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A New Spin On Physical Phenomena
f00Dave writes "Researchers have discovered "a new physical phenomenon, electrostatic rotation, that, in the absence of friction, leads to spin". I'm a bit skeptical about the implied relationship between physical "spin" (as in rotation) and quantum "spin", however. Still, this is the sort of scientific advance that renews my faith in the system. Go nerds! =]"
I'm more excited about the "absence of friction" part...
At last my dream of building a perpetual motion machine can be realized. Take that thermodynamics!
I don't understand this submission:
I'm a bit skeptical about the implied relationship between physical "spin" (as in rotation) and quantum "spin", however. Still, this is the sort of scientific advance that renews my faith in the system.
What system are we talking about? Why does faith need to be renewed in it? What, have you lost faith in physics because it doesn't discover new laws every day?
Maybe that's the cool thing about scientific curiosity - the things you discover don't have to have commercial value in order to be discovered.
Consider this: when it was determined that a current flowing in a wire produces a magnetic field, or when Faraday discovered that moving a magnet near a wire or coil of wire can produce a voltage, I'm sure a lot of people said, "but seriously, what would this be used for?" And they probably said the same thing about countless other things that were discovered in situations where the effect was so small that they had no apparent use.
Of course now we look back and say, "what a dumb question! How could they now know these things could be useful?" And maybe 200 years from now somebody will look at this archived announcement on Slashdot and say the same.
Then again, maybe this will turn out to be a misinterpretation of the experimental observation. Time will tell...
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Nanotech basically. They have basically discovered a way to use a distribution of electric charges on a configuration of three sphere to start one of the spheres rotating. This is different from current electric motors; they use magnetic fields to start things rotating. This kind of engine would use a lot less current to generate motion than conventional electromagnetic motors. This would be good for building little machines; it's really hard to make electromagnets at the subatomic scale, but metallic spheres? Much easier. And static charge? It's hard NOT to get something with static charge on it down at that scale.
Having said that, this is purely a proof-of-concept thingy. What they did was just say, "Look, we can use this simple setup to create rotation". It's like they stuck a magnet near another magnet dangling on a string ang made it rotate. That's a long way from an electromagnetic motor, but it is a first step...