The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #59418   Message #1696662
Posted By: Amos
17-Mar-06 - 11:33 PM
Thread Name: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
The reason way any three MOABites are always in synch is explained at the quantum level:

"An international team of physicists has converted three normal atoms into a special new state of matter whose existence was proposed by Russian scientist Vitaly Efimov in 1970.


In this new state of matter, any two of the three atoms--in this case cesium atoms-- repel one another in close proximity. "But when you put three of them together, it turns out that they attract and form a new state," said Cheng Chin, an Assistant Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago.

Chin, along with 10 scientists led by Rudolf Grimm at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, report this development in the March 16 issue of the journal Nature. The paper describes the experiment in Grimm's laboratory where for the first time physicists were able to observe the Efimov state in a vacuum chamber at the ultracold temperature of a billionth of a degree above absolute zero (minus 459.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

This new state behaves like the Borromean ring, a symbol of three interlocking circles that has historical significance in Italy. The Borromean concept also exists in physics, chemistry and mathematics.

"This ring means that three objects are entangled. If you pick up any one of them, the other two will follow. However, if you cut one of them off, the other two will fall apart," Chin said. "There is something magic about this number of three."

The Innsbruck experiment involved three cesium atoms, a soft metal used in atomic clocks, formed into a molecule that manifested the Efimov state. But in theory the Efimov state should apply universally to other sets of three particles at ultracold temperatures. "If you can create this kind of state out of any other type of particle, it'll have exactly the same behavior," Chin said. "




This is not, of course, a new state of matter to those of us who have been posting here all along. It is just science catching up with BS.


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