posted about.
This is not surprising. Longtime readers of Slashdot know that Hemos routinely nails all of Nobel prize winners in a given year. The only drama was whether the Bose-Einstein guys would beat the particle accelerator guys and 'Young Einstein' himself Yahoo Serious for the physics prize.
You seem to be saying that we need 2^N amount of space to store the spins? No we don't. You said it yourself: there are 2^N possible values that can be stored, and this requires precisely N amount of storage space. Say we have ten particles, that requires ten bits to store the spins, not 2^10 (1024) bits!.
It's still a lot though -- how many particles are in the human body again? ;)
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
Here's a question I've always wondered about regarding BECs. Say you make one out of a cloud of radioactive atoms. You hold the cloud together long enough to where if it were NOT a BEC, some of the atoms would decay. What happens? Does the waveform of the whole cloud change? When the cloud warms up, how does it decide which atoms not to reconstitute because they are "gone"?
just a small comment: Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) are not new. ever since helium has been cooled below 2.2 kelvin (early in the 20th century), we have BECs, since around 8% of helium
are in the condensate if it's really cold liquid helium. problem is, it has been hard to detect in helium. furthermore those Nobel laureates and others not only detected it very convincingly, but managed to play really interesting, beautiful experiments with their condensates. (i say 'play', cause real science is about playing i think [ok, and beauty]). congratulations to the 3 fellows!!
V=P/T is only exact for ideal gasses. When things get very dense, they are no longer ideal, so their volume doesn't actually go to 0.
Physical identity is such a limited concept of identity. Even if you're not a dualist, identity can be defined in a functualist way; for example, my identity could be defined as a certain configuration of matter and energy (or better, a large set of possible configurations of matter and energy). Any configuration of matter an energy suitable to be in that set would be functionally equivalent to me.
Just as many different tissue-damage-sensing devices are functionally equivalent (and can therefore all be called "pain"), different functionally equivalent replicas of myself can all be called "me."
See, for example:
Owen, Flanagan. (1992). Consciousness reconsidered. The MIT Press.
Clark, Andy. (1997). Being there : putting brain, body, and world together again. The MIT Press.
Heil, John. (1998). Philosophy of Mind. London, New York: Routledge.
Cheers,
Benjamin Keil(.sig not yet released to the public)
Correction on that bibliography....
The first item should have been:
Flanagan, Owen. (1992). Consciousness reconsidered. The MIT Press.
Cheers,
Benjamin Keil(.sig not yet released to the public)
However, for the average American, Finland should be even more alien than Mars.
No, they couldn't. If you were to make a copy without destroying the original (as would be just as likely with this sort of 'transporter') the original is still you. The copy is still a copy, no matter how perfect. Your consciousness is in the original, not the copy, and certainly not in both.
And in any event, only a complete idiot would step onto that transporter. Either that, or someone who's seen one too many eps of Star Trek.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Isnt this the anti-matter containment field we've all been looking for?
Absolutely every thing I have seen or read about how the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlation works has basically flat out said that is a way around the Heisenburg Uncertainity Principle. And that is coming from the people who pioneered the processes.
You take two photons and place them under circumstances that entangle them. When you measure one, the other will instantly collapse into the opposite spin. You can use the one of the photons as an encoder and the other as the decoder. By doing this you can create an exact replica of the photon in question.
At the moment of the copy, the consciousness in both the "original" and the "copy" are both exactly the same. I beleive strongly in the possibility of divergence after the moment of copying, but there really is no way to differentiate between the original and the copy, unless you could, for example, uniquely identify electrons or such. But then you'd be back to a problem of physical --- rather than functional --- identity.
Cheers,
Benjamin Keil(.sig not yet released to the public)
Not true. A third party couldn't distinguish between the two. However, *I* could - I'm only in one body, after all.
Third party verification isn't required for me to make an informed judgement as to which body I'm actually in. Opening my eyes would do the trick. And from that point I'd know if I were the original, or the copy.
This would be absolute physical verification of identity. *It doesn't matter if anyone else can do the verifying - only if you can*.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Again.. there is no such thing as pure 'energy'.
Light waves (or photons, if you like) can carry energy, yes.
'Heat' is energy.. yes.. the kinetic energy of particles. Or some such thing.. but 'heat' is not a thing.
Yes, okay, if you want to say 'e=mc2' matter and energy are interchangable.. but the point I was making is that energy is a sort of mathematical constant.. a property that we can observe in a system, it is not a 'thing'.
When we talk about matter converting to energy, say, during fission.. that 'energy' is in the form of kinetic energy.. motion of particles.. which we can use to heat up some heavy water, which in turn heats up some normal water to steam, which turns a turbine, which creates electricity.....
ALl these are just systems to move energy around... the 'energy' is conserved in the system overall.
I guess I just get dismayed at the misuse of the word 'energy'. Light is not energy. Electricity is not energy... but both can be used in the movement of energy.
e=mc2 does not mean, directly, 'we can convert light to matter and vice-versa'... it means that, in a closed system, the amount of matter can be decreased and the amount of energy in the system can increase.
According to the story I heard, this was postulated by Satyen Bose (Indian scientist). He sent it to Einstein, who got it published. My question is, if Einstein's contribution was to merely get it published, why is his name attached to it ?? Sounds like I need to find another Bose 'cause I know a good publisher ...
That's exactly my point. That after the copying took place the two consciousness can diverge, but at the instant of the copying, they are equivalent. The fact you say you'd "know if [you] were ... the copy" suggest that the copy would be in that same state before it opened its eyes. And if the event took place while you were unconscious, neither you nor the copy would have any way of knowing which was which. You could both be equally convinced of your orignality.
Cheers,
Benjamin Keil(.sig not yet released to the public)
And how does this make being deconstructed *not* a form of suicide? Just because the copy is exact, therefore 'good enough'?
I don't buy that for a second. And I still won't step on the transporter.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?