The MIT team took a different approach - they used a combination of laser and evaporative cooling methods to turn sodium atoms into a Bose-Einstein Condensate. "We were able to produce this special state in the lab thanks to a sophisticated setup that allowed us to make the two resonance chambers identical for the atoms," one of the ETH Zurich team, Tilman Esslinger, told.
These states arise depending on conditions such as temperature and pressure, and are defined by the arrangements of particles within the matter. Usually, matter exists in just four simple states: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. There's sure to be controversy over whether these new experiments unequivocally demonstrate a supersolid state - especially after a similar claim in 2004 went on to be debunked - but this is the most compelling evidence yet that supersolids could actually exist.įor those who aren't familiar with just how bizarre that is, a 'supersolid' is a strange sate of matter that has the crystalline structure of a solid, while flowing like a liquid - something that's pretty contradictory when it comes to traditional physics. Now, two independent teams of physicists have used different techniques to achieve the same odd result - what they claim are the first examples of supersolid matter. Scientists have predicted that this exotic state of matter could exist for more than 50 years, but no one had been able to demonstrate that it's actually possible.
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