Scientists create Bose-Einstein condensate leading to a new fifth state of matter

Scientists create Bose-Einstein condensate leading to a new fifth state of matter

In a Columbia University laboratory in New York, physicist Sebastian Will and his team have reached one of ultracold physics’ long-running goals: turning molecules into a Bose-Einstein condensate. Their results, reported in Nature, rely on a key idea from theoretical collaborator Tijs Karman at Radboud University in the Netherlands, who helped design a way to stop fragile molecules from destroying one another during the final push to extreme col…