Vortex Forms Spontaneously in a Bose-Einstein Condensate

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This color movie simulates that as very cold gas gets colder, some atoms in the gas change into a new form of matter, a superfluid called a Bose-Einstein Condensate. Scientists discovered in UA experiments that atoms in the superfluid sometimes spin up spontaneously into a vortex, shown here as the dynamically twisting pink feature. The black-and-white image to the right of the movie is made from actual photographs of this phenomenon. The black spot is looking straight down into the center of the vortex, with superfluid rotating around the "eye," or void, of the vortex, where there is no superfluid.