Quantum gas in free fall
A sensitive measuring device must not be dropped - because this usually destroys the precision of the instrument. A team of researchers including scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics has done exactly this, however. And the researchers want to use this experience to make the measuring instrument even more sensitive. The team, headed by physicists from the University of Hanover, dropped a piece of apparatus, in which they generated a weightless Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), to the bottom of a drop tower at the University of Bremen. The particles in a BEC lose their individuality and can be considered to be a 'super-particle.' The researchers want to use such an ultra-cold quantum gas at zero gravity to construct a very sensitive measuring device for the Earth's gravitational field - in order to find deposits of minerals, and also to settle fundamental issues in physics (Science, June 18, 2010)...