Imagine pouring cold milk into a cup of hot coffee and finding that the milk stays cold while the coffee stays hot. Physicists have now achieved a similarly strange result by restricting atoms of an ultracold gas to motion in just one dimension.
IN A RUT. Confined to narrow tubes, oscillating atom clouds of unequal energies collide without attaining a happy energy medium.
Log in
Subscribers, enter your e-mail address for full access to the Science News archives and digital editions.
