
A magnetic and optical trap used to bring atoms closer to absolute zero
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
The laws of physics dictate that an organized system will become more and more disordered over time until it dissolves into a featureless mush, but a new experiment shows that some very cold atoms can avoid this entropy.
Any system that begins with low disorder or low entropy will eventually become more disordered. Picture flowers arranged in a bouquet: their entropy will gradually increase until a bouquet of bright colors…