MYS_fit

7-14-95. NYPaper Page Oner:


   "2 Groups of Physicists Produce Matter That Einstein
   Postulated."

      By chilling a cloud of atoms to a temperature barely
      above absolute zero, scientists at a Colorado laboratory
      have at last created a bizarre type of matter that had
      eluded experimenters ever since its potential existence
      was postulated by Albert Einstein 70 years ago. The
      creation of this Bose-Einstein condensate -- named for
      Einstein, and the Indian theorist Satyendra Nath Bose --
      was hailed yesterday as the basis of a new field of
      research expected to explain some fundamental mysteries
      of atomic physics. A Texas group later produced similar
      results. The achievement should allow physicists to peer
      directly into the realm of the ultrasmall.     MYS_fit


   [This was also reported in The Economist of July 1.]

O.K., this is totally off any reasonable topic, but allow me the indulgence:

>    "2 Groups of Physicists Produce Matter That Einstein
>    Postulated."

I've been hanging around Carl Weiman's lab for a couple of years (a friend
of mine works on one of the projects), and this is one hell of an 
achievement. The apparatus they use sits on a tabletop, and you can
watch the gas through infared T.V. cameras in real time. The trap is just
a little vacuum chamber with windows in the side. They use the same
diode lasers that come in your C.D. player, an ingeniously inexpensive
setup. 

Yow!

                                  -- Will