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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."
The article seems to highly stress the practical application of this new form of matter. Doesn't this seem too optimistic or unrealistic? If it's a new form of matter, surely there must be properties which even researchers are unsure about. What are the safety and health issues involved in using this in 'practical applications'?
the 21st century's version of the 20th's "i was promised rocket cars!" will be "i was promised maglevs!"
maglevs always seem to be just around the corner... perpetually...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You militant assholes should refuse medical help when the cops beat you up next time.
Presentation of this story suggests that this work is a step towards room temp superconductors. While this may be true, I suspect it is no more true of this that any other significant development of our understanding of that wierd stuff we call 'quantum'.
I really dont see superconductors becoming feasable at room temperatures anytime soon (i.e. 100 years) unless we all decide we actually like it when our rooms are well below freezing.
New forms of matter are interesting - but that they are found only at a billionth of a degree above absolute zero is no more interesting to me than the fact that we can build a fridge able to get stuff down to those temperatures in the first place. I'd be scared if we didn't find some spooky stuff going on!
And this is bad because...? To put it bluntly, that's a bit elitist attitude, "if you can't understand this thing, you shouldn't even think about it, just go and do your daily work and pay your taxes so scientists get their grants and particle accelerators, don't bother your little brain with this stuff".
Anything that makes layman more familiar with basic scientific research and principles and generally interested in those is good IMHO, even if they get it a bit wrong.
I'm not a Quantum Physicist by any stretch, just a Materials Engineer. But it seems to me that the condensates have a small issue about them. They seem to hold an extremely narrow definition of a material.
Considering solid, gases, liquids, and even plasmas, they all have a range of environmental factors within which they can exist and have some level of application/interaction to the rest of the newtonian universe. I'm not disputing that they are able to get all these little bits together, but at a billionth of a fraction above absolute zero? That's going to make for a pretty cold ride on the maglev
While it's impossible to tell from this shitty article what was actually observed, it's clear that this super-low-temperature experiment has nothing to do with high-Tc superconductivity. At least not more than a million previous experiments; a more likely candidate would have been experiments done long ago on superfluid 3He.
You can blame that on all those 'easy-to-read' books on quantum physics. I'm not quite sure, someone might let me know - what is the attraction of attempting to explain something as abstract as quantum physics to lay people.
/. are likely not quantum physicists, this sounds an awful lot like flamebait. Really, there's no point in writing such things... they should just send their research to you, right? At least you understand it, unlike those of us "lay people" who aren't so enlightened. Bah, waste of paper, those books. Yup. Uh-huh. Yessir.
Considering that the majority of the people who read
What, precisely, is wrong with explaining science to the general populace? I would consider such a thing a laudable goal, regardless of discipline to be disseminated, not only because of the sheer enlightenment value, but also because a population taught to think scientifically and flexibly, as from exposure to the sciences, is far more difficult to manipulate than one that has no understanding of any of it!
"What's the use in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes?" --Fourth Doctor, "Robot"
These guys keep talking about superconductors but the fact remains that this is fundamental research with no real applications now or even in the near future.
Oh, I'm sorry -- is this your field? Yes, now I understand. You are entirely qualified to discuss the viabilities of this research for the purposes of application now or down the road, you brilliant slashdotter, you.
Just what makes that "fact?" Surely facts are universal -- so would I be getting a reflection of that if I went to a chemistry Ph.D. friend of mine (who happens to specialize in development of superconductors) and asked about honest prospects regarding applications?
Smacks like "gotta tell them at least about some possible application to keep us funded"-talk.
Smacks of "if it ain't instant gratification it's worthless"-talk to me, actually...
"What's the use in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes?" --Fourth Doctor, "Robot"
Ooh...this sort of comment makes me mad. There's no possible way anyone can know what will come out of any fundamental research tomorrow, a year from now, or ten years from now. Many, many conveniences of modern day life sprang forth from researches into the most arcane of topics.
It especially gets me in this particular case, because we're talking about research that will likely bear as much fruit as the early 1900's physics research that later served as the foundation for the modern transistor.
I shall not be as vainglorious as to assume I can say it better than it's already been said, so let's see what a few of the titans had to say on this...
Hardy is speaking of his contributions in general, of which the search for prime numbers was significant, one of the most abstruse and abstract areas of pure mathematics one could name at the time of the research. Even this, however, in a mere 70 years yielded important practical applications in public key encryption.Bertrand Russell spent much of his time trying to find a definition of "number" in terms of pure logic, having found a flaw in Gottleb Frege's attempt to do the same. This was the purest of pure intellection and Russell himself would have hooted with laughter if you'd asked him about practical applications at the time. He even found himself wondering: "It seemed unworthy of a grown man to spend his time on such trivialities..."
In fact, Russell's work eventually brought forth Principia Mathematica, a key development in the modern study of the foundations of mathematics. Among the fruits of that study have been, so far, nothing less than victory in World War II (at least, victory at lower cost than would otherwise have been possible) and machines like the one on which I type this.
I just previewed this post and read it, and I realized I've used words like "vainglorious" and "intellection". I've clearly been watching too much Dennis Miller.
sevbut have you considered the following argument: shut up.
But I study to become one.
Essentially, you have two types of particles. Bosons, of which there can exist infinitely many in the same state (place, time, energy and such), and fermions, of which no two can occupy the same state. For the more physics geek among us: Bosons have an integral spin, fermions have halve-valued spins.
In superconducting material, two electrons (fermions) bind together to form a boson (2 x 1/2 = integer), which form a sort of Bose-Einstein condensate in matter, creating superconduction. (This is a higher hand-waving physics explanation, but this space is too short to explain it fully).
What the news is now, is that they have now done this, not for electrons in a material, but for actual atoms. Not sure how this can be used for superconduction at high (liquid nitrogen) temperatures though.
from the article:
"They cooled potassium gas to a billionth of a degree C above absolute zero or minus 459 degrees F -- which is the point at which matter stops moving. "
So you have something that could bring a superconductor closer, which would save HUUUGGGEEE amount of energy. Only 1 thing... you need to cool it down to minus 459 degrees F. And that would cost exactly how much energy???
"Hmmmmm; how are they going to come to a process that can produce an extruded filament that can be bought in Radio Shack, if cooling to such a low temperature is needed in the process?"
Well, the point is the process, or some future decendant of it, will produce materials that will superconduct AFTER it is warmed up to room temperature. That this is only the first step to creating new, heretofore unknown superconductors that will perform to different specs.
As for how it would be economical, which I think your point is: how economical is the process that builds silicon processors? How incredibly, ridiculously persnickity and expensive. But economies of scale and massive investment by both government and private concerns made factories theat could turn out enough chips to change the world.
Superconducting materials at room temperature will change so many things. Motors. Power transmission. Industrial manufacturing. Transportation. No matter how hard it is to make the room temperature superconductors, it would be more expensive NOT to make them. It'll be done.
That even with the so-called "pros," much of the ideas associated with quantum dynamics is theory. While some is based on real physical phenomenon (the particle/wave duality of light for example), other ideas, like the notion that there exist quantum entities that float around in spacetime (moving backward and forward in time - we notice their presence only when they happen to share the same point in spacetime that we occupy), qualify as nothing more than "the best way we can think of at the moment to explain what we see." Fortunately, a good imagination doesn't require a PhD in quantum physics.
Here we go again. There are some mentally deranged individuals on this board that clearly have a low self esteem, otherwise they would not make such a half-assed comment. The EU does a lot more fundamental research than applied research, and that is why it may seem that the EU does not "create" things: You won't see highly theoretical papers in these popular scientific magazines. Also, research is not that jazzed up by the media as it is in the US.
But go ahead, feel superior, you probably need it.
These guys keep talking about superconductors but the fact remains that this is fundamental research with no real applications now or even in the near future.
...oh wait...
Wanna talk about pointless research, I heard about these zany scientists that were looking into interactions between electicity and magnetism (like anything good could come of that). I think they were trying to make something called a "Cathode Ray". I mean, what good would that do the general public? Are we going to zap things with this mysterious "Cathode Ray" or something? It sounds like something from a bad sci-fi movie.
These people should be cut from funding... they're just waisting tax payers money. Who ever heard of a Cathode Ray anyway?
consumes 30% of generated power in transit.
Superconductor research (especially that which works at "room temperature") could be immediately applied to this problem once refined, drastically reducing energy costs and our largest source of pollution.
The sooner, the better, I say.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Just abbreviate it, e.g. "... with my feco ray!"
After all, today they don't say "I'll blast you with my Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation gun" in SF films, but they say "I'll blast you with my LASER gun!"
Now, if the patented process turns out to be the only way to physically create the new form of matter, then yes, your fears will be realized. Darn, after all that research, the scientists are the only ones allowed to profit from their discovery!
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