TIFR creates fifth state of matter
In a first for the country,
scientists at the TATA INSTITUTE of FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH (TIFR) have created the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) or the fifth state of matter. The other four states are solid, liquid, gas &
amp; plasma. The TIFR scientists used magnetic
fields &
lasers to cool
atoms to an extremely low temperature just above minus 273.15 degrees Celsius or absolute zero & created a Bose-Einstein Condensate. The scientists cooled a gas of atoms of the element
rubidium to such a low temperature that a cluster of tens of thousands of atoms behave as a single “superatom”.And each atoms overlaps every other atom to make a giant “matter wave” which is the hallmark of BEC.While most BECs in the world are confined within magnetic fields, the TIFR team used lasers to create a trap the BEC in a high vacuum stainless steel glass chamber. The first optimally-trapped BEC was produced by scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology in US in 2001. A BEC has only a short existence barely a few seconds .The ultra cold atoms need to be confined in special “traps” created by either magnetic fields or lasers & maintained in ultra high vacuum. Any contact with air will destroy a BEC.The Bose-Einstein condensate results from a phenomenon predicted by Einstein in 1924 for a gas of atoms or molecules based on the ideas presented by Indian scientist S N Bose in the same year in the context of the spectral distribution of light called the Plank spectrum of black body radiation. Bose insisted on dealing with the problem by treating light as a collection of particles of light, deviating from the earlier treatments He managed to arrive at the correct law, in effect assuming that the photons are indistinguishable particles & that any number of them can occupy a given state of being without restriction.
More reviews about the Times of India