Jay Novella

So researchers have known for years that there is critical stuff missing in this BCS theory and they've been searching for years and have really hadn't

had any major breakthroughs.

There's been some developments for sure, but actually understanding it at a fundamental level has been kind of very elusive.

So this gets us to their new experiment.

They used a new imaging method.

This involved an ultra-cold atom microscope, which is fascinating, out of scope for this talk.

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.