The Iceman Cometh...

Nobel Physics Winner - Prof. Wolfgang Ketterle visits Dublin on 24 January 2002

The old saying that a genius is simply someone who sees the obvious more clearly than the rest of us can be applied to Professor Wolfgang Ketterle, last year's Nobel Physics winner, who gave a lecture on "The Bose-Einstein condensate - superfluid gas of coherent atoms" at DCU on 24th January.

Professor Ketterle, along with Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in December 2001 and his visit to Ireland is his first speaking trip since the prize was awarded. The invitation was issued to Prof Ketterle, Professor of Physics at MIT, before the announcement of his Nobel award, and the university is particularly delighted that despite the obvious pressures, he was still prepared to maintain his commitment to the university.

Dr. John Costello, lecturer in DCU's School of Physical Sciences and the National Centre for Plasma Science and Technology played a major role in the organisation of this Irish lecture, along with the Institute of Physics, which also brought Professor Ketterle to Limerick and Belfast. The Dublin Lecture held at DCU was with over 400 members of staff, industrialists and senior academics and students from other third level institutions.

The degree of interest shown in the visit by Professor Ketterle sends out a very clear message to us all that physics is not just an abstract scientific and academic subject. We are all actually surrounded by the discoveries of physics in our everyday lives, but we just don't realise it.

So what is outstanding about Professor Ketterle's achievement?

In a remarkable feat of scientific endeavour, Professor Wolfgang ketterle has managed to create matter that is even colder thatn interstellar space. In that vast expanse of space, temperatures average -270°C. Prof Ketterle's ultra cold gases of atoms exist at just billionths of degrees above absolute zero (-273°C) and are the coldest matter in the universe.

To create these atoms Prof Ketterle used a combination of laser cooling and evaporative cooling to achieve Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC). The possibility of BEC was proposed almost 70 years ago and while it has been said that perhaps other scientists could have achieved BEC and indeed a number of them have subsequently managed it, it took an Extraordinary mind to take the leap of imagination to figure it out in the first place.

At these incredibly low temperatures matter does some strange things. According to the Nobel citation, "When a gas consisting of uncoordinated atoms turns into a Bose-Einstein condensate, it is like when the various instruments of an orchestra with their different tones and timbres,after warming up individually all join in the same tone". The atoms can form a beam just like a laser except that this is a matter rather than a light beam. When the optical laser was first invented over 40 years ago, commentators called it a solution looking for a problem. The optical laser is now ubiquitous. Its functions range from surgical scalpels to supermarket scanners. Undoubtedly Prof Ketterle's atom laser will impact on science, medicine, industry and our everyday lives in the future. It is already predicted that the new control over matter that Bose-Einstein condensation provides may have far reaching practical applications in both lithography and nanotechnology.

Prof Ketterle has strong views on what he calls 'curiousity driven science', in other words, fundamental research that pushes out the boundaries of science rather than concentrates on short lead-time applications. He believes that fundamental research doesn't bring us new devices but rather whole new technologies. There is little doubt that the control of matter which this technology involves is also going to bring revolutionary applications in such fields as precision measurement and nanotechnology.

Prof Ketterle's lecture was webcast live on DCU site. So, for those who missed his inspiring talk first time around, log on now to see the recorded broadcast.