Noble Prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Ketterle addressed a packed audience Friday during the Ohio University physics department's weekly field-specific lecture.
Ketterle, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and expert in the area of fundamental physics, gave a presentation on his work with Bose-Einstein condensation to physics faculty, students and visitors.
With his two team members, Ketterle won the2001 Noble Prize in Physics for producing Bose-Einstein condensation, which is a new, not fully understood state of matter achieved with super-fluid gases of particular atoms.
The original theory was developed by Satyendra Bose and Albert Einstein more than 75 years before Ketterle and his team applied it in a lab setting.
But Ketterle offered a broader idea for attendees than the specifics of his research.
They should take away that physics is exciting; physics is fun; physics is addressing important questions
he said.
Sergio Ulloa, a physics professor at OU, invited Ketterle to speak after hearing him at a conference several years ago. Few of the department's lectures have drawn as large a gathering as Ketterle's and for good reason, Ulloa said.
I think it is important to say that what his group (did) and of course what others have discovered since '95 - it opened a completely new field of understanding Ulloa said. And they can
by these methods he described
simulate systems that exist in nature or may not exist in nature
and they can actually implement them and explore.
Ketterle said it is difficult to pin its immediate application at this stage.
I'm working in fundamental physics where applications may take 20
30
40 years to come
he said. So we are here for the long haul because we work on fundamental concepts.
Ulloa said he feels it is very likely that Ketterle's work will transform technology, especially in the area of superconductivity. Superconductivity is achieved when metallic conductors pass electric currents without resistance, which has only been reproduced by a select few metals at extremely low temperatures.
If
in fact
we can do superconductivity at room temperature - and people are trying - they will revolutionize technology
