More Strange Bose-Einstein Condensate Behavior

Allen Varney writes "According to a story on EurekAlert, an arXiv preprint server paper titled 'Scattering of atoms on a Bose-Einstein Condensate' reports that atoms striking a BEC sometimes appears to leave before they enter. 'This doesn't imply a breaking of the light-speed barrier, time travel or anything overly exotic but is a property of waves being broken down into component parts and being reassembled slightly differently. [...] As an atom hits the BEC, it is absorbed into the collective state but still exists as a vibration. The vibration travels through the BEC but can escape as an atom once more. The study reinforces the similarity between atoms as waves and light as waves.' Slashdot has talked about supposed faster-than-light travel once or twice (or more) before."

Comments

Offtopic: Moderation for difficult science stories

[The Grassy Knoll]

I haven't got the first clue about "the scattering properties of a Bose-Einstein condensate held in a finite depth well", and I doubt many people here have.

To prove my point, most of the mod'ed up comments here have been mod'ed as 'Funny', rather than 'Interesting' or 'Informative'.

Seems symptomatic of most hard science posts on /.

That's it. My post-pub waffle is over.