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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."
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.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
more efficient electric motors, and (our favorite) cheaper maglev trains.
Maglevs are cool, but the real slashdotter wants to know how it will help build space elevators.
"The new matter form is called a fermionic condensate and it is the sixth known form of matter -- after gases, solids, liquids, plasma and a Bose-Einstein condensate, created only in 1995." Come on people, RTFA already... :)
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Clinton took it.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
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
Lets see... ... ...
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.
Step 1. Freeze until cold cold cold (like a regular superconductor)
Step 2. ???
Step 3. Have a room temperature superconductor
Step 4. PROFIT!!!!
Ok, seriously... Whats to say that you can't get any kind of matter to act like superconductors at a low enough temperature?
And while I'm at it:
Imagine a beowulf clust.....
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!
I believe there's a monorail in Springfield, Illinois. It's well documented; I thought everyone knew about it?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Its the Bose-Einstein condensate - and may I point out what a SHIT name this is for a form of matter.
.... etc... etc.... etc...
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
You can order a maglev from Siemens, Germany, at any time. Provided you have a deep pocket.
Deborah Jin the team leader gives more of an idea of her work in this article. http://physicsweb.org/article/world/15/4/7
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
If you want the actual paper, and have access to the journal, it's published on the online version of Physics Review Letters Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 040403 (2004)
abstract here for those with access.
Croatian scientist Danijel Djurek discovered superconducting ceramic that works reliably at room temperature. Danijel says that current will flow without resistance through the material, which is a mixture of lead, lead carbonate, and silver oxides. Here is article in today's croatian daily paper (sorry, there is no translation). Old news on you.com.au.
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.
Frankly, I wish they would stop claiming every phase transition to form 'the n-th state of matter'. There are literally hundreds of phase transitions in nature, especially at low temperatures. If you start calling every sector of the phase diagram 'a New State Of Matter (tm)' on an equal footing with gases, liquids and solids, you can't stop at Bose-Einstein condensates and these fermionic condensates. What about superconducting metals, vortex lattices, liquid crystals, flowing sand, and what have you. All New Forms Of Matter. That is to say, it's completely arbitrary. Sure it's cool what these guys have done, but they deliberately misrepresent their result to make a catchy headline. A scientist has a responsibility not to do that.
I think this is possibly a big step towards room temperature superconductivity. The point is that in normal (even high Tc) superconductors, the forces between the cooper pairs are rather weak, hence the need to cool to at least 70K or so to get the effect. In this fermionic stuff, the force is a little stronger (at least, this is claimed in the article). Thus it may be possible to design a material which uses the same principle as the fermionic gas but in the form of a solid material at say 300K (just as high Tc superconductors are essentially solid B-E condensates, more or less).
BTW, I'm a cosmologist, not a condensed matter person, so I could be talking out of my arse.
The world is everything that is the case
Here is a relevant quote from the adorable Feynman:
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
It's interesting how all the big ideas of the 1940s and 1950s have come to nothing: no people walking around on the Moon or Mars, no widespread personal jet aircraft, no fusion reactors, nuclear power limited by safety concerns and the availability of cooling water, limited use of superconducting magnets, lasers being used in CD players rather than as enormous weapons. Fifty years later, most research seems to be into making things smaller and smaller, or making tiny quantities of exotic things (as in this case.) Surely the remaining proponents of the Big Ideas should have learned to stay quiet by now?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
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"
scientists are forced by our society to lie about these uses to get public support and public funding
Don't let them off that easily. They're part of a broken system whose causes can be found all over our society.
- We have a public that's incredibly ignorant of science... which is a compliment, considering that they're mostly just stupid.
- We have ignorant politicians elected by that ignorant/stupid public who don't understand science well enough to know how we should be spending public funds.
- And back to the Scientists: We have a Scientific community with members who lie their asses off like a bunch of whores for money. No one "forces" them to lie, they do it of their own volition.
- Finally, we have supporters of Science in the public who make excuses for poor ethical behavior by saying "scientists are forced by our society to lie".
The answer to most of these problems is "education". Education, education, education. Besides the defense of our borders, it's the one thing that our government absolutely must provide: a solid education for every member of our society.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
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.
Research as fundamental as this should be funded, with no regard to practical applications. These scientists shoudn't be forced to think about practical applications, that is the job of other scientists, later in the process.
Are you out of your mind? The only one of those that has the slightest prayer of working is private school.... and even that will only provide an education to those who can afford it.
Argue all you like, there is a fundamental truism in Education. Those who can do, those who can't teach. The reason is simple, teaching doesn't pay shit. The related catch 22, which is that if you pay teachers more you'll attract some decent teachers but a lot of people who are just looking for job security and a nice salary, is also pretty much inescapable. Again, argue all you want, at this stage it's about what you believe about human nature.
So moving on, if the basic problem is that teachers (as a whole, there are of course individual exceptions) are some of the least qualified people in their fields. We are confronted with the problem of how to get good teachers into the classroom while introducing a minimum number of disinterested individuals. Let's examine how the three methods you advocate do that.
Private Schools -- Have the option of paying more, but frequently don't. They do have the advantage of being more or less immune to the completely insane federal regulations (such as No Child Left Behind) and therefore able to operate within the bounds of reality, but will ultimately fail the American People because we need to educate more than just the children of the wealthy. Higher scores? Of course, most standardized test scores can be expressed as a function of socio-economic status
Home schools -- Again, a problem of who can get into it. Most American families require two incomes to survive, and that's not addressing those with only one parent. How can you home school these kids?
Community Schools -- Here you encounter many of the same problems as public schools (in terms of teacher pay and regulations). This isn't solving the problem, it's shifting it off onto a community with fewer resources less able to deal with the it.
So what can we do? Well a big part of the problem is funding. Michigan has boosted test scores through the roof by socializing their education across the state. No longer is the funding of a school tied to the taxes generated locally, rather all those taxes are thrown together and applied to all schools across the state. The result is the application of funds where they are needed the most.
Another part remains the ability to attract good teachers to bad areas. Wealthy school districts with well behaved kids and lots of resources will never have problems attracting teachers. Ask at your local college's education school... most of the applications go to the ritzy 'burbs. So how do you get teachers into the inner city? The rural backwoods areas? You pay them for it of course, and you pay them in the best way possible.... student loans. Granting temporary licensure to BA and BS holders to teach for three years is fairly easy to do in most states (No Child Left Behind will make it all but impossible). Let these young graduates teach the next generation, let them emerge from those disadvantaged schools debt free and able to enter the professional world with solid experiance and confidance. The forgiveness of tens of thousands in debt will draw graduates to these jobs like nothing else and will allow these underfunded schools some of the nations brightest minds, if only for a few years.
What we're doing now doesn't work. You're right, we need real change, but not the kind of change that only benefits the few. Public education must benefit all. Should we fail even a few, we have failed the community as a whole. Education is the silver bullet. Crime? Hunger? Even longevity is beneficially affected by education. We don't need "No Child Left Behind" or school vouchers, we need to actually leave no children behind, and we need to do it be strengthening the public schools.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
This will not do! I demand that the scientists come up with a name for this stuff that is more fun. You just can't use this properly in sci-fi films. Observe:
Captain Shamerica: Cease and desist, foul scum!
Grokthor: Never! *rowr*
Captain Shamerica: Then I shall blast you with my fermionic condensate ray!
See? Poor Captain Shamerica now looks like a pussy because he's using some weirdo-thingy to whack the bad guys.
New name! New name! *forms picket line*
Blog,Twitter
Okay, what was the fifth?
Mila Jovovich. Duh.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"