SIGNIFICANT EVENTS - SCIENCE EVENTS
04/06/01

Article by MIT Investigator Ketterle Featured in NASA News Release

NASA and JPL have generated news releases describing the upcoming publication of research results by the MIT group of Fundamental Physics investigator Wolfgang Ketterle. The research results will be published in Science magazine on April 20, presenting photographs of up to 130 whirlpools (vortices) in an ultra-cold gas of sodium atoms. An on-line preview of the article is available at the SciencExpress site at http://www.sciencemag.org/sciencexpress/recent.shtml. The NASA news release (see http://spaceresearch.nasa.gov/news.html) emphasizes the possible relation to starquakes as observed in glitches in pulsar rotation rates by the Hubble and other telescopes. The JPL news release (see http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2001/whirlpool.html) includes a 30-second animation of a pulsar and of the spinning cloud of sodium atoms with whirlpools.