Thursday, January 17, 2008

Bose-Einstein Condensates

Thankfully once in a while there's nothing on tv, and since I don't have cable, I have to watch public television. One of the best programs is NOVA.

This past week there was an interesting show on Bose-Einstein Condensates. Essentially, the closer you get to absolute zero a new form of matter is created in which individual particles retain their identity but at the same become the same as others. Approaching that point the particles start acting as waves.

Don't ask me to explain it better than that, which I know isn't very good. This site seems to be pretty good. It was all theory until early in 2000 when the first such matter was created. It's rather mind blowing, but the first thing I thought of is how that could relate to the existential question of what all beings are and how they are separate but part of a whole, and whether when we die, our individual selves go back to the whole.

Who knows.

5 comments:

Squirrel said...

Quantum mechanics is some wacky, wacky stuff; will make your mind spin in all sorts of strange directions. Even Einstein didn't believe a lot of it; it was too weird.

By the way, thanks for getting the Smurf's theme song stuck in my head.

NoRegrets said...

You're welcome! :-) thankfully I don't know that theme. Of course I do know Barney's song.

Churlita said...

That is some deep stuff for a Thursday morning. I guess I'll be in my cubicle comtemplating my after life for the rest of the day now.

heather said...

copy and paste this into your browser. (i gotta learn how to leave a link in comments!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3nbK_ayV4g&feature=related

~way~ too deep a post for right now! lol i just got outta work and need simple thought free entertainment. :-) but a good post all the same.

NoRegrets said...

Sorry Churlita and Heather... I was just getting deep, in part after reading Eslocura's post.

And Heather, welll, if the intent was to get it to stay in my brain, well, sorry, it didn't.... I never watched the show when it was on. But thank you for sending!