Frigid ‘dynamite’ assembles into superatom

Since 1995, studies of a new and strange state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate have deepened physicists’ understanding of the quantum nature of atoms. After first creating the state with rubidium (SN: 7/15/95, p. 36), researchers have made these ultracold atomic clouds also with sodium, lithium, and hydrogen (SN: 7/25/98, p. 54).

Now, a French team reports both making the first Bose-Einstein condensate of gaseous helium and doing so in a novel way that may illuminate unexplored features of the condensates.