Ford Motor Company Distinguished Lecture in Physics

2005 Ford Motor Company Lecturer - Wolfgang Ketterle Wolfgang Ketterle, Physics Nobel laureate and the John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will give the 2005 Ford Motor Company Distinguished Lecture in Physics. Wednesday, April 6, 2005 Lecture in 1324 East Hall Auditorium at 4:15 p.m. Reception preceding at 3:45 p.m., first floor East Hall Atrium (located directly behind the lecture hall facing Church Street) Please see map for approximate location

When Freezing Cold is Not Cold Enough -- New Forms of Matter at Close to Absolute Zero Temperature

Why do physicists freeze matter to extremely low temperatures? Why is it worthwhile to cool to temperatures which are more than a million times lower than that of interstellar space? This lecture will discuss new forms of matter, which exist only at extremely low temperatures. Low temperatures open a new door to the quantum world where particles behave as waves and “march in lockstep”. In 1925, Einstein predicted such a new form of matter, the Bose-Einstein condensate, but it was realized only in 1995 in laboratories at Boulder and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). More recently, Bose-Einstein condensates of molecules and fermion pairs have been created and may show behavior similar to electrons in superconducting materials.

More Information about Professor Ketterle

Previous lectures in this series

• 2004 Physics Nobel Laureate Robert B. Laughlin: The Emergent Age
• 2003 Physics Nobel laureate Carl E. Wieman: Bose-Einstein Condensation: Quantum Weirdness at the Lowest Temperature in the Universe
  
• 2002 Sir Michael Atiyah: Geometry and Physics: A Marriage Made in Heaven
  
• 2001 Mildred S. Dresselhaus: Frontiers in Nanoscience