What does Absolute Zero mean? Temperature tends to be relative — the air is below freezing, her fever is above normal. But scientists probe the extreme ends of the spectrum of what’s called absolute temperature: At the upper limit, absolute hot is a theoretical furnace where the laws of physics melt away. On the flip side, absolute zero —
Life at the bottom Read More »
A Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), the first of which was shown experimentally 22 years ago, isn’t your garden variety state of matter. It formed at a fraction above absolute zero and only in atoms that act like bosons, one of two types of fundamental particles. Bosons don’t follow the Pauli exclusion principle, which prohibits two particles
How Bose–Einstein condensates keep revealing weird physics Read More »
We learn it from a young age: solids hold their shapes; liquids flow. Physical states of matter are mutually exclusive. A solid occupies a particular position in space, its molecules fixed. A fluid assumes the shape of its container, its molecules in constant motion. But a so-called supersolid, a predicted phase of matter that forms
The return of supersolids! Read More »
