While working at The University of Otago, quantum physicist (and now expat NZer) Andrew Wilson was part of a team that became the first in the Southern Hemisphere to create the fifth state of matter (after solids, liquids, gases and plasma).
The Bose-Einstein Condensate (or BEC) started out as a thought experiment by the Indian mathematician Satyendra Nath Bose. Later corroborated by Albert Einstein, it took 70 years for laser technology to allow it to be made in the lab for the very first time. This month marks the 25th anniversary of the BEC’s Nobel Prize-winning discovery by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman.
Now Wilson’s been appointed to lead the quantum physics team at the lab where this work took place: JILA at the University of Colorado at Boulder. We ask him what the discovery of this fifth state of matter has enabled, how the BEC is being used today, and why this month one was created at zero gravity aboard the International Space Station.
Andrew Wilson in his Quantum Physics Laboratory Photo: Supplied/Andrew Wilson
