Stopping cold
Besides stirring a research rush to explore exotic forms of matter, such experiments open the door to some practical applications. These include vastly more powerful computers as well as the possibility of communications that are much more secure from hackers and people trying to steal your credit and bank card numbers.
"We hope for wonderful things," says David Phillips, who worked on the CfA "stop light" project. "Our imagination hasn't figured out what the possibilities are yet."
Hau, a tall, slender scientist educated as a theoretical physicist in Denmark, had a hunch several years ago that intensely cold atoms would become a hot area in physics. In the mid-1990s, she and her colleagues became excited about experiments aimed at crowding atoms so close together that unusual things happen. The key is to cool them to within a billionth of a degree of minus 459.7 degrees F. Called "absolute zero," this is the temperature at which atoms have the least possible energy, and they all but cease to move around.
Stopping cold
Besides stirring a research rush to explore exotic forms of matter, such experiments open the door to some practical applications. These include vastly more powerful computers as well as the possibility of communications that are much more secure from hackers and people trying to steal your credit and bank card numbers.
"We hope for wonderful things," says David Phillips, who worked on the CfA "stop light" project. "Our imagination hasn't figured out what the possibilities are yet."
Hau, a tall, slender scientist educated as a theoretical physicist in Denmark, had a hunch several years ago that intensely cold atoms would become a hot area in physics. In the mid-1990s, she and her colleagues became excited about experiments aimed at crowding atoms so close together that unusual things happen. The key is to cool them to within a billionth of a degree of minus 459.7 degrees F. Called "absolute zero," this is the temperature at which atoms have the least possible energy, and they all but cease to move around.
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