I consider myself a scientific and knowledgeable person, and I thoroughly enjoy those moments when my understanding of the world gets an upgrade – as well as the included ‘Ah-a!’ moments that happens in these moment, taking my breath away.
Recently I had that happen three times in one moment – incredible I know – with the discovery that over a decade ago the Harvard Professor Lene Hau has slowed a beam of light to the speed of a person crawling along. That was the first ah-a moment!
Fueled by my curiosity, I dug deeper into this research and found that this was made possible by creating the coldest place in the world, within a Bose-Einstein condensate that exists at almost 0 Kelvin (−273.15° Celsius) ! Second ah-a!
All of this is possible because of using multiple lasers blasting the particles, and that makes it get that incredibly cold 100 times faster, making me Third moment of ah-a!
And today I just discovered that MIT recently are able to create these unbelievably cold environments even faster than before – the endless march of science continues to feed my curiosity and hopefully yours as well. You can find more about the science of Curiosity in the Curious Information section of this website.
Did something recently give you a ‘ah-a!’ moment?