THE FIFTH STATE OF MATTER
In
physics, a state of matter is something the matter takes on. Four states of
matter that are observable usually are solid, liquid, gas and plasma. Many
other states like Bose-Einstein condensates and Neutron-degenerate matter also
exists but only in ultra-cold or ultra-dense matter. Though Satyendranath Bose
and Albert Einstein have predicted it in early 1920’s, it was created in 1995
by Eric Cornell and Carl Weimen of JILA at The University of Colorado at
Boulder.
A Bose-Einstein condensate is a rare state (or phase) of matter in which a large percentage of bosons collapse into their lowest quantum state, allowing quantum effects to be observed on a macroscopic scale. If plasmas are Super hot and Super excited atoms, Bose-Einstein condensates are Super cool and Super unexcited atoms. As the word ‘condensate’ reminds of condensation, which exactly happens inside, the gas molecules get closely packed and it gets denser.
Condensate:
Condensation
happens when all the gas molecules get together and form a liquid, and there
will be loss of energy and due to loss of energy they slow down and begin to
collect and thus the matter changes it state from gas to liquid and now this
will be called a condensate. For example, when the water vapor gets cooled, it
will be called a condensate.
In
BEC, matter starts behaving like independent particles and collapses to single
quantum state that can be described with a single uniformed wave function. The
BEC usually happens at super low temperatures (absolute zero). So at absolute
zero, all the molecular motion stops and something interesting begins to
happen. All the process just happens in a few billionth of degree just above
the absolute zero( i.e.,0 kelvin). All the atoms begin to clump and they start losing
their energy and finally become motionless at absolute zero. As there is no
energy transfer as in solids or liquids, atoms undergo no change in energy
levels, like twins. And the result of this is the BOSE-EINSTEIN CONDENSATE.
In this picture, the velocities of the atoms are shown as they are cooled. The higher the peak, the slower the atom. On the left, the condensate hasn’t been isolated yet, the center one showing immediately after isolation and the other one showing an isolated condensate.
Applications:
This is how a BEC is created. Eric Cornell and Carl Wiemen have created this condensate using Rubidium (Rb). This state of matter can actually bring a major change in the world. There are many applications of this but this concept of 5th state of matter is being still mystery to many scientists!! One of the most interesting applications is Matter lasers. Bose-Einstein condensate exhibits qualities of coherent matter, much like the photons in current lasers. Matter lasers will be used for translating the information of entangled particles to their new "copy" particles, which will mimic the spin of the original particle, thus performing the seeming effect of teleportation. Perhaps (in another 100-200 years) humans will be able to "teleport" large, complex objects via matter laser information transmission.
#Knowing #9D
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