NEWS OF THE WEEK SCIENCE
RINGING IN MOLECULES Physicists in the Netherlands slow ammonia molecules emitted from a pulsed valve to a near standstill using an electrostatic device known as a Stark decelerator. Packets of neutral molecules emerge from the decelerator in a single quantum state and are collimated and injected into a hexapole torus storage ring (orange), where they can be probed repeatedly with lasers (blue) or used in other investigations.
COLD MOLECULES GO ROUND AND ROUND Physicists debut device for storing neutral molecular beams
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used to prepare beams of ultracold molecules, researchers in the Netherlands have demonstrated a storage ring capable of maintaining dense packets of neutral molecules in circular orbits [Nature, 411, 174 (2001)]. The device provides new opportunities for advances in the fields of precision molecular spectroscopy, molecular dynamics, and other areas. During the past 15 years or so, scientists have developed quite a knack for cooling and con-
RESEARCH
trolling beams of atoms—leading to atom lasers, atom interferometry and Bose-Einstein condensates. But molecules have been much more unyielding. They possess complex energy structures relative to atoms and have access to huge numbers of molecular rotationalvibrational states, all of which make it difficult to apply atom-cooling methods to molecules. Yet some success in cooling molecules to within fractions of a degree above absolute zero has been reported recently. For example, physics professor Gerard Meijer and
MANAGEMENT
SMITHSONIAN GETS SCIENCE COMMISSION In wake of controversy, science reorganization will be guided by experts
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mission will guide a planned reorganization of science at the Smithsonian Institution, Secretary Lawrence M. Small told a press briefing last week that followed a meeting of the Smithsonian Institution's Board of Regents. Small offered few additional details about the reorganization. He did say that commission members will be "powerfully credible" scientists from inside and outside the Smithsonian, and that he hopes to name panel members by the end of June.
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Small's announcement followed weeks of criticism touched off by his decision to cut two Smithsonian research centers (C&EN, April 23, page 46). In fact, Small withdrew from consideration by the regents a plan to close the Smithsonian Conservation & Research Center in Front Royal, Va., which conducts research on endangered species. Small said, however, that the regents approved his plan to close the Smithsonian Center for Materials Research & Education (SCMRE), which carries out
coworkers at the University of Nijmegen and at the FOM Institute for Plasma Physics, Rijnhuizen, devised a method in which a series of pulsed electric fields causes molecules to lose kinetic energy in multiple stages. T h e technique, which can be applied to any molecule with an electric dipole moment, has been used to prepare millikelvin-temperature pulses of deuterated ammonia molecules in a single quantum state. Now, Meijer and coworkers Floris M. H. Crompvoets, Hendrick L. Bethlem, and Rienk T. Jongma have gone an important step further by developing a storage ring into which decelerated bunches of molecules can be injected for further study. Storage rings enable researchers to repeatedly probe molecules with light or particle beams at welldefined times and locations and may eventually be used to study collisions between counterpropagating beams of neutral molecules.-M ITCH J ACQ BY
research on conserving and preserving museum artifacts. Asked at the press conference ifhe or the regents had considered how the SCMRE closing will affect the Smithsonian's responsibility to care for the National Collections, Small said, "We see an ongoing need for excellence in materials conservation," explaining that the Smithsonian's individual museums have their own conservation programs that will help them care for the collections. Critics, including many Smithsonian scientists, have charged that the planned cuts —which are contained in the Smithsonian's fiscal 2 0 0 2 budget request to Congress—might be a prelude to still more cutbacks. They say that the secretiveness of Small's reorganization effort has fueled fears that he intends to sacrifice science in order to fund building improvements and public programs.-WILLIAM SCHULZ HTTP://PUB5.ACS.ORG/CEN
