Slashdot Mirror
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."
Wait, you mean that there are actual ARTICLES that go along with these stories???
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
With all due respect, f00Dave, /. isn't a science site -- it's a site about cool news. "News for nerds, stuff that matters." I'll be blunt: "soft" sciences, such as biology, generally don't have the cool factor that things like BECs do. Granted, I'm making a huge generalization, but it's one I'll stand by. You'll see physics, math, and nanotechnology on here, along with the odd explosion dressed up as a chemistry story, long before you'll see "behavioral scientists agree that 73% of people watch too much TV" or somesuch. Does that mean that soft science isn't news, or is unimportant? Absolutely not. But better places to read up on them might be www.sciam.com and www.nytimes.com (on Tuesdays, which is "Science Times" day).