Monday, April 11, 2005

Back in 1999 they slowed the speed of light down to 38 miles per hour or so.  Lene Hau, the woman who led the a team that translated the theoretical existence of the Bose-Einstein condensate into our physical world works in a place called the Cruft Laboratory.  If this kind of thing gets you off, you’ll want to read the recent paper from Hau’s lab titled, "Detection and Quantized Conductance of Neutral Atoms Near a Charged Carbon Nanotube."

(There’s been some cavilling in the comments below by an anonymous science politician about the implication that she did it first…  Given the politics of the Nobel, one certainly can’t know, but one can give credit where credit is due and there are lots o’ physicists slowing down atoms these days.  Talking about science politics, one would almost wonder why Bose himself didn’t get the coveted Nobel prize, wouldn’t one?)

Keep up the good work JILA.

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