Science at JILA

A Rainbow of X-Rays

Henry Kapteyn and Margaret Murnane in their laboratory at JILA.

Many people who have seen a green laser pointer “know” that laser light is a single pure color. But this idea doesn’t hold true for all lasers. Special lasers called femtosecond lasers can produce rainbows of tens, hundreds, or even millions of pure colors. These rainbows can include colors with wavelengths (in the infrared) that are too long for people to see and colors with wavelengths (in the ultraviolet) that are too short for people to see. Read more »

Nature's Fingerprints

A Laser of Many Colors Is Used to Identify Different Atoms and Molecules

Millions of different kinds of atoms and molecules make up everything in the world, including you. Sometimes it’s important to know what kind of atoms or molecules are in a suspicious package or a person’s breath. Some molecules like carbon dioxide are found in everybody’s breath, but other molecules only show up in your breath if you smoke cigarettes or something in your body like your kidneys isn’t working right. Read more »

Empire of the Sun

Layer of the Sun just beneath the surface.

Magnetic wreaths form in young stars rotating faster than the Sun.

Juri Toomre studies the star closest to the Earth — the Sun. Since it is relatively close by (just 93 million miles away), Toomre and his students can detect and analyze sound waves that are trapped inside the Sun. Read more »

Titans of the Universe

Artist's conception of a gigantic black hole at the center of a galaxy.

Long, long ago during the creation of the first galaxies, some very strange stars appeared. These stars grew to colossal sizes — a million times bigger than our Sun. For a brief time, they were the Titans of the early Universe. However, they burned out in less than 2 million years, which is just a blink of an eye in a Universe that is now nearly 14 billion years old. Read more »

Sky Walkers

Montage of the solar system’s outer planets.

Comparison of the Epsilon Eridani star system to our solar system. Both have ast

The Greeks called the planets in our solar system “wanderers.” Unlike stars that appear in the same place at the same time each year, the planets seem to roam randomly through the night skies, sometimes even visible at twilight or in the early morning. The picture here shows a montage of the solar system’s outer planets (from l–r): Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter. Only Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus are visible from the Earth without a telescope. Read more »

The Time Lord

Dr. Judah Levine is the nation's timekeeper.

Judah Levine has been our nation’s timekeeper for nearly 40 years. As timekeeper, his job is to send out the exact time to everyone who wants it. The exact time is determined by atomic clocks at the Boulder (Colorado) Laboratories of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Read more »

The Quietest Amplifier in the World

When JILA scientist Konrad Lehnert needed a better amplifier, he invented one. An amplifier is a device in a radio or stereo system that makes sounds louder. Lehnert recently needed a new amplifier to help him figure out what was happening inside the tiny structures he builds and studies. Lehnert’s structures aren’t just something you can just take the lid off of and measure. They’re really, really small. In fact, they’re so small that to understand them, you have to figure out what’s going on with the atoms and molecules inside them. Read more »

More Ultracool Molecules

Artist’s conception of ultracold molecules.

The cold-molecule team is led by Dr. John Bohn (bottom center), Dr. Deborah Jin

JILA scientists Deborah Jin and Jun Ye have done something remarkable: They’ve created an entirely new form of matter! They’ve taken two different incredibly cold atoms at three hundred billionths of a degree above absolute zero and made them into molecules. These molecules contain one atom of rubidium (Rb) and one atom of potassium (K). They are too cold to exist naturally anywhere in the Universe. Read more »

Ultracool Molecules

An energetic (purple) electron in this ultracool molecule (which looks like a tr

JILA scientists are famous for exploring matter that is really cold — less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero (which is as cold as matter can ever get). At first, they studied ultracold atoms, but they soon started to wonder what would happen if they could link incredibly cold atoms together to make amazingly cold molecules. For instance, in 2000 JILA scientist Chris Greene (and other scientists he works with) did some mathematical calculations. This is how theoretical physicists like Chris explore how the world works. Read more »

Scientists with X-Ray Eyes

Margaret Murnane in her lab with a laser. Credit:The Kapteyn/Murnane Group

JILA scientists Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn run a lab at JILA together. They’re also married to each other. They specialize in studying lasers and light. One of the things they like to do in the lab is watch what’s happening inside molecules. They’ve come up with a very clever way to do this. Read more »

Molecule Manufacturing

Adjusting magnets helps very cold atoms form very big, floppy molecules.

Brrrr! JILA scientists have made some of the coldest molecules in the world. That is because the molecules were made from pairs of atoms of potassium and rubidium inside the coldest place in the Universe. Once you have got atoms a few millionths of a degree above the absolute coldest possible temperature, all you need to make molecules are some magnets and a radio signal.
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The World's Best Breath Tester

Mike Thorpe holds part of his laser breath tester. This is the chamber where the

Mike Thorpe just invented the world's best breath tester. This nifty device uses a laser to see what sort of things come out of your mouth when you breathe out. Mike's amazing breath tester can tell you what every one of them is.Read more »