FROM VISION TO REALITY IN 100 YEARS
1924 EINSTEIN PREDICTS QUANTUM WAVE
Physicists S. Bose and A. Einstein predict that ultra- cold atoms will behave like a collective wave – a Bose-Einstein condensate.
1985 LASER COOLING IS INVENTED
Laser beams can slow down atoms, hence cooling them. The method allows the cooling of a gas of atoms to less than one thousandth of a degree above absolute zero.
1995 CONDENSATES ARE PRODUCED
The first BoseEinstein condensates are produced at temperatures of a few billionths of a degree above zero. In 2001, three US physicists are rewarded with a Nobel Prize in physics for their results.
2001 BOSE-EINSTEIN IN ATOM CHIPS
Bose-Einstein condensates can be produced in atom chips, but they are hard to study. When the atom cloud is let loose, physicists have 10ms, before the quantum state collapses.
2007 UNIVERSAL COLD RECORD
Scientists make a chip-based chamber fall down through a 146-m-high tower in a state of weightlessness. En route, the condensate is cooled to 50 billionths of a degree above zero.
2017 FIRST SPACE EXPERIMENT
An chamber is launched into space for the first time from Kiruna, Sweden. Over a period of six minutes of weightlessness, physicists make 85 different condensate measurements.
2018 100 BILLIONTHS ABOVE ZERO
The Cold Atom Laboratory is launched to the ISS, to study condensates for 10-20 seconds, as they expand and cool. The chamber cools below 100 billionths of a degree above absolute zero.