 MIT's
Wolfgang Ketterle Gets Coherent on Atoms
In 1995, Wolfgang Ketterle astounded the quiet world
of atomic physics with the announcement that his group at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology had created Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), the so-called "fifth state
of matter" in which atoms are locked together in the lowest quantum state of the
system. This achievement came on the heels of a breakthrough by a group at Boulder,
Colorado, which had independently created BEC earlier in 1995. Barely two years later
Ketterle was back on the front page with even more dramatic news: the demonstration of the
world's first atom laser, a coherent beam of atoms in the same quantum state. In Great
Britain the BBC led the early-morning news slots with Ketterle's quiet voice telling the
world he could make atoms "march... |
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Citations Reveal
Concentrated Influence: Some Fields have It, But What Does It Mean?
Science Watch is truly spoiled for
choice, so many are the fascinating statistics about science that are only a few
keystrokes away. Take the accompanying table, for example. Science Watch asked
which fields of science, defined here by sets of journals, show the most concentration in
influence (and possibly excellence), as measured by the percentage...
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