By Adrian Cho
ScienceNOW Daily News
It would be tough to stick it to your refrigerator, but an ultra-cold gas magnetizes itself just as do metals such as iron or nickel, a team of atomic physicists reports. That cool trick shows that the messy physics within solids can be modeled with pristine gases, the researchers say. But others are skeptical that the team has actually seen what they claim.
Condensed matter physicists can tell you essentially all there is to know about how common metals carry electricity and heat. Why some of them are magnetic is a trickier question. Physicists know the basics: The electrons that flow through iron, nickel, and other magnetic materials act like little bar magnets. Below a certain temperature the electrons align so that they all point in the same direction, at least within relatively large "domains" in the crystalline material. The question is why do the electrons align themselves?
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