Jay Novella

Maybe I'll talk about it some other day.

But using this ultra-cold atom microscope, they were examined.

essentially a Fermi gas.

Now, in this case, this is a gas of lithium atoms, and they cool it to make it into a Fermi gas.

They have to cool it down to a few billionths of a degree Celsius above absolute zero.

And that always just makes me so impressed.

I mean, they're so close.

I mean, we all know absolute zero is essentially impossible to reach, but they're within a few billionths of a degree.

And

The low temperatures are critical here, right?

Because that removes the thermal noise that infests everything that's not this cold, right?

So when you get that low in temperature, it allows this group quantum behavior.

I mean, these atoms are always quantum beasts no matter what.

But once you cool them down and that thermal noise kind of disappears and gets really minimized, it allows this group quantum behavior.

behavior to take over.

And that's what allows things like superconductivity to happen, superfluidity to happen, Bose-Einstein condensates to happen, and of course, Fermi gases to happen as well.

You need something to be really, really cold.

So this is why, essentially why electrons will require these really, really cold regimes in order to pair up, to form Cooper pairs and do their superconductivity bit.

So in this state, then, lithium atoms essentially act like electrons.

And it all comes down to the fact that they're fermions.