Winter 2006

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  Flashdance!

  Imagine trying to describe the intricate motions of a single atom as it interacts with a laser. Then suppose you could generalize this understanding to a whole cloud of similar atoms and predict the temperatures your experimental physicist colleagues could achieve with laser cooling. [Continue Reading]

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  Atoms in Collision

  "Watch" atoms collide! Thrill to the twists and turns of potassium atom wave functions as the atoms come closer and closer to impact! "See" the atoms deform, then recover as they smash together and fly apart inside a dense atomic vapor! [Continue Reading]

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  Timely Comparisons

  When Albert Einstein said, "the only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once," he didn't know about studies performed by Senior Research Associate Christine Hackman and Fellow Judah Levine. [Continue Reading]

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  Designer Rings

  One way to understand unstable molecules is to systematically create slightly different versions of a similar stable molecule and investigate each new molecule with identical analysis and experiments. That is exactly what researchers from JILA and CU are doing with a series of ringed molecules. [Continue Reading]

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  Smudging Genetic Blueprints

  High-energy radiation is notorious for damaging DNA, primarily by breaking chemical bonds. Damage to DNA can cause mutations, cancer, or even death. [Continue Reading]

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  Spinning Out Stars and Planets

  Scientists believe that planetary systems coalesce from disks of gas and dust orbiting a star. Similarly, stars can form within massive accretion disks orbiting a black hole. Determining the mechanisms that create stars and planets from these orbiting disks is a hot topic among astrophysicists, according to JILA Fellow Phil Armitage [Continue Reading]

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  The Tie That Binds

  Graduate Student Sarah Thompson, Research Associate Eleanor Hodby, and Fellow Carl Wieman have come up with a novel way to assemble Feshbach molecules from a cloud of ultracold atoms. The molecules consist of very weakly bound atoms that are about as far apart in the molecular state as they are in the atom cloud from which they are formed. [Continue Reading]

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  Cool Star Winds

  We know a lot about cool stars because our Sun is one of them. However, we can't know for sure if cool stars produce winds (like the Sun does) without looking for evidence of such winds. Where stellar winds exist, they interact with hydrogen in the interstellar medium far from the star to produce tell-tale absorption in stellar ultraviolet spectral lines. [Continue Reading]

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  Cracking the Collision Code

  When molecules smash into each other, things happen on the quantum level. Electrons get shoved around. They may even jump from one atom to another. Spin directions can change. A chemical reaction may even take place. [Continue Reading]

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  Molecular Secrets Revealed

  Chemical physicists investigate the structure and behavior of atoms and molecules on the quantum level. Such research is particularly challenging when the molecule under investigation appears in small amounts and is rapidly transformed into something else, e.g., during combustion, chemical synthesis, or atmospheric chemical reactions. [Continue Reading]