MIT Team Creates Ultracold Molecules 34
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."
Old news.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Maybe if your penis wasn't 10^-27 inches long.
Re: (Score:1)
You're implying that women's bitchiness is inversely proportional to penis size. This fails to account for - single women who are very bitchy, single women who are not bitchy at all, lesbians who are usually bitchy, despite the use of large dildos and strap ons, etc.
Long story short - while you might have been moved to post through personal experience, correlation is not causation!
PS - this was supposed to be a joke. Smile!
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500 nanokelvin gas? (Score:2)
Why didn't the matter turn into the solid phase? (Not I did not RTFA.)
Re:500 nanokelvin gas? (Score:5, Funny)
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What can Ice Guy do now? (Score:1)
Oh great. More science for comic book writers to misunderstand.
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Maybe the comic book writers understood just fine, and science is only just catching up.
Three months from now, the Chinese will announce (Score:4, Funny)
450 nK, thus launching another Cold War
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How do you cool something that cold? (Score:2)
How do you cool something that cold?
No, I didn't RTFA, this is /. after all
Re:How do you cool something that cold? (Score:5, Funny)
>> How do you cool something that cold?
(air quotes) LAY-ZERZ (air quotes)
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I know a few women who can do it.
On a serious note though what happens if you take a particle that cold and hit it with a really energetic one? Like half of LHC energy( since the LHC has two sets of counter flying particles that it smashes together?)
Do you get different subatomic particles?
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Surprisingly, by shining a laser into it, thanks to the Doppler effect. It's how the Bose-Einstein Condensate was demonstrated at the U of Colorado in 1995, for a Nobel.
Re:How do you cool something that cold? (Score:4)
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 [gsu.edu] except that they are loosing me in the last but one paragraph when it really gets interesting.
Duff (Score:2)
Quantum mechanics (Score:1)
A Sodium and Potassium Molecule? (Score:1)
What does it take to make those pair join chemically?