Bose-Einstein 145;blob146; key to new physics

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have trapped a new form of matter, proposed 80 years ago by Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein, that may hold the key to new quantum physics.

Bose and Einstein had proposed that if a gas of neutral atoms is cooled to a low enough temperature, all the millions of atoms in the gas would end up in the same place at the same time8212;a weird quantum state dubbed a Bose-Einstein Condensate BEC.

The first BEC was generated 10 years ago by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Subhadeep Gupta andand the Berkeley scientists are the first to create a 8216;blob8217; of supercooled BEC in a storage ring8212; a racetrack two millimetres across at a temperature only one-millionth of a degree above absolute zero.