Dousing doubts

Julian Barbour

Gary A. Williams

Adrian Cho's article “New state of matter not so new?” (News Focus, 1 March, p. 1630) describes a debate on whether Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) has been observed in a system of helium-4 films adsorbed in porous glass (1, 2). Although Cho mentions that there are scientists who doubt that BEC was observed in this system, the reasons for this doubt are not presented. I wish to clarify the origin of the doubt.

Anil Ananthaswamy

Constantino Armesto Ramón

A historia comezou no verán de 2006. Turista en Los AÁngeles, decateime dun seminario de oito horas de duración que se vai a celebrar na Universidade de California, en Santa Cruz. Dirı́xese a escritores cientı́ficos e impárteno dous afamados fı́sicos, Bruce Rosenblum e Fred Kuttner. Matriculeime. Como traballo final tiven que redactar, expoñer en público e debater un artigo de catrocentas palabras; para escribilo permitı́ronme usar as bibliotecas da Universidade. Na do departamento de fı́sica, onde indaguei eu, atopei un curioso documento escrito a máquina. Na portada un tı́tulo “A conferencia do profesor Schrödinger”, unha firma “Stefan Zweig”, e un lugar cunha data “Santiago de Compostela 1934”; a continuación dúas páxinas escritas en alemán.

Edwin Cartlidge

An underground experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory casts doubt on Roger Penrose’s ideas on the role of coherent superpositions in the brain, as Edwin Cartlidge reports