'Trapping atoms between laser beams': AI research tool runs Nobel Prize physics experiment

"I didn't expect the machine could learn to do the experiment itself, from scratch, in under an hour," said co-lead researcher Paul Wigley from the Australian National University (ANU) Research School of Physics and Engineering in a statement. "A simple computer program would have taken longer than the age of the universe to run through all the combinations and work this out," he added. Scientists wanted to recreate an experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics, which involved extremely cold gas trapped in a laser beam known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. The condensates "are some of the coldest places in the Universe, far colder than outer space, typically less than a billionth of a degree above absolute zero (-273.15 The experiment involved trapping 40 million atoms at the intersection between two laser beams. The team used magnetic fields to cool the atoms down to about five millionths of a degree above absolute zero. Scientists then used the AI algorithm to control the lasers during cooling, carefully tuning the power of the two lasers to allow the most energetic atoms to escape without losing hold of the coldest ones. The AI algorithm was able to do this ten times faster than a regular non-AI program. "It is cheaper than taking a physicist everywhere with you.