Researchers create gigantic atom filled with 100 other atoms
The excided electron (blue) orbits its nucleus (red), and encloses other atoms of the Bose-Einstein-condensate (green). Image credits TU Wien.

Like a bag of chips, atoms are mostly empty space. However, a highly exotic state of matter that was recently created by a team from the Vienna University of Technology, the Harvard University, and Rice University, Texas, flips that notion on its head - dubbed a Rydberg polaron, this giant atom is filled with other atoms.

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