Mid-1990s Boulder was busy with activity. Fitness was king. Local businesses were prized. Hacky Sack circles and jam band opuses were ubiquitous anywhere students congregated. Simultaneous to that, though, was something wholly different. Buried in the corridors of the JILA tower on CU’s campus, a breakthrough was purring along quietly. Professors Carl Wieman and Eric Cornell were making real what many physicists thought was only theory. In the 1920s, Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein conceived of a new form of matter, which came to be known as the Bose-Einstein Condensate. A full explanation... Read More

Ask someone exactly how long one second is, and you’re likely to get a smirk. If pressed, many might rely on the “one-Mississippi” trick from their hide-and-seek days. Others might claim an innate sense of it, as though they’re a minor—if punctual—X-Men style mutant. But, honestly, most would look at their smartphone. Ask the right scientist that question, though, and they’ll tell you with confidence: it’s a matter of 9,192,631,770. Boulder is home to NIST, which, among its distinctions, is the keeper of official civilian time in the United States. That moniker comes as a direct... Read More