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High Temperature Bose-Einstein Condensation Observed
ultracool writes "Two separate research groups claim to have observed Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in quasiparticles at much higher temperatures than atomic BEC — one at 19 Kelvin and the other at room temperature. The 19 K BEC was composed of half-matter, half-light quasi-particles called polaritons, and the room temperature condensate was composed of 'magnons' (packets of magnetic energy). There is some skepticism among physicists as to whether these really are BECs. If they are true BECs, these experiments are the first evidence of them in the solid state." Just in case you need a brush up on BEC, like I did, check out the Wikipedia article on Bose-Einstein condensation.
You could have tried the external links at the end of the page.
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
I thought Bose-Einstein condensate was a completely different state of matter. How then, could it appear in a "solid state"?
"Yes, I do have something to hide - my shame."
Oh, for the love of...
Editors, if you link a Wikipedia page from the summary, PLEASE link a historical revision. That way, whatever vandalism happens won't affect the link, and thus fewer people will be tempted to even vandalize at all.
Seriously, do the editors have any sense at all? It's not like this is a new problem.
And whatever corrections are made won't be updated in the link, either. With many eyes, after all, all errors are shallow--isn't that the founding principle of Wikipedia? A crush of visitors should improve the article beyond anything seen in Britannica or the New York Post.
Wait, what?
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
You intuation is right.
They cool thing about BEC is that it violates that intuition. Until B&E published, everyone thought that "much higher than zero kelvin" meant when that (in the appropriate units) the temperature (i.e. roughly the average energy per particle) had to be (much) less than the difference in energy between lowest state and any of the the others. If you think about this assumption, you will see that it nearly comes from
Bolzman's law (and if you don't know what Boltzman's law is, and are not a science or engineering student, you probably don't care).
Satyendranath (sp?) Bose came up with the bombshell that although Bolztman's law is right Bolztman's law operates differently for quantum particles. Some quantum particles (nowadays called Bosons) are more likely than expected to get into the same quantum state. They will do this wheneve the temperature is low enough
that their momentum uncertainty forces their position uncertainty to be at least as large as the typical distance between partciles (i.e their wavefunctions must "overlap" coherently, and again if you don't understand, you don't care).
So even ordinary BECs happen at relatively high temeratures. Unfortunately these temperatures are still in the nanokelvin range, at least for atoms under experimental conditions.
I have a Ph.D. in biology, and I am interested in current research in many other fields as well. That said, I have no idea WTF the *significance* of the current breakthrough is. What does it mean? Why isn't there even a one sentence half-assed attempt in the summary? Thanks for the wiki-link. If I wanted to seriously brush up while trying to navigate the ridiculous wiki, I'd go there. Seriously, most people might just want to know why they should give a shit that BE condensation has been observed at solid-state. Don't get me wrong, I think there is something fascinating in all this, just wish the summary would have pointed to that aspect instead of regurgitating the so-called claimes of a breakthrough.
Seriously, I had no idea Slashdot articles could be this far above my head.
Slashdot started off as a strongly science/tech-oriented discussion site, and articles that required detailed knowledge of the subject matter were common in those early days (I have a 4-digit Slashdot ID so this is first-hand).
But popularity brought in a broader cross-section of the population, and deep science and engineering knowledge is rare in the population at large. The fact that nowadays the majority of Slashdot articles are merely rehashes of some non-technical person's blog is just the editors keeping in tune with their majority audience. It's sad, but inevitable.