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What is Bose Einstein Condensate · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Jorney, do you know who is the first person
0:11
Speaker 1: to reach the South Pole? It's probably a Norwegian, wasn't
0:16
Speaker 1: it someone called rolled Emson. Yeah, he's pretty famous. But
0:20
Speaker 1: do you know who the second or third place finishes were.
0:25
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess rold Emonson Jr. Or rold Emonson the third.
0:30
Speaker 1: I have no idea. You know, those people who came
0:33
Speaker 1: in second and third, they risked their lives, literally froze
0:37
Speaker 1: their butts off, and we don't even know who they are.
0:39
Speaker 1: Man in this case, it was literally a raised to
0:42
Speaker 1: the bottom of the world. But yeah, you're right, I
0:46
Speaker 1: guess second place doesn't get much attention. And the same
0:49
Speaker 1: is true in science. There's no consolation prize for the Nobel.
0:53
Speaker 1: You don't get a silver Noble price. They should hand
0:56
Speaker 1: out a silver and a bronze, an honorable mention. There
1:00
Speaker 1: just an honor to be nominated. Hi, I'm or Hamming
1:17
Speaker 1: cartoonists and the creator of PhD comments. Hi I'm Daniel.
1:21
Speaker 1: I'm a particle of physicist. And if I was in
1:23
Speaker 1: the running for the Nobel Prize, I wouldn't get the
1:25
Speaker 1: silver or le bronze. I would get the Plywood Nobel Prize.
1:29
Speaker 1: You get the thanks for Trying coupon, I get the
1:33
Speaker 1: pin and ribbon on him and say thanks. Welcome to
1:35
Speaker 1: our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe, a production
1:38
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio in which we take a tour
1:41
Speaker 1: of all the incredible things that scientists have won the
1:44
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize for and dive deep into all the things
1:47
Speaker 1: that science has not yet figured out, all the things
1:50
Speaker 1: that people want to understand, all those weird mysteries of
1:54
Speaker 1: the universe that nobody has yet figured out. Because it's
1:57
Speaker 1: a big, mysterious universe out there and humans are trying
2:01
Speaker 1: to make sense of it and come up with theories
2:03
Speaker 1: about how it all works. But it is, after all
2:05
Speaker 1: a human endeavor, and so it's about humans chipping away
2:10
Speaker 1: at the big unknown questions of the universe. And here
2:13
Speaker 1: on the show, we like to talk about the smallest things.
2:15
Speaker 1: We like to break open the universe and find out
2:18
Speaker 1: what it's made out of. What are the smallest things.
2:20
Speaker 1: But another sort of orthogonal way to approach discovery is
2:24
Speaker 1: trying to make matter do weird stuff like you're familiar
2:28
Speaker 1: with three states of matter, solids, liquids in gases, But
2:32
Speaker 1: it turns out there are lots of other really weird
2:34
Speaker 1: things that matter can do. Yeah, there are other states
2:38
Speaker 1: of matter like super hot forms like plasma, and also
2:42
Speaker 1: super cold forms. And one of these forms is a
2:47
Speaker 1: pretty well known form that we're going to talk about today.
2:49
Speaker 1: That's right. If you get matter into really weird configurations,
2:52
Speaker 1: it will do strange stuff. And this is a great
2:55
Speaker 1: way to learn about what the rules are, how does
2:57
Speaker 1: it fit together, what are the forces that are involved?
3:00
Speaker 1: And it's just fun to make matter be weird. Can
3:03
Speaker 1: you make it shinye? Can you make it jump? Can
3:05
Speaker 1: you make it super conducting? Can you make it super fluid?
3:09
Speaker 1: Can you make it act as a single blob? It's
3:11
Speaker 1: fun to make new kinds of Google, would that be
3:13
Speaker 1: your bumper sticker, Daniel? Keep matter weird, yeah, because one
3:17
Speaker 1: of the basic ways to explore the universe is just
3:19
Speaker 1: to look around you and see, like what kinds of
3:21
Speaker 1: stuff is there? You know, the very first people to
3:24
Speaker 1: think about what is the universe made out of just
3:27
Speaker 1: sort of organized the stuff around them into like you know,
3:30
Speaker 1: air or fire, earth and water. And that's reflection that
3:33
Speaker 1: there are different kinds of things. And even though we
3:37
Speaker 1: know that the universe has made fundamentally of tying the
3:40
Speaker 1: little particles. Those particles come together in really weird ways.
3:44
Speaker 1: I mean, who could predict solids and gases and all
3:47
Speaker 1: sorts of weird behavior from just the tiny particles. It's complicated.
3:51
Speaker 1: So while it's worthwhile to like dig down deep to
3:53
Speaker 1: the tiny bits, it's also really worthwhile to figure out
3:56
Speaker 1: how those bits play together to make weird stuff. So
3:59
Speaker 1: to the the program will be asking the question, what
4:06
Speaker 1: is a Bose Einstein condensate now? M Daniel, I'm guessing
4:11
Speaker 1: that's not related to both speakers or being like a BOWS.
4:17
Speaker 1: I think Bose was an early investor in the Bows
4:19
Speaker 1: speaker system. They're not related. The Bose family fortune came
4:25
Speaker 1: from physics. No, but they are related to the Higgs boson.
4:28
Speaker 1: It's the same Bows, is it? Yeah? Yes, absolutely, the
4:32
Speaker 1: Bose Einstein condensate is related to the Higgs boson. It's
4:35
Speaker 1: the same. Bows is a famous Indian physicist whose last
4:39
Speaker 1: name is Bose, and the kind of particle that we
4:42
Speaker 1: call a boson, a particle of spin one, is named
4:44
Speaker 1: after both. And he's also the guy who worked together
4:48
Speaker 1: with Einstein to come up with this idea of a
4:50
Speaker 1: weird state of matter called the Bose Einstein content. So
4:54
Speaker 1: he did rocket leg a ball And I don't know
4:57
Speaker 1: if you remember, but after the Higgs boson was discovered,
5:00
Speaker 1: there are a lot of folks in India who are like, hey,
5:02
Speaker 1: how come Higgs is getting all the credit? After all?
5:05
Speaker 1: What about bos is important contribution? His name is half
5:08
Speaker 1: of Higgs boson. Why isn't he getting as much credit? Wow?
5:12
Speaker 1: I guess it's lots of brand appealed, like clean X. Yeah. Well,
5:16
Speaker 1: if you're gonna get your name on stuff, you know,
5:17
Speaker 1: you can get your name on one individual particle like Higgs,
5:21
Speaker 1: or you can get your name on like a whole
5:22
Speaker 1: class of particles like bosons. Bosons are anything with integer spin.
5:28
Speaker 1: That's like half the particles out there, photons, w's, z
5:31
Speaker 1: s all these are boson particles. Right. Well, so today
5:36
Speaker 1: this is about states of matter, and you're right, it
5:38
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting that, you know, we can talk
5:40
Speaker 1: about what matter is and what it does and what
5:43
Speaker 1: it looks like, but we can also talk about the
5:45
Speaker 1: ways it can form itself or the ways that it
5:48
Speaker 1: can exist out there. Yeah, and it's incredible that we
5:51
Speaker 1: can sometimes predict this. We can just like write down
5:54
Speaker 1: math on a piece of paper and say, we think
5:56
Speaker 1: if you put these atoms in this weird configuration that
6:00
Speaker 1: do this amazing, crazy thing you can't otherwise see. And
6:03
Speaker 1: then it's a game of seeing whether you can do it.
6:06
Speaker 1: You know, it's an experimental challenge. And this is one
6:09
Speaker 1: of those stories where the theorists were decades and decades
6:12
Speaker 1: ahead of the experimentalists. They had this idea in the
6:15
Speaker 1: twenties and it wasn't until the nineties that people figured
6:19
Speaker 1: it out. That means that it was one of these
6:21
Speaker 1: like plums hanging out there where everybody knew if you
6:25
Speaker 1: could be the first one to do it, you would
6:27
Speaker 1: get a Nobel Prize. And there was sort of like,
6:29
Speaker 1: you know, progress for ten years, and then things ground
6:32
Speaker 1: to a halt. Nobody had any good ideas, and then
6:34
Speaker 1: I burst a progress and then very late in the game,
6:37
Speaker 1: a quick sprint to the finish line, where you know,
6:40
Speaker 1: the people who crossed the finish line first, they win
6:42
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize and everybody else just has a cold
6:45
Speaker 1: gas of atoms man. So only two people are famous,
6:49
Speaker 1: the people who come up with a problem and the
6:51
Speaker 1: people who solve the problem. Everyone in between gets forgot
6:54
Speaker 1: that's right. And if you find this kind of story inspiring,
6:57
Speaker 1: you know, there are plenty of other things out there
6:59
Speaker 1: which everybody knows. If you discover them, you would win
7:02
Speaker 1: a Nobel Prize. And maybe we're five years, maybe we're
7:05
Speaker 1: fifty years away from discovering those things and somebody getting
7:08
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize. But there is plenty of low hanging
7:11
Speaker 1: fruit left in physics. All right, are you making a
7:14
Speaker 1: plug for bananas, Daniel, because they're pretty low hanging In general,
7:19
Speaker 1: people have discovered bananas already, sorry to first bubble well,
7:25
Speaker 1: such as the case for the Bose Einstein concent And
7:28
Speaker 1: as usually, we were wondering how many people out there
7:30
Speaker 1: knew what this was or where familiar with what the
7:33
Speaker 1: state of matter is, And so as usual, Daniel went
7:36
Speaker 1: out there into the wilds of the internet to ask
7:39
Speaker 1: people what is a Bose Einstein concent That's right? And
7:42
Speaker 1: if you'd like to participate in our random person on
7:45
Speaker 1: the Internet questions, please write to us two questions at
7:49
Speaker 1: Daniel and jorgean dot com. We would love to hear
7:51
Speaker 1: your thoughts for future upcoming episodes. Here's what people had
7:54
Speaker 1: to say. I would imagine something to do with Albert Einstein,
7:58
Speaker 1: though I don't think it has anything to do with
8:00
Speaker 1: Bose audio. I would guess it might have something to
8:03
Speaker 1: do with Bosn's and condensate means, maybe something with the
8:08
Speaker 1: way they behave at a particular temperature or pressure. Maybe
8:12
Speaker 1: it's a speaker of the vibrates water out of the
8:14
Speaker 1: year and then use the hydrogen to blow up your house. Well,
8:18
Speaker 1: I heard about it, but I don't remember. It's some
8:23
Speaker 1: kind of state or I don't know. I think Bose
8:28
Speaker 1: was a fellow that was around before Einstein who came
8:31
Speaker 1: up with the initial concept, and then I think Einstein
8:33
Speaker 1: sweetened the deal a little bit. But this was around
8:36
Speaker 1: something hectic to do with theory of relativity and the
8:41
Speaker 1: expansion of the universe and universal constants, So I think
8:45
Speaker 1: it was something related to that, but I can't quite remember.
8:48
Speaker 1: I know it was mentioned on the podcast recently. It
8:50
Speaker 1: was the state of matter, I think from dron The
8:54
Speaker 1: scientists in the s S lab found it in some
8:57
Speaker 1: udom cold lab that in the one name and they
9:00
Speaker 1: discoded it's been theoretical so far, and so first them
9:04
Speaker 1: there's something you exist in that state of matter? All right, Well,
9:08
Speaker 1: it sounds like a lot of people knew was a
9:10
Speaker 1: state of matter. Yeah, except for the folks who thought
9:13
Speaker 1: it was a speaker that vibrates water out of the
9:15
Speaker 1: air and blows up your house. Wow. Where did that
9:19
Speaker 1: one come from? Right? I don't know. That must have
9:21
Speaker 1: been like an awesome installation of massive bows speakers that
9:24
Speaker 1: chattered somebody's windows or something, And I like somebody made
9:28
Speaker 1: that connection to the Boson particle. Yeah, exactly. So there's
9:31
Speaker 1: some good general knowledge out there. Good job listeners. Yeah,
9:34
Speaker 1: so bose, Einstein, condensate, Daniel, let's dig into it. What
9:38
Speaker 1: is it? I'm guessing it has something to do with
9:40
Speaker 1: Einstein and maybe condensed milk? Is that the sweet and
9:46
Speaker 1: condensed milk? Yes, it's a recipe for lemon bars by
9:50
Speaker 1: Boz and only if you get it cold enough and
9:54
Speaker 1: only the first bite. Yeah. So what it is is
9:56
Speaker 1: a new state of matter, another state of matter different
10:00
Speaker 1: and from liquid, solid, or gas or even plasma. And
10:04
Speaker 1: as you said before, those are the states of matter
10:06
Speaker 1: sort of organized in terms of temperature increasing, right, solid, liquid, gas, plasma.
10:12
Speaker 1: And what happens there is the particles are disassociating as
10:15
Speaker 1: they get hotter and hotter, they tend to move around more,
10:18
Speaker 1: they have less restrictions. But there are these phase differences, right,
10:21
Speaker 1: Things don't go smoothly from solid to liquid and liquid
10:27
Speaker 1: to gas. They're these transitions where suddenly things behave different Wait,
10:30
Speaker 1: isn't there a middle state called the smoothie or a
10:35
Speaker 1: carbonated drink. That's right, it's called the margarita. That's the
10:41
Speaker 1: state of matter you discover after you win the Nogo process. Right, Yeah,
10:46
Speaker 1: it's made of dacorns. Now, So they're these interesting transitions,
10:49
Speaker 1: and that's fascinating, right that these particles tend to work
10:52
Speaker 1: in one way and then you cross them over a
10:54
Speaker 1: threshold and they tend to work in another way, Like
10:56
Speaker 1: there are different rules for gases and liquids and solids
10:59
Speaker 1: and lasmas, right. And it has something to do with
11:02
Speaker 1: the forces that bind atoms together and particles together, right, Like,
11:07
Speaker 1: at some point their energy is more than the that bond,
11:11
Speaker 1: and so they start arranging themselves in different ways exactly,
11:14
Speaker 1: And so you have to understand it from the microscopic
11:16
Speaker 1: You say, well, what's the dominant force? And just like
11:19
Speaker 1: you said, when things get cold with the dominant force,
11:22
Speaker 1: is this crystal structure of the atoms that are holding
11:25
Speaker 1: them together. And after that, the dominant energetic contribution is
11:29
Speaker 1: the kinetic energy of the objects. But there's still some bonds, right,
11:33
Speaker 1: the bonds between atoms and a liquid or what give
11:35
Speaker 1: you things like surface pressure and constant volume and stuff.
11:39
Speaker 1: And so you have to understand, like what are the
11:41
Speaker 1: dominant forces and how are they playing together? And so
11:44
Speaker 1: you take these little atoms and you try to think
11:46
Speaker 1: what are their emergent properties. And this is a really
11:49
Speaker 1: hard thing to do, to go from the microscopic like
11:52
Speaker 1: I have a few little particles to understanding the whole thing.
11:56
Speaker 1: It's like why hurricanes are difficult. You know, we understand
11:59
Speaker 1: how particles of water move through the atmosphere, it's not hard,
12:03
Speaker 1: But how do you understand ten trillion of them swirling
12:05
Speaker 1: around in really complex situations? So this kind of theory
12:09
Speaker 1: is very difficult. And Bows and Einstein we're playing around
12:13
Speaker 1: with the math and they figured out a new phase.
12:15
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, here's a way if you arrange the
12:18
Speaker 1: particles in this special way, you can get completely different
12:21
Speaker 1: behavior from anything we've seen. Well, I guess you're saying
12:25
Speaker 1: it's sort of like an emergent property that means that
12:27
Speaker 1: it's like how they all behave collectively, and you're saying
12:31
Speaker 1: that it doesn't you know, like you can't talk about
12:34
Speaker 1: one atom being solid, liquid or gas, right, you have
12:36
Speaker 1: to talk about like a collection of them, That's right.
12:39
Speaker 1: You have to talk about the state of like many particles,
12:41
Speaker 1: you know. I think about physics sort of like in layers. Right,
12:44
Speaker 1: we have rules for how the solar system operates, and
12:47
Speaker 1: we think about the planets as like an individual blob.
12:50
Speaker 1: But then we also have rules for how winds move
12:53
Speaker 1: and fluid dynamics, and then we have on another layer
12:55
Speaker 1: we have rules for individual particles, and then deeper down
12:59
Speaker 1: we have rules for like how the quarks move inside
13:01
Speaker 1: those particles. That in principle, all you need to know
13:04
Speaker 1: is the sort of lowest level stuff, the tiniest particles.
13:08
Speaker 1: Those really do determine everything else. But in practice it's hard.
13:13
Speaker 1: It's a hard way to do stuff, Like it's hard
13:15
Speaker 1: to predict how a hurricane works, even if you understand
13:18
Speaker 1: wind and water. And the amazing thing is how much
13:21
Speaker 1: interesting stuff you discover that's not fundamental like tiny particles,
13:26
Speaker 1: but comes out at the higher levels like hurricanes, And
13:29
Speaker 1: this stuff can be simply described by new laws of
13:33
Speaker 1: physics that work at that higher level, Like you don't
13:36
Speaker 1: need to know about particles to understand how cannonball flies,
13:39
Speaker 1: and have a math formula that describes it. And that's
13:42
Speaker 1: why phases of matter are super fascinating, not because they're fundamental,
13:47
Speaker 1: but because they emerge. All right, So then Einstein got
13:51
Speaker 1: together with this scientist called Bows and they hung out
13:55
Speaker 1: and worked out the math together. Or how did they
13:57
Speaker 1: work together? I think Bo's actually worked out the basic
13:59
Speaker 1: idea at first, and then Einstein reads paper and extended it,
14:03
Speaker 1: and the result was this prediction that if you took
14:06
Speaker 1: atoms and you made them not super hot like you
14:08
Speaker 1: would need to get a plasma, but super duper duper cold,
14:12
Speaker 1: then they would do something really interesting, but only if
14:15
Speaker 1: there were a certain kind of particle, a particle called
14:18
Speaker 1: a boson. Oh. I see, so this is not about atoms.
14:21
Speaker 1: It's more like when we're talking about particular particles. Well,
14:25
Speaker 1: there's two kinds of particles. There are fermions and there
14:27
Speaker 1: are bosons. Fermions are particles that have a certain kind
14:31
Speaker 1: of spin half an integer that can have spin one
14:33
Speaker 1: half or minus one half, and bosons are particles that
14:36
Speaker 1: have spin that are an integer. So they can have
14:38
Speaker 1: spin like one zero or minus one. Now that's not
14:41
Speaker 1: really a big deal, it doesn't really matter. But every atom,
14:44
Speaker 1: for example, is either a fermion or boson depending on
14:47
Speaker 1: how you build it up out of the little particles.
14:49
Speaker 1: So for example, rubidium is a boson because of the
14:53
Speaker 1: particles it's made out of. You can also have fermionic atoms. Oh,
14:57
Speaker 1: what are electrons? But are electron? Electrons are emions, and
15:01
Speaker 1: quarks are bosons. Right, Electrons are fermions and quarks are fermions.
15:05
Speaker 1: At the particle level, the smallest level, all of the
15:08
Speaker 1: matter particles quarks and leptons are fermions, while the force particles, photons, etcetera.
15:14
Speaker 1: Are bosons. But you can combine fermions together to make boson.
15:19
Speaker 1: So like two electrons together can make a bosonic pair
15:24
Speaker 1: because the one has can add up to an integer.
15:26
Speaker 1: And that's why, for example, you can make bosons out
15:29
Speaker 1: of fermions. Some really complicated spin arithmetic there that we
15:33
Speaker 1: probably don't want to get into. And vocabulary. I feel
15:36
Speaker 1: like you're confusing me with vocabulary again, Daniel. But like Higgs,
15:40
Speaker 1: boson then is made out of other things, or is
15:42
Speaker 1: the higgs boson and boson bosons don't have to be
15:45
Speaker 1: made the fermions. They can be fundamental like the higgs,
15:47
Speaker 1: but all the force particles like the higgs, boson, the photon,
15:50
Speaker 1: the w d z fundamentally are boson. But fermions can
15:54
Speaker 1: get together and become like boson. Yes, absolutely, you can
15:59
Speaker 1: combine find the half spin lego pieces to make integer
16:03
Speaker 1: spin pieces. I see, but they have to come in
16:06
Speaker 1: like in pairs. I guess right, Yeah, you have to
16:08
Speaker 1: combine them the right way. So does it have to
16:10
Speaker 1: do with like if the atom has an even number
16:12
Speaker 1: of electrons or yes, exactly, so you can make bosons,
16:18
Speaker 1: you can make fermions. Every atom can be fermions, you
16:20
Speaker 1: can have bosons, etcetera. But there's an important difference because
16:24
Speaker 1: bosons can do something that fermions cannot do, which is
16:28
Speaker 1: hang out together. You're saying, yes, they can hang out together.
16:31
Speaker 1: So fermions, for a reason that nobody really understands, can
16:35
Speaker 1: never share a quantum state. Like that's the reason why
16:39
Speaker 1: electrons which are fermions don't all lie in the ground
16:42
Speaker 1: state of an atom, like you have an atom with
16:44
Speaker 1: ten electrons in it. They don't all just lie in
16:47
Speaker 1: the lowest energy level. They stack on top of each other.
16:50
Speaker 1: The energy levels are a ladder. You can only have
16:52
Speaker 1: one electron per layer of the ladder because their fermions
16:56
Speaker 1: bosons are happy to all hang out at the bottom
16:59
Speaker 1: level in the nuts. In many configurations, like you can
17:02
Speaker 1: have a laser, which is a bunch of photons which
17:04
Speaker 1: are bosons, all in the same quantum states. And so
17:08
Speaker 1: we have two kinds of particles, bosons and fermions. And
17:12
Speaker 1: we understand sort of mathematically why this happens. It emerges
17:16
Speaker 1: from the math, but we don't really fundamentally and tutially
17:18
Speaker 1: understand why bosons can all hang out in the same
17:21
Speaker 1: state and formons just will not Like this, this famous
17:25
Speaker 1: story about how somebody asked Fineman he find me, can
17:28
Speaker 1: you explain this to us why bosons can all hang
17:31
Speaker 1: out in the same state and formons can't. And he
17:34
Speaker 1: came back and he said, you know, I don't have
17:36
Speaker 1: an explanation that I can use on like eighteen year olds,
17:39
Speaker 1: which means I don't really understand it. That's right. He's
17:43
Speaker 1: famous for saying nobody understands quantum physics, right, yeah, exactly,
17:48
Speaker 1: and you know it does come out of the mathematics,
17:50
Speaker 1: but we don't intuitively understand it. It's just a weird
17:52
Speaker 1: fact about the universe. But it means that if you
17:56
Speaker 1: put a bunch of Boson particles together, they can in
18:00
Speaker 1: all hang out in the coldest, lowest quantum state, and
18:04
Speaker 1: that is the Einstein bos concit. Yes, so they predicted
18:08
Speaker 1: that if you get a bunch of these particles together
18:11
Speaker 1: and you get them really cold, they can all be
18:13
Speaker 1: in the same quantum state. And then something really weird
18:16
Speaker 1: would happen that because they would be so close together
18:20
Speaker 1: and so cold that the size of their quantum wavelength
18:25
Speaker 1: would be larger than the distance between them, and so
18:28
Speaker 1: they would basically merge and all have the same quantum
18:31
Speaker 1: state and act like one big quantum particle. Alright, cool,
18:35
Speaker 1: let's get into it a little bit more and how
18:37
Speaker 1: that all works. But first let's take a quick break.
18:53
Speaker 1: All right, we're talking about the Bose Einstein condensate, and
18:56
Speaker 1: you're saying that it's related to this idea that bosons
18:59
Speaker 1: can hang out to other and they can share a
19:01
Speaker 1: quantum state. I guess maybe some people might be wondering
19:04
Speaker 1: what does that mean, Like they're sharing a quantum state.
19:07
Speaker 1: Does that mean that they have all the same quantum
19:09
Speaker 1: properties and are sitting in the same spot. It means
19:12
Speaker 1: that they sit on top of each other. They can
19:13
Speaker 1: be in the same location and they can share all
19:16
Speaker 1: the same quantum properties. And this is really interesting because
19:19
Speaker 1: usually you have just one particle in a quantum state,
19:23
Speaker 1: and you know, we know the quantum state is sort
19:25
Speaker 1: of a thing that controls what happens to one particle.
19:28
Speaker 1: It's like a list of all the possibilities for what
19:30
Speaker 1: that particle can do. But since you only ever have
19:33
Speaker 1: one particle in a quantum state, you don't really see
19:35
Speaker 1: the full distribution. But if you have a bunch of
19:39
Speaker 1: particles and they're all in that same one quantum state,
19:43
Speaker 1: then you can see sort of the whole distribution. You
19:45
Speaker 1: can like physically look at this thing and see, oh,
19:48
Speaker 1: here's the distribution of all the possible things that could
19:52
Speaker 1: happen to this particle. Because you have ten million particles
19:54
Speaker 1: and they're all in the same quantum states, you get
19:57
Speaker 1: to see sort of all the outcomes at once. A
20:00
Speaker 1: only if there are boson. Only if there are boson
20:02
Speaker 1: because only bosons can do this. Permons can only have
20:04
Speaker 1: one particle per quantum state. Bosons you can have any
20:08
Speaker 1: number of particles all in the lowest quantum state. Now,
20:11
Speaker 1: how do you get a bunch of particles in the
20:13
Speaker 1: same quantum state. Well, the only way really to do
20:16
Speaker 1: that is to push them up against the wall of temperature.
20:19
Speaker 1: But you can't get them all in the same quantum
20:20
Speaker 1: state if they're at two hundred degrees because there's a
20:23
Speaker 1: billion different quantum states. So what you do is you
20:25
Speaker 1: make them really really cold, so there's only one of
20:29
Speaker 1: state available to them, the lowest one, and then they
20:32
Speaker 1: all pile up in that quantum state. And Einstein and
20:35
Speaker 1: Bows predicted that if you did that, you would get
20:37
Speaker 1: this blob where the particles sort of lose their individuality.
20:41
Speaker 1: They become a macroscopically size like you could see it
20:45
Speaker 1: quantum mechanically behaving conject I guess maybe I'm getting tripped
20:49
Speaker 1: up because I'm thinking of these things as particles. It's
20:51
Speaker 1: like little things. But maybe you know, if you think
20:54
Speaker 1: of them as waves, then it maybe makes more sense.
20:57
Speaker 1: Like you know, fermions, you can't have a wave on
21:00
Speaker 1: top of another wave, but bosons they're happy to stack
21:02
Speaker 1: together as waves. It's that kind of what you're saying. Yeah,
21:05
Speaker 1: And every time you think about these things, you should
21:07
Speaker 1: not be thinking about a tiny, little spinning ball of matter, right,
21:10
Speaker 1: because that's not what they are. They're weird quantum mechanical objects.
21:14
Speaker 1: And the intuition you usually have about how a particle,
21:16
Speaker 1: a little thing moves through space doesn't work. But you're right,
21:20
Speaker 1: and you can apply that intuition to the waves because
21:23
Speaker 1: the waves follow all those rules, like waves are deterministic
21:26
Speaker 1: and their future can be predicted and actually move through space.
21:30
Speaker 1: So yes, you can imagine all those bosonic waves sort
21:32
Speaker 1: of stacking on top of each other. They're all doing
21:34
Speaker 1: the same thing, right, whereas like a fermion, a bunch
21:37
Speaker 1: of waves, they would all sort of avoid each other. Yeah, exactly,
21:40
Speaker 1: like droplets that repel each other. Yeah, or sort of
21:42
Speaker 1: like a game of connect for you know, you slide
21:45
Speaker 1: the pieces in and they stack on top of each other,
21:47
Speaker 1: and once you got one in a slot, you can't
21:49
Speaker 1: get another one in a slot, whereas boson is that
21:51
Speaker 1: just like slide right past each other, and they're all
21:53
Speaker 1: happy to go down to the very lowest level. So
21:56
Speaker 1: you couldn't play connect forward with bosons, they all stack
21:58
Speaker 1: at the bottom. That would be a hard game to win.
22:01
Speaker 1: There's right, unless it's connect one, in which case it's
22:05
Speaker 1: over instantly, all right. So einstand and bos figured out
22:08
Speaker 1: that if you cool atoms, you make them cold enough,
22:11
Speaker 1: then with bosons then they all sort of like merge
22:14
Speaker 1: together all their wave functions. I think you were telling
22:17
Speaker 1: me that, like you go over some threshold, like their
22:20
Speaker 1: quantum wave functions starts to overlap. The key thing is
22:23
Speaker 1: to get them so cold. That's the size of their
22:26
Speaker 1: wave function. The thing that controls where they are is
22:29
Speaker 1: about the same as the mean difference in the spacing
22:33
Speaker 1: between them, so that their wave functions actually overlaps. And
22:36
Speaker 1: you have like atom number one over here and I'm
22:38
Speaker 1: number two over there. They're not literally on top of
22:41
Speaker 1: each other, but their wave functions are now over and
22:44
Speaker 1: the more you can get them on top of each
22:46
Speaker 1: other the better. But there's this sort of threshold where
22:48
Speaker 1: their wave functions are now overlapping. And they think that's
22:51
Speaker 1: when the faith transition occurs, and you get this new
22:54
Speaker 1: weird kind of blob that should behave differently, and we'll
22:58
Speaker 1: they can do exactly what this thing can do, but
23:00
Speaker 1: it should behave differently than liquids or gases or solid Oh.
23:04
Speaker 1: I see, it's kind of like normally the particles or
23:07
Speaker 1: the atoms are are bouncing around, they're moving too fast,
23:10
Speaker 1: really far apart from each other. But once you cool it,
23:12
Speaker 1: they start to come together and at some point their
23:15
Speaker 1: wave functions overlap. They synchronize. I guess is a good
23:19
Speaker 1: way to put it. Yeah, they synchronize. They all follow
23:22
Speaker 1: the same rules, they're all in the same state. They
23:24
Speaker 1: can have different actual outcomes because remember there's still a
23:27
Speaker 1: random element there, but they all have the same wave functions.
23:30
Speaker 1: They're all determined by the same fundamental and dynamics. Wait,
23:34
Speaker 1: there's like one overall wave function that sort of controls
23:38
Speaker 1: all of them. Yeah, that's right. And you know, there's
23:39
Speaker 1: nothing stopping you from writing a wave function down for
23:42
Speaker 1: two particles that have nothing to do with each other.
23:45
Speaker 1: But those way functions factorized. It's just like a product
23:47
Speaker 1: of the two. But when they overlap, when they synchronize,
23:50
Speaker 1: like you said, then you have a single wave function
23:52
Speaker 1: that describes both particles. And so if you get a
23:55
Speaker 1: bunch of particles you cool them, they will start to
23:58
Speaker 1: overlap and suddenly it's like you have a giant article. Right,
24:00
Speaker 1: that's kind of the idea, and that's they're all sort
24:03
Speaker 1: of like moving together, but they're not really moving, they're
24:06
Speaker 1: just sort of existing in a quantum way together. Yes,
24:10
Speaker 1: and then together they can do quantum things that you
24:12
Speaker 1: usually can only see on tiny microscopic particles. But now
24:16
Speaker 1: you can see a giant, millimeter sized blob doing these
24:20
Speaker 1: quantum things. A giant, like a millimeter sized quantum object.
24:24
Speaker 1: That's yes, huge, that's huge. Yeah, I mean in a
24:27
Speaker 1: literal and also significance. And it's not like it has
24:31
Speaker 1: great you know, military applications or it's going to revolutionize
24:35
Speaker 1: the Internet. You're not going to see like Bose Einstein
24:37
Speaker 1: computing or whatever. It's mostly just cool, like, can we
24:41
Speaker 1: make a new weird kind of Google, especially one that
24:44
Speaker 1: reveals the fundamental quantum nature of the universe in a
24:47
Speaker 1: way that's just totally unambiguous and observable. I guess because
24:51
Speaker 1: you can look at it. Yeah, people like to see stuff,
24:54
Speaker 1: and so here this is quantum mechanics you can see,
24:56
Speaker 1: and so what kind of weird stuff can it do?
24:58
Speaker 1: Can it's like teleport or well, it can interfere. So
25:04
Speaker 1: you can have like two of these things with different
25:07
Speaker 1: way functions, and then you sort of overlap them and
25:09
Speaker 1: you see an interference pattern. Like rather than having a
25:13
Speaker 1: single particle and it's got a probability going here or there,
25:15
Speaker 1: you get these waves in the blob, You get these
25:19
Speaker 1: interference patterns, these patterns of dark and light in the
25:21
Speaker 1: single blob, and you can do quantum mechanical tunneling. Yeah,
25:25
Speaker 1: that's what I mean by teleporting is that they can
25:28
Speaker 1: cross impossible barrier. A single particle can have a way
25:32
Speaker 1: function that exists on both sides of a barrier, right
25:35
Speaker 1: like in a potential well, and across a barrier to
25:38
Speaker 1: the other side of the well. So it can't be
25:41
Speaker 1: in between, but has a possibility to be on the
25:43
Speaker 1: left and the right. We did a whole fun podcast
25:45
Speaker 1: episode about quantum tunneling and the reason that that can
25:48
Speaker 1: happen is that the particle has a probability to be
25:50
Speaker 1: on the left and the probability to be on the right.
25:52
Speaker 1: And particles aren't limited to classical paths. They don't have
25:56
Speaker 1: to go from where they were to where they are.
25:58
Speaker 1: They just have these snap shots. So if your probability
26:01
Speaker 1: to be on the left and then on the right later.
26:03
Speaker 1: That's no problem. You can do that. That's quantum tunnel.
26:06
Speaker 1: And so that's why would happen with the blob. It
26:08
Speaker 1: would suddenly appear on the other side of a wall. Yeah,
26:11
Speaker 1: you can have part of the blob on the left
26:12
Speaker 1: and then suddenly have part of the blob on the right,
26:14
Speaker 1: even though it can't go in between. So it can teleport.
26:18
Speaker 1: So we can do weird. Yeah, quantum teleportation. Sure, So
26:23
Speaker 1: you just have to be cool and you can teleport
26:26
Speaker 1: super duper cool like nano cool. All right, And are
26:29
Speaker 1: there any other interesting things that can do or interesting
26:33
Speaker 1: applications we can use these for. Well, we talked about
26:35
Speaker 1: this once that you can do weird stuff to light.
26:38
Speaker 1: Bose Einstein condensate, because of its weird properties, can slow
26:41
Speaker 1: down light to like the speed of a bicycle. Usually
26:45
Speaker 1: light travels, you know, three hundred million meters per second,
26:49
Speaker 1: but you can slow down light if it goes into
26:52
Speaker 1: various media and boze Einstein content sates can slow it
26:55
Speaker 1: down to like the speed of somebody riding a bicycle.
26:58
Speaker 1: And there's a group of Harvor that even was able
27:00
Speaker 1: to stop light inside of Bose Einstein condensate. Right, Yeah,
27:04
Speaker 1: we talked about light going in and then bouncing around
27:07
Speaker 1: kind of or interacting with the Bose Einstein concert and
27:10
Speaker 1: essentially slowing down light. Yeah, slowing down light or even
27:14
Speaker 1: stopping it. Like they can have a laser pulse go
27:16
Speaker 1: into the Bose Einstein condensate and then they can just
27:19
Speaker 1: wait and they can move it somewhere else and then
27:21
Speaker 1: they can have it re emit the exact same laser pulse.
27:24
Speaker 1: So that's kind of cool. They're working on using Bose
27:27
Speaker 1: Einstein condensates to build an atom laser. So usually you
27:30
Speaker 1: have a laser made of photons, right, You're shooting beams
27:33
Speaker 1: of light made of tiny little photons. But people are
27:36
Speaker 1: interested in shooting beams of atoms, atoms that are all
27:40
Speaker 1: in the same quantum state, and that can do the
27:42
Speaker 1: same kind of thing as a laser, like enhance and
27:45
Speaker 1: resonate with each other. And it has all sorts of
27:47
Speaker 1: weird applications. Plus it just seems kind of cool. And
27:51
Speaker 1: so people are building atom lasers using Boze Einstein condensates.
27:55
Speaker 1: That is a really weird thing that matter can do. Right,
27:58
Speaker 1: I guess it's all because of quantum acount. It's like
28:00
Speaker 1: you know, solid gas, liquid plasma. Those you can sort
28:04
Speaker 1: of imagine from classical physics, right, but this one is
28:09
Speaker 1: like a very unique quantum state of matter. Yeah, this
28:12
Speaker 1: one you couldn't do if matter really was tiny little
28:15
Speaker 1: classical balls. So you really need a microscopic quantum understanding
28:19
Speaker 1: to make any sense of this. And it's sort of
28:21
Speaker 1: awesome that they just use the map to predict it, right,
28:24
Speaker 1: to say, like, oh, here's how we think this should work.
28:27
Speaker 1: I'm really in all of those kinds of accomplishment. This
28:29
Speaker 1: is a really interesting story. And so let's get into that.
28:32
Speaker 1: Einstein and Bows figured out this possible quantum state of
28:35
Speaker 1: matter and then it took seventy years to actually sort
28:39
Speaker 1: of do it. Yeah, it took seventy years. And the
28:42
Speaker 1: reason is that they knew it had to be really,
28:44
Speaker 1: really cold. And so this basically just traces the technology
28:48
Speaker 1: available to make stuff super duper cold. A story of
28:52
Speaker 1: refrigerations what you're saying, Yeah, it's like the race to
28:55
Speaker 1: the South Pole in that sense, right, It's a race
28:57
Speaker 1: to the bottom of the temperature scale. How call did
29:01
Speaker 1: it need to be? It needed to be down to
29:02
Speaker 1: like nano kelvin, like really nano kelvins, like zero point
29:07
Speaker 1: zero zero zero twelve zeros one kelvin. Yeah, And very
29:12
Speaker 1: early on in the race, people were able to do
29:14
Speaker 1: stuff like get down to a few degrees kelvin, you know,
29:18
Speaker 1: tens of degrees kelvin, and you can do things like
29:20
Speaker 1: super fluid helium, which we think now has a small
29:24
Speaker 1: element of Bose Einstein condensate in it, but people really
29:28
Speaker 1: wanted to get like a pure Bose Einstein condensate something
29:31
Speaker 1: where most of the atoms were in that state, so
29:33
Speaker 1: it was like unambiguous, and for that to happen, you
29:36
Speaker 1: really have to get the whole thing down to really
29:39
Speaker 1: really cold temperature, to nano kelvin. And so you're saying
29:42
Speaker 1: then that even in the twenties and thirties they could
29:44
Speaker 1: go down to a few kelvin, but I guess you
29:47
Speaker 1: needed like a super special technology to go even further. Yeah,
29:51
Speaker 1: And so fast forward to like the nineties, and people
29:54
Speaker 1: have been trying to do this and using various techniques,
29:56
Speaker 1: and you know, we had atomic physics and you could
29:59
Speaker 1: trap individual a ms and do clever stuff. But people
30:02
Speaker 1: were struggling, right, they sort of hit a wall, and
30:05
Speaker 1: there was a lab at m I T that was
30:07
Speaker 1: trying to use hydrogen. They're like, let's just start with hydrogen.
30:10
Speaker 1: And this is Dan Kletner his lab at m I T.
30:13
Speaker 1: And he sort of hit a wall in the nineties
30:15
Speaker 1: and couldn't really make much more progress. But that's when
30:18
Speaker 1: the breakthrough happened. He couldn't teleport to the other side. Yeah.
30:22
Speaker 1: Then people made two really big advances, and there's actually
30:25
Speaker 1: his students that made these advances. Two advances were laser
30:29
Speaker 1: cooling and magnetic evaporation. Is the two technologies that let
30:34
Speaker 1: them super cool these atoms down to the levels they
30:38
Speaker 1: need to. All great combinations of words that you sound
30:41
Speaker 1: impressive in the physics sense, magnetic evaporation and laser cooling.
30:46
Speaker 1: All right, let's get into the details of how they
30:48
Speaker 1: finally found a Bose Einstein concert and let's talk about
30:52
Speaker 1: what awesome things we can do with it. But first
30:54
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. Okay, So there's a raise
31:10
Speaker 1: Daniel to get the coldest thing possible so that it
31:14
Speaker 1: can snap into the Bose Einstein state of matter, conside,
31:20
Speaker 1: and so they figured out how to do magnetic evaporation
31:22
Speaker 1: to do that. What does that mean. What that means
31:25
Speaker 1: is you have a bunch of atoms and you want
31:27
Speaker 1: to get it colder. How do you do that? Well,
31:29
Speaker 1: one way is to actually make all the atoms each
31:32
Speaker 1: individually slow down. Another way is to just sort of
31:37
Speaker 1: take out its kinetic energy. Yeah, because remember temperature is
31:40
Speaker 1: basically kinetic energy. The faster these things are moving, the
31:43
Speaker 1: hotter the gas is. The Other way to do it
31:46
Speaker 1: is to start with a larger sample and then just
31:49
Speaker 1: pick out the slower moving ones, like boil off the
31:52
Speaker 1: hot parts. Selectively pick out the slow ones. Then you
31:56
Speaker 1: end up with somebody which is on average colder than
31:58
Speaker 1: what you started, right. That's kind of what happens to
32:01
Speaker 1: a glass of water when you leave it out right,
32:02
Speaker 1: Like it's actually a little bit cooler than ambient temperature
32:06
Speaker 1: because all the hot water atoms fly off. Yeah, I
32:09
Speaker 1: think that's true. Where it's sort of like you know,
32:11
Speaker 1: say you had a glass of ice water and you
32:13
Speaker 1: wanted it colder. Well, one thing you do is put
32:15
Speaker 1: it in the freezer and actually cool it all down.
32:17
Speaker 1: The other thing is you could just fish the ice
32:19
Speaker 1: out of it and be like, oh look now I
32:21
Speaker 1: have ice, right, and you just leave the hot parts behind.
32:25
Speaker 1: So magnetic evaporations sort of works like that. It says,
32:28
Speaker 1: let's just pick out the coldest bits, so start with
32:31
Speaker 1: more than your need, right, and has a distribution. Some
32:34
Speaker 1: are hot, some are cold, and you pick out the
32:36
Speaker 1: cold bits. In the way they do it is they
32:38
Speaker 1: put it in a magnetic bowl. So they put it
32:40
Speaker 1: in a bowl so that you need to have enough
32:42
Speaker 1: energy to get out of the bowl, and you just
32:45
Speaker 1: let it sit there for a little while and the
32:47
Speaker 1: hot ones will get over the lip of the bowl
32:49
Speaker 1: and the cold ones will get stuck in the bottom,
32:51
Speaker 1: and eventually you're left with only the cold one. Gradually
32:55
Speaker 1: lower the sides of the bowl and so they can
32:57
Speaker 1: tune the temperature that they get. Well, so that's one
33:00
Speaker 1: way to cool example. And then you also said they
33:02
Speaker 1: can use lasers. Yeah, they use lasers. And this is
33:05
Speaker 1: sort of mind blowing because you imagine, if you're gonna
33:07
Speaker 1: cool something down, you probably shouldn't shoot it with high
33:10
Speaker 1: energy lasers, right, So this is really counted to it if.
33:13
Speaker 1: I don't know how anybody came up with this idea,
33:16
Speaker 1: but the way it works is that you shoot a
33:18
Speaker 1: laser at these atoms and you shoot a laser at
33:20
Speaker 1: them at just above the energy that they like to absorb. Remember,
33:25
Speaker 1: adams can't just absorb any photon. They have to absorb
33:28
Speaker 1: photons of certain energies to have this spectrum that they
33:31
Speaker 1: can jump up and down to. So they need a
33:34
Speaker 1: photon that has exactly the right gap between the energy
33:37
Speaker 1: level they're at and the one they can go to.
33:40
Speaker 1: So if you shine an arbitrary energy laser through a gas,
33:43
Speaker 1: probably won't even absorb anything. You have to sort of
33:46
Speaker 1: tune the laser to where the gas likes to drink
33:49
Speaker 1: its light. But wouldn't that make it absorbed then the light,
33:53
Speaker 1: how does that make it give off energy? So what
33:55
Speaker 1: they do is they tune the laser to just above
33:59
Speaker 1: where it likes to absorb the light. And what this
34:01
Speaker 1: means is that atoms moving towards the laser, we'll see
34:05
Speaker 1: the laser doppler shifted. It will change the wavelength of
34:09
Speaker 1: the light to be the one that they like to absorb.
34:11
Speaker 1: So adams moving towards the laser will preferentially absorb this
34:15
Speaker 1: laser light, which will slow them down because they're moving
34:18
Speaker 1: towards the laser. So you pick the ones that are
34:20
Speaker 1: moving towards the light and you give them a push
34:23
Speaker 1: and that basically slows them down a little. And then
34:26
Speaker 1: the opposite happens for the atoms going the other way. Yes,
34:29
Speaker 1: and so what you do is you shoot laser beams
34:32
Speaker 1: at this thing slightly above the wavelength that they should absorb,
34:35
Speaker 1: and that preferentially slows down the atoms moving away from
34:38
Speaker 1: the center of the block. It's like a quantum hack.
34:42
Speaker 1: It's really cool. It's mind blowing. And you know, they
34:45
Speaker 1: do absorb this and then they give off the light
34:48
Speaker 1: and so they slow back down, but they end up
34:50
Speaker 1: going in a different direction. And so you've taken a
34:52
Speaker 1: particle which was shooting towards the laser and you've modified
34:56
Speaker 1: its angle a little bit, and that in effect slows
34:58
Speaker 1: it down because the overall magnitude of its philosophy is
35:01
Speaker 1: now smaller. I see. It's kind of like a wall
35:03
Speaker 1: that slows and Adam down, but only in one direction. Yeah.
35:06
Speaker 1: It's like you've got a bunch of sheep and you've got,
35:08
Speaker 1: you know, a dog on each side, and it's like
35:10
Speaker 1: finding the single sheep that are running away from the
35:12
Speaker 1: herd and sort of like turning them around and pushing
35:14
Speaker 1: them back in, and eventually sheep come together and make
35:17
Speaker 1: a Bose Einstein content sheep. That's such a bad joke, Danny.
35:24
Speaker 1: All right. So the race was on to be the
35:26
Speaker 1: coolest physicist on the planet to get the Bose Einstein
35:30
Speaker 1: contestant going. And we were at M I T and
35:32
Speaker 1: then somebody discovered these two techniques. Yes, so Dan Kleptner
35:36
Speaker 1: was doing it at hydrogen with M I T but
35:38
Speaker 1: sort of hit a wall. And then his students went
35:41
Speaker 1: out to NIST into you See Boulder and they started
35:45
Speaker 1: a lab out there. These are Cornell and Wyman. I
35:48
Speaker 1: believe it's See You Boulder. Then I just want to
35:51
Speaker 1: insult the whole campus as people. Thank you. Yeah, I'm
35:54
Speaker 1: biased because I'm at the Universe of Californ in this,
35:56
Speaker 1: I think, you see. And they had an idea to
35:58
Speaker 1: try heavier out of instead of using hydrogen, which had
36:02
Speaker 1: this certain interaction between them that made it hard for
36:05
Speaker 1: them to stay in the magnetic trap. They said, well,
36:07
Speaker 1: let's use rubidium. Rubidium is still a boson, but it's
36:10
Speaker 1: a little heavier. And so people hadn't tried these heavier
36:14
Speaker 1: alkali atoms before, and so they made a better magnetic trap,
36:19
Speaker 1: and they had this cool idea to use really cheap lasers,
36:22
Speaker 1: like other folks were trying to get their lasers to
36:25
Speaker 1: work and buying like a hundred and fifty dollar laser systems.
36:28
Speaker 1: But you know, this is the era when you could
36:30
Speaker 1: buy like a laser for two dollars because they were
36:33
Speaker 1: in CD players right in DVD readers, laser pointers and
36:36
Speaker 1: laser pointers. So lasers have become really cheap. And they
36:39
Speaker 1: figured out a way to use really cheap lasers and
36:41
Speaker 1: that combine them in this cool way to make it
36:44
Speaker 1: very flexible but very powerful. So there's sort of like
36:47
Speaker 1: this experimental cleverness and they were the first ones to
36:50
Speaker 1: do it. They combined this magnetic evaporation with this laser
36:54
Speaker 1: cooling and it was in that they were able to
36:58
Speaker 1: get this thing down to a d seventy nano kelvin
37:02
Speaker 1: and they actually saw this Bose Einstein condensate in their device.
37:06
Speaker 1: What did it look like like? Does it look like
37:08
Speaker 1: a blog? Yeah, it looks like a blog. Can you
37:10
Speaker 1: actually see it or is it too small? You can
37:12
Speaker 1: actually see it? It looks like a blob. It's like
37:14
Speaker 1: millimeters across. It lasted for about fifteen seconds. It had
37:19
Speaker 1: like two thousand atoms in it. And you know what
37:22
Speaker 1: happens is it's getting colder and colder and colder, and
37:25
Speaker 1: each atom is sort of doing its own thing. And
37:27
Speaker 1: when you have a bunch of atoms doing their own thing,
37:29
Speaker 1: you get like a distribution, like some are a little faster,
37:31
Speaker 1: some a little slower. All of a sudden, when they
37:33
Speaker 1: crossed this threshold, this temperature threshold, they all snapped into place,
37:37
Speaker 1: and we're all doing the same thing. Like they all
37:40
Speaker 1: had the same velocity and they were in the same place,
37:43
Speaker 1: and they acted like one mega particle. And you can
37:47
Speaker 1: see this in their paper. They show like there's a blob,
37:49
Speaker 1: there's a blob boom, there's a spike in the middle,
37:51
Speaker 1: and that's a phase transition. That's when matters like doing
37:54
Speaker 1: something really different. That's when it clicks. That's when it clicks. Yeah.
37:58
Speaker 1: The sort of tragic thing is that you and see it,
38:00
Speaker 1: but the only way to see it is to shine
38:03
Speaker 1: a laser at it. Right, this is really small and
38:05
Speaker 1: really cold, can just like see it with your naked eye.
38:08
Speaker 1: So they had to shine a laser at it, which
38:09
Speaker 1: destroys it. So they can prove that it's there, but
38:12
Speaker 1: only by destroying And is that why it only last
38:15
Speaker 1: fifteen seconds because you're trying to look at it at
38:18
Speaker 1: the same time, or what's the time limit here? The
38:20
Speaker 1: time limb is just how long they can keep this
38:21
Speaker 1: thing cold and trapped. Eventually the atoms will fall out
38:25
Speaker 1: of their trap. And the way they made their magnetic
38:28
Speaker 1: bowl has a bit of a hole in the bottom
38:30
Speaker 1: they had, so they were struggling with that a little bit,
38:32
Speaker 1: and so it's hard for them to get a lot
38:34
Speaker 1: of atoms in there and for it to last a
38:36
Speaker 1: long time. It's a leaky bowl, a little bit of
38:38
Speaker 1: a leaky bowl. But hey, they were the first ones
38:40
Speaker 1: to do it. Because at m I T there was
38:42
Speaker 1: a follow up lab, a lab led by Wolfgang Keaderly
38:45
Speaker 1: that was sort of inheriting what Kleppner had done and
38:48
Speaker 1: also trying to use heavier atoms. And there was a
38:50
Speaker 1: race between this lab at U C Boulder and this
38:54
Speaker 1: lab at M I T, and then also a lab
38:56
Speaker 1: at Rice University, where I was happening to be an
38:58
Speaker 1: undergraduate at this very moment, right you're telling me you
39:02
Speaker 1: knew one of the scientists in this race trying to
39:04
Speaker 1: get it to work first. Yeah, so everybody sort of
39:06
Speaker 1: figured this out, and everybody knew that like this was
39:09
Speaker 1: going to happen, and it was going to happen soon. Really,
39:11
Speaker 1: like everyone knew that they were close to the finish
39:13
Speaker 1: because they'd be giving presentations at conferences and these ideas
39:17
Speaker 1: have been sort of coalescing, and these guys were the
39:19
Speaker 1: leaders in the field, and it was really about like
39:22
Speaker 1: making it work and getting it done. So the ideas
39:24
Speaker 1: were out there, everybody knew how to do it. There
39:26
Speaker 1: are a few slightly different approaches, like the guys that
39:29
Speaker 1: m I T had a cool way to plug the
39:31
Speaker 1: hole in the bottom of their magnetic well using another laser,
39:35
Speaker 1: and the guys at Rice course, and the guys at
39:37
Speaker 1: Rice were using lithium to try to get it done.
39:40
Speaker 1: And I remember at this time because I was taking
39:43
Speaker 1: thermodynamics as a physics major and the person teaching it
39:47
Speaker 1: was Professor Randy Hewlett, and he was engaged in this
39:50
Speaker 1: three way race for the Nobel Prize. These three labs
39:53
Speaker 1: were all trying to make this happen at the same time.
39:55
Speaker 1: I remember specifically because he almost never showed up to class,
39:59
Speaker 1: like he was off giving talks, or he was in
40:01
Speaker 1: the lab, or he sent his grad student or canceled lecture.
40:05
Speaker 1: At the time, I was like, what is this guy
40:07
Speaker 1: doing these things? He's so important. He was racing to
40:10
Speaker 1: get the Nobel Prize. He wasn't on the clock. He
40:13
Speaker 1: was on the clock where you know, days and weeks
40:16
Speaker 1: make a difference between winning the Nobel Prize and just
40:18
Speaker 1: being like also mentioned on the podcast years later by
40:24
Speaker 1: one of your students that you ignored. Oh no, but
40:27
Speaker 1: if the people at T Boulder did it first, who
40:31
Speaker 1: got the Nobel Prize? We'll see you Boulder did it first.
40:33
Speaker 1: And then M I T did it a couple of
40:35
Speaker 1: months later, and they put out their paper. I think
40:37
Speaker 1: this is so M I T. They put out their
40:39
Speaker 1: paper the Monday after Thanksgiving, which means they must have
40:42
Speaker 1: worked all Thanksgiving. Break them. Yeah, it was a few
40:48
Speaker 1: months later, but it was a lot bigger, Like they
40:50
Speaker 1: plugged that hole and they were able to get a
40:53
Speaker 1: lot of atoms like you know, many many more atoms
40:56
Speaker 1: that lasted a lot longer than to see you Boulder one.
40:59
Speaker 1: So it was really like a big step forward in
41:01
Speaker 1: another demonstration, and then you know, Rice did it also
41:04
Speaker 1: in lithium. But it was later, and so they didn't
41:07
Speaker 1: get included in the Nobel Prize. They went to MT
41:11
Speaker 1: and see you Boulder, but Rice just got a cold gas. Well,
41:16
Speaker 1: but Rice did it. They just did it even later,
41:18
Speaker 1: and so the Nobel price compantee said, all right, we'll
41:21
Speaker 1: cut it off at a couple of months after the discovery.
41:24
Speaker 1: That kind of it seems a little totally arbitrary, but
41:26
Speaker 1: there is this rule about Nobel Prizes you can only
41:29
Speaker 1: share it among three people. And so there are two
41:32
Speaker 1: p I s leading the lab at SEU Boulder slash
41:35
Speaker 1: Mist and one leading the lab at m I T
41:37
Speaker 1: And so that was sort of a natural cut off. Yeah, man,
41:41
Speaker 1: you know, so you know, if those grad students in
41:44
Speaker 1: the lab at Rice had just worked over Thanksgiving or
41:47
Speaker 1: giving up their Christmas break or not taking vacation, or
41:50
Speaker 1: if they didn't have to teach your class, maybe they
41:53
Speaker 1: didn't have to grade. Like, oh, I almost got it,
41:55
Speaker 1: but I gotta go teach this freshman the physics class.
41:57
Speaker 1: I gotta grade this sloppy homework. May in I can't
42:00
Speaker 1: even read this, writing up all night trying to decide
42:02
Speaker 1: for this kid's homework. So basically, Daniel you're claimed to fame.
42:06
Speaker 1: Is that not only did you know the second place
42:09
Speaker 1: finisher for the both iceland concept, you were maybe a
42:12
Speaker 1: participant slowing this person down. I definitely had interactions with
42:17
Speaker 1: this person. No. I I know Randy Hewlett. He's a
42:20
Speaker 1: great physicist and I admire him, and he's a great teacher,
42:24
Speaker 1: and I think it's exciting to be on the forefront
42:26
Speaker 1: and so close to the cutting edge. I do have
42:28
Speaker 1: some sympathy for being so close and not quite being
42:32
Speaker 1: included in the upper echelon of folks who win the
42:34
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize. Yeah, I mean it seems kind of arbitrary, right,
42:37
Speaker 1: Like you get the Nobel Prize, you don't get the prize,
42:40
Speaker 1: but they were all sort of in it together. Yeah,
42:41
Speaker 1: And what's really the difference between a few months here
42:43
Speaker 1: or there. I think a lot of times people in
42:45
Speaker 1: science make way too big a deal about somebody who's
42:48
Speaker 1: one day ahead or the second day. You know, it's
42:50
Speaker 1: important that everybody has done their own individual work. If
42:53
Speaker 1: somebody has published a result and you just go and
42:56
Speaker 1: replicate it, that's not the same thing as individual independent
43:00
Speaker 1: in contribution. These are different lines of research, different ideas,
43:03
Speaker 1: different strategies, really independent efforts that were in parallel. Sure,
43:07
Speaker 1: one finished a few weeks or months ahead of the other,
43:10
Speaker 1: but they all made contributions around the same time. So
43:13
Speaker 1: in a better world, we would have recognized all of
43:15
Speaker 1: them and think about his accomplishments. I mean, he taught you,
43:18
Speaker 1: and now here you are teaching thousands and thousands and
43:21
Speaker 1: thousands of people. Yeah, that's a I hope that's enough
43:24
Speaker 1: for you. You didn't get to meet the King of Sweden.
43:26
Speaker 1: You got to be talked about on my podcast. All right,
43:29
Speaker 1: Well that was pretty exciting for such a cool topic,
43:32
Speaker 1: such a chill topic. Yeah, and so people are continuing
43:37
Speaker 1: and now they make Bose Einstein condensates all the time.
43:39
Speaker 1: They even made it once on the space station, kidding like,
43:43
Speaker 1: you can make a Bose Einstein maker that you can
43:46
Speaker 1: take to space. Yeah, exactly. They put together a lab
43:48
Speaker 1: on the International Space Station that made a Bose Einstein
43:51
Speaker 1: condensate in space, which is pretty cool. Could they also
43:55
Speaker 1: make bar garded and smooth only on Fridays? Very cool
44:00
Speaker 1: that Bose and Einstein thought of this and that it
44:02
Speaker 1: actually came to pass. That's pretty awesome. And now it
44:05
Speaker 1: gives us a new window, a new kind of stuff
44:07
Speaker 1: to poke and to play with. And you know, now
44:10
Speaker 1: we can make these things and they last a long time,
44:12
Speaker 1: so you can do things like stir them and make
44:14
Speaker 1: vortices in them, and watch quantum vortices be created and
44:18
Speaker 1: overlap them and and launch them into each other, and
44:21
Speaker 1: see interference effects on macroscopic objects. So you can recreate
44:25
Speaker 1: a lot of the cool quantum mechanical experiments that used
44:28
Speaker 1: to only work on tiny, invisible microscopic particles. Now you
44:31
Speaker 1: can do them on macroscopic blobs of stuff. That's pretty amazing.
44:35
Speaker 1: So are there any other states of matter we should
44:37
Speaker 1: be looking out for or that we might discover in
44:39
Speaker 1: the future. You know, there are lots of other states
44:41
Speaker 1: of matter that people theorize about, you know, tetracorks and
44:45
Speaker 1: hexa corks and all sorts of weird combinations. Because matter
44:49
Speaker 1: is complex and it has lots of really complicated interactions
44:52
Speaker 1: and in various configurations and pressure and density. You know,
44:56
Speaker 1: you can do all sorts of weird stuff, like we
44:58
Speaker 1: talked about quirk matter and strang age matter. You know,
45:01
Speaker 1: what might happen in the core of a neutron star.
45:04
Speaker 1: And I'm sure there are lots of things we haven't
45:05
Speaker 1: even imagined. One day, I hope we'll discover something before
45:09
Speaker 1: we think about it, so we'll have a triumph for
45:10
Speaker 1: experimental physics rather than just for theoretical physics. Well, and
45:14
Speaker 1: maybe somebody out there listening could be the person to
45:16
Speaker 1: discover this new state of matter. That's right. There's lots
45:19
Speaker 1: more to discover, lots more weird kinds of good that
45:22
Speaker 1: we can make matter to do. And hopefully you'll start
45:25
Speaker 1: a lab and zap matter into doing something weird and
45:29
Speaker 1: then chill out with your Nobel Prize and your Margarita
45:33
Speaker 1: or at or your silver Bibel Prize. What did you
45:36
Speaker 1: call it, the Plywood Nobel Prize? Plywood not as valuable,
45:43
Speaker 1: but very tough. It's very hearty, that's right. Yeah, and
45:46
Speaker 1: it's got the description written in a sharpie. All right. Well,
45:49
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed that, and you we hope that
45:51
Speaker 1: you joined this amazing race to discover new kinds of matter.
45:55
Speaker 1: And thanks for listening. If you're interested in hearing more
45:57
Speaker 1: about this kind of stuff, please send us a suggestion
46:00
Speaker 1: two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com and come
46:03
Speaker 1: interact with us. We're on Twitter at Dale and Jorge
46:05
Speaker 1: where we answer questions and make jokes, so come and
46:08
Speaker 1: check us out. Thanks for joining us, see you next time.
46:19
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained.
46:22
Speaker 1: The Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. Or
46:25
Speaker 1: more podcast from my heart Radio, visit the I heart
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Speaker 1: favorite shows.