Scientists Create New Form of Matter

soren100 writes "Yahoo News has a story about scientists creating a sixth form of matter. They are calling their new state of matter a 'fermionic condensate.' Somehow they got potassium atoms to form pairs similar to the 'Cooper pairs' that make superconducting possible. Maybe any quantum physicists around can tell us more about this, but it certainly sounds pretty revolutionary. The scientists are predicting that this will lead to 'room temperature solid' superconductors, which in turn will enable us to have better electricity generators, more efficient electric motors, and (our favorite) cheaper maglev trains."

Comments

Re:Quandry

[Urkki]

• Maybe, but how will you tell the real quantum physicists from the myriad of armchair quantum physicists who think they know what it's all about.

Why, by making an observation of course! After that their quantum state collapses to just one state, either a real or an armchair quantum physicist.

There are some experiments underway to use this to encrypt articles about quantum physics, so that only intended recipients can decrypt the text, even.

Re:Sixth form of matter?

[squaretorus]

Its the Bose-Einstein condensate - and may I point out what a SHIT name this is for a form of matter.

When you're naming a star, a hurricane, or a child you know you have a good chance of some more coming along later - so hell - John or Mary will do nicely.

But with forms of matter I think they missed a trick. Plasma is a pretty cool name after all. I would have thought a few minutes spent searching for the phone number for Douglas Adams and a quick "Hey - Doug - can I call you Doug - No? - Okay - Mr Adams - You were joking? - cool - very funny - ANyway - we have a new form of matter - and we can only think up really shit scientificy names for it - any chance of you coming up with some options we can present to the board? - None of your stupid numbers or shit - a proper kick ass name .... etc... etc.... etc...