Quantum Chemistry Experiment on the ISS Creates 5th

Post Reply New Topic

Full Title:
Quantum Chemistry Experiment on the ISS Creates 5th State of Matter

https://www.space.com/quantum-chemistry-gas-cold-atom-lab-iss

I have known about this research project for some time. In a nutshell, they are super-cooling matter to almost absolute zero to get the wave functions to combine into one wave function. We understand this as multiple atoms becoming one large atom. I have been following this research since the early 1990s, before it was first achieved experimentally at Boulder, Colorado in 1995.

It is interesting that they got it to work with both Rb and K atoms at the same time. Since they are from the same group (alkali metals) on the periodic table, their matchup would be much easier than elements that are from different groups. On Earth, the reaction cannot be contained longer than a few minutes at best. Most only occur for a few seconds or so.

The temperature that this reaction occurs under is lower than the temperature of liquid He (4 K). Outer space average temperature is around 2.7 K if I remember right. Bose-Einstein condensation starts when matter is below a certain limit (fractions of a degree K).

The 7 States of Matter:

1. Energy
2. Plasma
3. Gas
4. Liquid
5. Solid
6. Degenerate Matter
7. Singularity

I wrote a paper on this idea for 12th-grade physics class in '75, but received only a B+ due to its 'untestable' nature.