Tangled quantum whirlpools caught unraveling in an ultracold gas

When a cloud of atoms is cooled close to absolute zero, its atoms can merge into a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC): an exotic fluid in which atoms across the whole cloud share a single quantum state. Current theories predict that as a disordered quantum gas settles into this ordered state, a tangle of tiny vortices should form and gradually unravel.