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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."
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.
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
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.
Deborah Jin the team leader gives more of an idea of her work in this article. http://physicsweb.org/article/world/15/4/7
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.
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
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.