First 'Atomic Air Force' Observed

SeaDour writes "From the National Institute of Standards and Technology (the people who brought you the atomic clock) and the Unviersity of Colorado at Boulder (location of the world's first Bose-Einstein Condensate and Fermionic Condensate) comes the world's first observation of atoms "flying in formation". Atoms are normally expected to fly around through empty space quite haphazardly, constantly colliding with one another. But thanks to precision laser pulses and extremely cold temperatures, Jun Ye's team was able to correograph strontium atoms into the shape of a cube as they travelled across a vacuum chamber. "This 'really bizarre' behavior is believed to occur with all atoms under similar conditions.""

Science is Fun

[Please_Chose_Another]

I know some will sat this is worthless but it is this kind of playing around that leads to huge advances in technology

So is friction.

[Veramocor]

F = uN

Re:So is friction.

[Alibi]

Technically it's a greek mu (μ in html, slash won't let it go in directly) :P

Atomic Cube, eh?

[daeley]

We are the Borg.
Precision laser pulses are obsolete.
You will be assimilated.

Re:Atomic Cube, eh?

[MagicDude]

Cliches are irrelevent.

We seek only the integration of intellegent thought into the collective discussion.

Probably...

[BigZaphod]

..this air force will all be swallowed by a small dog.

Of course this sort of thing is going on all the time and we are powerless to stop it.

Re:Probably...

[Alsee]

this air force will all be swallowed by a small dog

The small dog swallowed a spider,
the spider which swallowed a flea,
the flea which swallowed a bacteria,
the bacteria which swallowed a virus,
the virus which swallowed a stray strand of DNA,
the stray strand of DNA which swallowed a foreign gene,
the foreign gene which swallowed the airforce,
and so did the small dog swallow the airforce.

-

Re:Probably...

[wikdwarlock]

Only if that small dog doesn't mind getting pulsed with high energy lasers, focused magnetic fields, and liquid helium/hydrogen temperatures. Actually, sound like a plot for the next blockbuster.

Sparky, an ordinary pet beagle, sat watching the experiment from a nearby lab stool. His owner, Fred, was on the verge of something, something great, something that would free humanity from death, disease, and poverty. As the equipment came to life, Sparky the inquisitve beagle sniffed in the direction of the mi

Re:Probably...

[2sheds]

"I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle."

Just another step towards

[Marxist Hacker 42]

A cashless gift economy based on nanofactories.

I see this all the time

[Photar]

Atoms moving in formation is nothing new.

Atoms usually move in formation. You know when you throw a ball, or drop a hammer on your foot. WTF?

Still no cure for cancer. Still no flying cars.

Honey, I shrunk the kids?

[rickbrodie]

If the normal behaviour of atoms is to whizz about individually, what does this new observation imply for the density of the material? If all the atoms are stacked up in some sort of lattice type structure (though they're not actually connected), then they'd be super-dense, not to mention super-strong right?

Re:Honey, I shrunk the kids?

[Windscion]

We're talking about maybe a few hundred atoms here. Even if we get a few million or billion (10^9), Avogadro's Number is (IIRC) 6x10^23 so the mass involved is negligible. Hence, no building super-materials. The real use is being able to measure gravity with great precision and do other kewl stuff.

New Form of Matter?

[Vagary]

Can someone parse this [wikipedia.org] and tell me: does this qualify as a new form of matter? And if so, doesn't that mean there are an infinite number of forms?

Re:New Form of Matter?

[Mark of THE CITY]

No. Gas atoms cool into liquids or solids, and on the way exist as clusters of small numbers of atoms. What is special here is that the cluster is formed under controlled conditions, not haphazardly.

There were a number of researchers trying to understand the condensation process by a variety of experimental processes. As a graduate student, I was looking for molecular clusters with symmetries that lent themselves to further study.

Subscription needed

[mike3411]

Why is a story posted that is only available to subscribers? I can't read the article.