A truely fascinating field of study, not only in terms of the peculiar properties of BEC's, most of which this video doen't get into, but the ingenious methods used to remove energy from these groups of atoms. I initially began researching this topic by way of the investigating questions that had been a thorn in my mind for far too long:

How the fuck does a laser cool something? Don't lasers heat, melt, burn, evaporate, etc?
The answers to this questions led me to BEC's, Superfluidity, Supersolids, Feshbach resonance, ...

It was a satisfying foray into physics.

ahhh but have you ever heard of optical cooling of erbium doped crystals using lasers? that is a venture into incredibly weird non-intuitive physics. shine a laser at a chunk of crystal and it gets cold! there are some who think it could actually be used for common refrigeration.

Yes, I researched it in some length. It was the non-intuitive part that compelled investigation. I seriously doubt, personally, that it will find it's way into bulk commercial refrigeration though.

They use exceptionally pure, rare earth materials, very expensive, highly tuned lasers, and are only cooling infinitesimal amounts of material. The lasers only cool the atoms directly exposed to the beam which is why the Feshbach resonance method of fliping the spin of the more energetic atoms in the center of the material and ejecting them out of the system with magnets is necessary. As far as the laser cooling is concerned it was the ingenious use of the Dopler effect that really impressed me. Both the magnetic and laser methods are seriously cool...pun intended.

Here's a link to the 1997 Nobel Prize that was won as a result of the developement of the laser cooling method:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1997/press.html

anyone else get the feeling that something will go wrong and they will both turn into super heroes?

Any vids similar to this one on string-net liquids?

1. Plasma
2. Gas
3. Liquid
4. Solid
5. Bose-Einstein condensate???

They couldn't come up with a better name??

Lol @ Mikoyan.

Or super villains.

this is the geekiest sift I've ever seen do this well. woot.

There goes 5 minutes i'm not gettin back

i feel like a chimp listening to an explanation of evolution! we desperately need more shows and people like Nova and Carl Sagan and James Burke that can explain scientific advances to the layman, but without any activist overtones and without junking it up with pop culture theatrics.

*dead

Possible replacement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnqAwtorUTE

This published video has been declared as non-functional; embed code must fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by Fletch.

*science

Adding video to channels (science) - requested by Fjnbk.

Of course there is a rap song mentioning Bose-Einstein condensate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBZSVHQYrSk&watch_response
check it out. Some kind of a first no doubt!