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– Many scientists describe your scientific activity as "going towards uncertainty". In addition, you have received the Nobel Prize for research on cold atoms. Perhaps you could tell non-physicists why these cold atoms should be important to us and what exactly would you explore?
– Let me answer, using a comparison. If you get lower and lower temperatures, you always have the opportunity to discover something completely new. For example, if you live in a hot country, no one would have seen snow or ice, unless scientists create a refrigerator and put water in it. Then, after opening the door, you'll find this new one, the one you've never seen before – snow and ice. What I just said is no longer in the everyday world, but it still happens in science.
In my research, we have developed special refrigerators that reach lower temperatures than ever before. This is how discoveries begin. We find these materials, forms of matter like never before, because nobody has managed to reach the temperature necessary for the existence of these forms of matter.
In our case, it is not crystalline snow, but ultrafast ones with special properties. – The superficial state and behavior, that they would not be at a higher temperature. Of course, we can not touch them with their own hands, everything happens in an empty room, but there is a clear demonstration of this new abnormal behavior when we capture everything with digital cameras
– But these discoveries will they be used in the future? Practically applicable?
– I am convinced and convinced that the basic sciences of today lay the foundation for completely new technologies and new industries in the future. In my research, I deeply interested in new forms of matter with new qualities, but we do it at a fundamental level, because we want a complicated task to be solved in the simplest way possible. It is easy to imagine that it will take 20, 30 or 40 years to get to know these new materials so that they create a new practical use. So, I have no doubt that there will be new forms of materials that will at least partially be based on our current research, but this can be time consuming.
Of course, there are other methods of application more "terrestrial". – People are already developing precision clocks in the world, whose operation is based on cold atoms at an absolute zero close to zero. These watches are important for navigation, a global positioning system called GPS. Also for accurate communication and geological exploration of the diversity of our planet.
– An interesting detail is that these "refrigerators", as you called them, should have been installed not on Earth, but in space. Why?
– The beginning of the research was here – our refrigerators built with vacuum cavities and lasers were built in the laboratory and this year NASA launched an experiment where cold atoms are produced at the space station. This is a new stage of research, when new forms of matter are created outside the gravitational field on Earth, but in space, microgravity. The possibilities develop further, as there is no more gravitational effect, and it is possible to study more closely the materials of microgravity under microgravity conditions.
"Cancan photo" / NASA
– Correct me if I'm wrong. but scientists claim that only 5% of the universe is visible. And the other 95 percent? Will your search help you discover something from this unknown side?
– There is a lot to do with science. The new forms of matter and matter that I study are part of these 5% of usual materials and are not directly related to 95% of our universe, which is made up of dark matter and dark energy [19659014]. in fact, there is a dark matter, still no answer, and the super precise atomic watches I mentioned can help answer it. We have noticed that clocks will look slightly different when they interact with dark matter, so the precision of the atoms of the ultra-low atom that they provide for watches and other measuring instruments can be useful as a detector of dark matter
Humans will know everything?
– No, it will never be a day when we will know everything, because science has two questions when it comes to answering a question
A hundred years ago, We do more research the more we become convinced that we can dig deeper and deeper – we can penetrate deep into the microscopic world, or penetrate deeper into space, or deepen in complexity, into a set
materials, they can suddenly react completely new to what you did not expect. Just remember the last few years – new fundamental materials have been discovered, we have a fundamentally renewed approach to dark matter and dark energy, to the structure of the universe – these incredible discoveries are achievable in just a few years.
It turns out science has goals, but you do not know if it will take a few years or ten years to reach them, or maybe you'll never find them, but that's part of the charm of science . ] I think it's human nature to be curious, discover, explore, learn and learn about nature and the whole world. Here on Earth, we can no longer navigate the ocean and discover the new continent – all this has already been done a few hundred years ago – but in our labs we still have to wait for this exciting bet be explored and discovered. It is happening today and it will happen in the future, you just have to be a scientist to be in this part.
– Thanks for the conversation.
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