Post by sherlew99 on Nov 30, 2013 11:24:17 GMT -6
Seeing Coldest Blobs in the Universe in New Light
By By Becky Oskin, Staff Writer | LiveScience.com – Fri, Nov 29, 2013
Physicists have come up with a new way to gaze longingly at some of the weirdest matter on Earth — the super-cold, super-calm gas called a Bose-Einstein condensate.
While scientists have been able to steal quick glimpses of the unusual gas, until now, simply snapping a picture of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) often destroyed it by adding extra energy from light.
"The absorption of a single photon (the smallest packet of light) is enough to break one," lead study author Michael Hush, a physicist at the University of Nottingham, told LiveScience in an email interview. [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]
By creating a new computer model, detailed on Nov. 28 in the New Journal of Physics, the researchers have figured out a way to re-route this heat and keep BECs chilled even during long imaging sessions.
By By Becky Oskin, Staff Writer | LiveScience.com – Fri, Nov 29, 2013
Physicists have come up with a new way to gaze longingly at some of the weirdest matter on Earth — the super-cold, super-calm gas called a Bose-Einstein condensate.
While scientists have been able to steal quick glimpses of the unusual gas, until now, simply snapping a picture of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) often destroyed it by adding extra energy from light.
"The absorption of a single photon (the smallest packet of light) is enough to break one," lead study author Michael Hush, a physicist at the University of Nottingham, told LiveScience in an email interview. [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]
By creating a new computer model, detailed on Nov. 28 in the New Journal of Physics, the researchers have figured out a way to re-route this heat and keep BECs chilled even during long imaging sessions.
Click here to read the rest of the article.
