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Language: en
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you're watching a Nova Video
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podcast matter can exist in various
States atoms at high temperature always
form gases if you cool the gas it
becomes a liquid if you cool the liquid
it becomes a solid but under certain
circumstances if you cool atoms far
enough to extremely low temperatures
they undergo a very strange
transformation they undergo an identity
crisis so let me show you what I mean by
an identity crisis when you go to low
temperatures the quantum mechanical
properties of the atoms become
important these are very strange very
unfamiliar to us but in fact each one of
these atoms starts to display wav likee
properties so in instead of points like
that you have little wave packets like
that moving
around it's really difficult for me to
explain just why that is but that's the
way it is now as you go to very low
temperatures the size of these packets
gets longer and longer and longer and
then suddenly if you get them cold
enough they start overlapping and when
they overlap the system behaves not like
individual parts particles but particles
which have lost their identity they all
think they're
everywhere this little wave packet over
here can't tell whether it's this one or
that one or that one or that one or that
one or that it's there and it's there
and it's there they're all in one great
big Quantum state they're all
overlapping they're all doing the same
thing and what they're doing to a good
approximation is they're simply sitting
at rest this Bose Einstein condensate is
very difficult to imagine or to
visualize I could imagine what it's like
to be an atom running around gy freely
bouncing into things sometimes going
fast sometimes going slow but on the
Bose
condensate I'm everywhere at once I've
lost my identity I don't know who I am
anymore I'm at rest and all the other
atoms around at rest but they're not
other atoms around we're all just one
great big Quantum system there's nothing
else like that in physics and certainly
not in Human Experience so just to think
about this causes me wonder and
confusion to learn more about the Bose
Einstein condensate and research in the
realm of the super cold watch the race
for absolute zero airing January 15th on
PBS or join us online at
pbs.org Noz