New form of matter created in lab

Now this is cool!

To make the condensate the researchers cooled potassium gas to a billionth of a degree above absolute zero – the temperature at which matter stops moving.

They confined the gas in a vacuum chamber and used magnetic fields and laser light to manipulate the potassium atoms into pairing up and forming the fermionic condensate.

Jin pointed out that her team worked with a supercooled gas, which provides little opportunity for everyday application. But the way the potassium atoms acted suggested there should be a way to turn it into a room-temperature solid.

It could be a step closer to an everyday, usable superconductor – a material that conducts electricity without losing any of its energy.

And that is the cool part. . . superconductors! If this is as stable as it sounds, and if it can be made as simply as the article suggests (simply being a qualitative word), then this could be a huge breakthrough in modern science and engineering.