PHYSICISTS often struggle to get their work into the public eye. Just ask Deborah Jin at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Two weeks ago, her group created a new form of matter called a fermionic condensate. Read the press release and news reports that followed and you could be forgiven for thinking that the new state of matter will solve the world鈥檚 energy problems. The reason? The pairing of atoms in a fermionic condensate resembles what might happen to electrons in a room-temperature superconductor. Understanding that might lead to super-efficient power cables and transformers that will not need to be chilled with costly liquid nitrogen.
But wait. Jin鈥檚 condensate is just 500,000 potassium atoms cooled to 300 billionths of a degree above absolute zero. It is unlikely to impact on practical superconductors for decades 鈥� if at all. Her work is a breakthrough because it reveals the delicate way that a whole class of quantum particles pair up.
So why the appeal to superconductivity? Sadly, science has grown ultra-utilitarian, and funding agencies demand to know what new devices their money will buy. Directors want publicity for their institutions, and many reporters want only stories that will not tax their audiences. Yet for most atomic and solid-state physicists it is not applications that motive them but the chance to study matter at its most basic level. It is time for them to take a stand and explain the beauty of fundamental physics 鈥� and leave out the hype.
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