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