SOUTHWORTH SCIENCE LECTURE SERIES
207-780-4249      www.usm.maine.edu/planet

*"The Cold Atom Laboratory"*
Thursday, February 16, 2017     7:00 p.m.
at Room 165 Science Building
USM Portland Campus
Presenter:  Dr. Thomas Jarvis

(Note: If you come to the planetarium, we will direct you to the class
room.  It is in the same building and very close.)


​
A new phase of matter emerges when atoms are laser cooled to nearly
absolute zero. This novel substance, a Bose-Einstein Condensate, was
predicted in the mid-1920s, at the beginning of the era of quantum
mechanics, but it took seventy years before a Bose Einstein condensate
could be observed in a laboratory in 1995. At the ultracold temperatures
that produce this exotic state of matter, atoms no longer exhibit
classical, thermal physical behavior, acting like tiny billiard balls that
bounce off each other or the walls of their container – instead, the tens
or hundreds of thousands of atoms in a condensate behave in an extremely
quantum mechanical fashion, with all the unconventional phenomena that
accompany this wave-like state of matter.


For twenty years, scientists have talked about building an apparatus in
outer space to produce Bose-Einstein Condensates free from the pull of
gravity. There, condensates will be able to be produced at even colder
temperatures, allowing us to study phenomena inaccessible even in the most
carefully controlled laboratory environments on earth. The NASA Cold Atom
Lab project will send a sophisticated Bose-Einstein experiment to the
International Space Station to achieve this goal – and Maine’s Bates
College is part of this nationwide effort.

Dr, Thomas Jarvis is a research physicist involved in this endeavor.    Come
hear this fascinating discussion tonight.

Admission by donation.

For more information, please contact us at  either 207-780-4249 or
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www.usm.maine.edu/planet