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MIT Team Creates Ultracold Molecules
jan_jes writes: Physicists at MIT have successfully cooled molecules in a gas of sodium potassium (NaK) to a temperature of 500 nanokelvins. The researchers found that the ultracold molecules were relatively long-lived and stable, resisting reactive collisions with other molecules (abstract). The molecules also exhibited very strong dipole moments — strong imbalances in electric charge within molecules that mediate magnet-like forces between molecules over large distances. According to professor Martin Zwierlein, "We are very close to the temperature at which quantum mechanics plays a big role in the motion of molecules. So these molecules would no longer run around like billiard balls, but move as quantum mechanical matter waves. And with ultracold molecules, you can get a huge variety of different states of matter, like superfluid crystals, which are crystalline, yet feel no friction, which is totally bizarre. This has not been observed so far, but predicted. We might not be far from seeing these effects, so we’re all excited."
There are about 10^27 ultra-cold molecules in my ex-wife.
Silence is a state of mime.
To get to the other side?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
450 nK, thus launching another Cold War
>> How do you cool something that cold?
(air quotes) LAY-ZERZ (air quotes)
The Doppler effect only comes in to explain how one can get atoms to actually slow down (thus cool down) when absorbing laser light while vibrating back and forth (so the absorption could hinder them or speed them up). The main mechanism is the absorption of photons and respective transfer of momentum. Georgia state university has a very nice explanation except that they are loosing me in the last but one paragraph when it really gets interesting.