I’ve often wondered how an atom knows it has stopped in a Bose-Einstein Condensation experiment. Basically an atoms are hit with a laser beams until they “stop” and then they all condense to the same place. But the atoms are only stopped relative to the tabletop of the experiment, so how do they know to condense?
Well filmore, in that experiment, they are not ‘stopped’, as I said before it is impossible to stop atoms from moving even at 0 K, they are brought down to a very low temp.
Oh I see now, do you mean photons? This is a completely different ballgame, nothing to do with relativity, everything to do with quantum physics (it’s more like the information of the photon is frozen, than the photon actually stops)
But they are only at 0 K relative to the tabletop. To another observer, those atoms could appear to be moving very fast and would have a much higher temperature to that other observer. Would the other observer see the BEC as well?
I think I might be misunderstanding something here so feel free to correct me.
0 K refers to absolute zero, which is not measured relative to anything. 0 K is always 0 K.