Quantum gas unlocks the secrets of the universe's birth ⚡ экспресс
Imagine that ripples on water could tell us about the birth of the universe. Physicists have created an analogue of cosmic ripples in a cloud of supercooled atoms and saw how invisible quantum 'whispers' can alter the large-scale picture. Could a handful of atoms shed light on the mysteries of the Big Bang?
To peer 14 billion years into the past, you don’t need a telescope—just a cloud of atoms chilled to near absolute zero. In the Bose–Einstein condensate state, discovered by Bose and Einstein, atoms merge into a giant synchronized wave. By tuning magnetism, scientists turn this wave into a tiny “pond” that models spacetime right after the Big Bang—complete with its ripples of primordial inhomogeneities. The key discovery: when the “pond” expands (like our universe), small ripples vanish without a trace, and when it contracts, large ones disappear. This “Planckian damping” breaks symmetry: contrary to expectations, ripples are not the same at all scales. This effect is a direct consequence of spacetime ceasing to be smooth at the smallest scales (where curvature plays a role). For the first time, a lab trick allows us to distinguish the inflationary theory of Alan Guth from other scenarios and peek beyond the Standard Model without giant accelerators. The temperature of this “cosmos” is a hundred million times lower than the interstellar void: the slightest heat would destroy the entire simulation.
🎯 The gas is cooled to a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero—so cold that even the cosmic microwave background, cooled after the Big Bang, feels hot.