MIT Physicists Create New Form of Matter

Ninwa writes "According to the MIT news office the folks in their labs have really outdone themselves this time, they've created a new form of matter. The post states, 'They have become the first to create a new type of matter, a gas of atoms that shows high-temperature superfluidity.' It has been said that this could solve the mysteries in superconductivity."

Comments

Short synopsis for the lazy

[winkydink]

Lots of weird shit happens when you approach absolute zero.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess they brought Gordon Freeman in on this one eh? :)

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Rei]

Science is full of neat, world-changing phenomina that we can't get to occur in a practical setting (or, at least, to the degree we'd like).

* 90% of the universe is hydrogen. H + H fusion produces crazy amounts of energy. But dang it, those electrons out there have all sorts of zany ways to dissipate the energy that you spend trying to surpass the Coulomb barrier.

* At low temperatures, some gasses behave as superfluids (like in the article). No friction. But darn those temperatures!

* Superconductors are the same, but even more frustrating in ways. Example: we found superconductors... but they only work at extremely cold temperatures. Then we found "high temperature" (i.e., liquid nitrogen-temperature) superconductors... but they're all brittle ceramics, limiting their uses. Another example: superconductors would have near boundless theoretical conduction potential... but, whoops, when you pass a current through a superconductor, it creates a magnetic field which will destroy its superconducting properties. We partly solve this by adding impurities to pin down the field lines, but we still have sadly limited capacity (even if it's much better than, say, copper).

* Carbon nanotubes have ridiculous strengths for their density. SWNTs have been measured up to 60 GPa tensile strength (theoretically much higher is capable), and MWNTs over 100. And yet, nanotube composites don't generally even outperform conventional materials because we can only produce tiny tubes held together weakly by vdw and pi bonds.

I can think of dozens more offhand. Science likes to tantalize you with incredible possibilities that float just outside your reach ;)

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[grammar fascist]

Well isn't that a "glass empty" view on life.

Actually, I read the GP as quite hopeful and excited about the possibilities. Words like "tantalizing" come to mind.

Maybe the good Lord intended such things to be so hard to achieve because he wants us to simply be thankful for what we have?

The universe has existed for more than 6,000 years. So, What make you think we'll ever find the answer to these questions so quickly?

Where in the crap did this come from? I can only ascribe it to drunken stupor. Or you're high. Someone posts on the frontiers of science and all you can do is turn it into an anti-religion rant?

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[misterlump77]

joking. sorry i didn't put the <satire> tags on the post

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[wass]

True dat. Temperature is merely an energy scale which relates finite changes of heat with finite changes of entropy.

What this means is that you can basically expect to see as many interesting phenomena between 1mK and 1K as you would between 1K and 1000K. These experiments were done down at 50nK, so that's a world of difference from even the cryo stuff I do at 10mK.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[dancpsu]

So now there are, what, 6 states of matter?

1. Solid
2. Liquid
3. Gas
4. Plasma
5. BEC
6. Superfluid

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[TummyX]

You are a fucking moron. How can anyone be so inane?

Clearly your religion is stupidity.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[TheKidWho]

jesus H fucking christ.

The US isnt #1 in the world because every single person in it is a god damned scientist or engineer. It's #1 because we have a huge variety of people in this world, people that do different things. Thats what makes the US so culturally amazing. Anyways I dont expect an art major or a writer to understand what nanotechnology is, nor do I expect my parents to. Me on the other hand, of course I know what they are, im a Phycisist for a reason yah know.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Vengie]

you shouldn't abbreviate london forces as vdw. or at least type out van der waals. :P [technically ALL dipole interactions are vdw...]
(people can't google for VDW if they don't know what it means....and i have faith that at least ONE reader out there would have wanted to google it)
</chem snob>

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[iammaxus]

A small correction on your thing about nanotubes: the limiting factor in current nanotube composites is not the weakness of inter-nanotube bonds, but the fact that nanotube composites do not even use these weak bonds well enough. Spinning fibers of dense, aligned nanotubes is very difficult.

Of course, longer nanotubes would help, as you suggest, but I'm saying that even current nanotube production techniques could theoretically produce some extremely high tensile strength fibers (they can already claim the highest toughness).

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Er...if I'm not mistaken, the post refers to "HIGH temperature superfluidity"

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

VERY well said. Religion ALWAYS gets in the way of science and the advancement of society.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[leonardluen]

yeah much like powered flight was just out of reach a bit over 100 years ago

and electricity once was

and combustion engines...and the transister

a lot of things at one time were just out of reach at the fringes of technology for a long time. give them a dozen or so years, and someone might be able to figure out a way to improve or use these technologies.

give them a 100 more years, and by then maybe we will have the jumbo jet as compared to the wright brother flier equivalents of these technologies.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[bynary]

Or, if you followed the development of the atomic bomb, give someone $2 billion and a dedicated team of brilliant theoreticians and physicists/chemists. Forget that whole 100 years bit.

Of course, the discoveries in physics that led up to the invention of the atomic bomb go back at least a good 100 years prior to its completion. But let's not split atoms...

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[spazzmo]

The only #1 the US is, is #1 Hated Bully. They are only where they are because they have spent the last 60 years raping and stomping on (or otherwise messing about with/overthrowing) the other countries of the world.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Stankatz]

Good summary, except this is a high-temperature superfluid, and so it has nothing to do with what you just said.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[u-238]

Nearly every Western scientific advancement made before 1950, which have lead to the discovery cited in this article, was created in a Euro-Christian society.

Blow your reactionary anti-Christian worldview out your fetus-hating ass.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[sickofthisshit]

uh, yeah, those well known European Christians like Albert Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose.

Oh, wait, Einstein was a non-observant Jew, and Bose was Indian.

I guess you're full of shit.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[TheKidWho]

yeah we sure did bully those Soviets!

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Associate]

Shame on me for responding to a troll, but in science, glasses are only empty when they're in a vacuum.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[kernelfoobar]

For a interesting insight, check out 'Angels and Demons' by Dan Brown, the guy who wrote 'The DaVinci Code'. Brings the whole Religion Vs. Sciences war into perspective, a very good read.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[GPF(BSOD)]

As Yoda would say, "Poor doofus, you are."

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

This one person can go to www.acronymfinder.com and and find out what vdw is

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[mcrbids]

Science likes to tantalize you with incredible possibilities that float just outside your reach ;)

Yes, but it's because of work like this that so many miracles do, in fact, happen.

* Ever stop to consider that the thermal density in recent P4/Athlon CPUs is actually higher than the thermal density of a nuclear power plant?

* Speaking of which, how about those nuclear power plants - 1 lb of radioactive material able to provide power for a city for a year or more...

* Power used to light up lights, like those nifty Compact Florescent bulbs that are so power efficient. Exotic power - a Florescent bulb creates an intense radio signal by blasting electricity at thousands of volts (essentially, a spark several inches long) through a vacuum tube, dusted with dust that floresces (glows) as it converts the radio signal into visible light... Fancy that - they cost me about a buck each, and are 4-5 times as efficient as regular incandescent light bulbs.

* Let's not even get into an obvious one - the Internet. Where are you? I'm in California - but it doesn't matter, does it? You can read this merely seconds after I post it, wherever you happen to be...

* I'm about to go jogging in my new running shoes, created from an exotic foam material that springs unnaturally, preventing injuries to my knees and ankles as I jog - they can take a pounding over and over again, yet their cost is only around $40.

* Its not uncommon for me to run in a Gore-tex suit. Comprising of nylon (itself a miracle material from the early 1900s) fabric covering a Mylar membrane with microscopic holes in it. Mylar is, itself, incredible in its strength-weight ratio, but the microscopic holes allow my sweat to evaporate and keep me dry, even when it's raining or the jacket is wet - the holes allow water vapor through while being far too small for liquid water to go through, effectively blocking it.

While science might appear to tantalize with things out of reach, we only remember them because they are out of reach. When you really consider it, the miracles within our grasp are nothing short of incredible.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that those things would happen a helluva lot quicker if people weren't bogged down by religious mumbo-jumbo.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Nirvelli]

people can't google for VDW if they don't know what it means
Actually, they can. He said held together weakly by vdw...bonds. I googled "vdw", and the 7th result was intermolecular bonding - van der Waals forces, anybody with half a brain (and slashdotters generally aren't too dull) could easily figure out that that is what they want. You don't even have to scroll the page to see it.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Soul-Burn666]

Some people use Acronym Finder.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[XchristX]

fr Temperature is not a scale of energy, it's a scale of information. It's a parameter that determines the statistical equilibruim of a system. Temperature is related to energy, but that fact is a derivable one, not one to be used in it's definition.


I'm not trying to be overtly pedantic. Just thought it bears mentioning, that's all.


Also, the truth of the matter is that, since only long wavelength terms matter in the immediate neighborhood of a phase transition (the ones that we understand, anyway), the study of low energy systems carries special importance over others, so that is one of the many reasons why we cool things. In addition, we want to see collective behavior which can be explained to a good degree by mappings into single-particle problems (which, when you think about it carefully, are the only problems that we REALLY can solve ab initio). This turns out to be very interesting in systems where strong correlations and quantum fluctuations dominate over thermal ones. With regards to this "new state of matter" and similar works done by the Ketterle Group and others, the primary advantage of these types of systems is their "tunability", both in terms of their effective dimensionality (controlled by lenticular magnetic traps that keep the energy gaps above the chemical potential in totally trapped directions), and in terms of the interactions, which, in this low temperature limit, can be approximated by the long wavelength terms in the Born expansion of the Lippmann Schwinger equation, ultimately leading to the possibility of changing the nature of the interaction itself by tuning a homogenous magnetic field close to a Feshbac resonance (the parent article explains this better), or by using optical systems to control the relative magnitude of tunneling terms over the "on-site" interactions. We've NEVER been able to do that so well in any solid-state system before.

That's why such systems are so vital to out understanding of condensed matter physics, because we can do many things to it with relative ease.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

a very good read

I think you misspelled "condescending".

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[XchristX]

There are infinitely many phases of matter. I don't blame you for this misunderstanding. My chemistry teacher thought the same thing.

The thing is that a 'state' or phase of matter in itself doesn't mean anything. Phases are defined by the means of phase transitions. A Phase Transition is perceived as a qualitative change in the collective behaviour of a many-particle system. The phase transitions we do understand are the ones that can be explained by the Landau theory of spontaneous symmetry breaking of an order parameter. This interpretation is sufficiently generic to include many material states that can be called 'phases', like metals & insulators, superconductors & insulators & metals, smectic & nematic phases of liquid crystals and some really wierd ones.


Oh, and superfluidity & BEC are connected, they are not 2 DISTINCT phases as such. Fermionic superfluidity is actually the result of Bosinic Cooper Pairs of Fermions.

Also,wrt to the posts that say that this is a high temp system, High temperature doesn't mean high as in Fermi-temperature high. It's still low enough for the comments above to be qualitatively valid. I mean, 50 nanokelvin is still like a billion times colder than the vacuum of intergalactic space, and the 'superfluid' is still a Quantum Phase, that which has been achieved through a spontaneous symmetry breaking of the many-particle ground state, which could never be treated as a pure quantum state if the temp was THAT high. This is fundamental.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[b00le]

The Da Vinci Code is nonsense, second hand nonsense and false facts, written with all the style and formal elegance of a Post Office circular, My cat knows more about history, art history, architecture, oh yes, and aviation than Dan Brown. There are scores of sites debunking the thing; though most of these are apologists for Catholicism and Opus Dei there are a few that will set you straight.
Do yu really believe the Louvre pyramid has 666 panes of glass?

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[cul8r]

... and even then, they're not really empty.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[aug24]

You can read this merely seconds after I post it, wherever you happen to be...

Fucking science, always wasting my time.

J.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[AugstWest]

* I'm about to go jogging in my new running shoes, created from an exotic foam material that springs unnaturally, preventing injuries to my knees and ankles as I jog - they can take a pounding over and over again, yet their cost is only around $40.

Have they made cases out of this same foam for your kidneys and liver?

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot

7. Cookie Dough.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[localman]

I don't smoke pot myself, but the vast majority of people I know who do are highly intelligent and well educated. There are also a lot of idiots.

My point is that weed doesn't have anything to do with it. It doesn't help or hurt (though there are people who would argue for both).

Yes: legalize it.

Cheers.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[winkydink]

The MIT team was able to view these superfluid vortices at extremely cold temperatures, when the fermionic gas was cooled to about 50 billionths of a degree Kelvin, very close to absolute zero (-273 degrees C or -459 degrees F)

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

But dang it, those electrons out there have all sorts of zany ways to dissipate the energy that you spend trying to surpass the Coulomb barrier.

That's why I've given up on surpassing the Coulomb barrier. I'm now working on getting past the event horizon.

- a.c.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[GeckoX]

Yeah, those god-damned non-fiction writers... ...Oh, right, it's _fiction_.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[MCraigW]

I can believe it all, except that the descendents of Jesus and Magdalene bred with the French.

Seriously though, we do need to remember that this book is a fictional novel that uses real places, settings, and events to make it seem more realistic. But it is still fictional.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

You *should* expect such from a writer. ;) Especially from a science fiction writer but yeah, I doubt an artist or a teacher would know in half the cases or more.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[timster]

K, I think there should totally be an award for "Intelligent, Interesting Post that Undeservedly Generates the Most Stupid Replies", and that you should win it.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[MCraigW]

Voodoo and Witchcraft

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

The US isnt #1 in the world because every single person in it is a god damned scientist or engineer. It's #1 because we have a huge variety of people in this world, people that do different things. Thats what makes the US so culturally amazing.

Er... I hope you realise that there are in fact one or two other countries in the world which exhibit some signs of variety in their populations?

Even China has been observed to have as many as three distinct subtypes of citizen, and further research may yet be able to develop a technique for distinguishing between Chinese individuals.

Africa presents a deeper problem; so far we haven't been able to determine whether everyone in Africa really is a clone of Nelson Mandela, or whether it just looks that way. Either way, it's clear that Africa's issues with poverty, famine, and war are all caused by the fact that there is no variety between African "individuals", all of whom do exactly the same things.

Or maybe you're talking bullshit, the USA is exactly the same as everywhere else in the world in terms of cultural diversity, and the reason the USA is #1 at the moment is not due to culture, resources, or even economics, but plain luck.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[mako1138]

Dirac sea, Higgs field... sure is a lot of stuff.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[b00le]

Seriously though, we do need to remember that this book is a fictional novel
- a fictional novel in which the author himself claims in a foreword that certain of the false facts in the novel are in fact true. Sure - the Cohen brothers claimed that Fargo was based on a true story, but nobody was inclined to believe them. Millions of borderline illiterates think Dan Brown's fiction is indeed based on fact and millions more think the book is fun to read. They are all wrong.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[PMuse]

Lots of weird shit happens when you approach absolute zero.

Yes, indeed it does.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

And even then, they're full of quantum foam.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this person's posts coming up at 0? No Karma or something?

Somebody mod this guy/gal up!

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[uvatbc]

Science likes to tantalize you with incredible possibilities that float just outside your reach

So does science fiction.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Turin_Tur]

+1 informative. I don't have more mod points today. (:

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Your experience is probably far from a representative sample of the jurisdiction in which you are considering legalization of marijuana.

An alternative hypothesis, which I guess is more likely, is that the vast majority of the people you know the pot-smoking habits of are "highly intelligent and well-educated" possibly because you are yourself well-educated.

E.g., the only persons *I* know with certainty to have smoked pot are graduate school colleagues or college acquaintances. Yet I'm sure the majority of pot smokers have not attended graduate school.

If pot smoking were massively destructive (which I do not believe, but for the sake of argument) to certain people, for example, resulting in instant homelessness and unemployability for those carrying a "pot vulnerability gene", there would be a strong argument for banning pot, while still allowing the "pot invulnerable" well-educated folks you know to toke harmlessly.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[XchristX]

Thanks, but unlike my Vedic ancestors, I don't give a rat's ass about karma.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Cyno]

#1 at what? Surely you don't mean education.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[TheKidWho]

yeah because people from all over the world don't come to American Universities right?

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Stankatz]

Pshhh! You consider 50 nK cold? You must be from southern California or India or something.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[xigxag]

Indeed. And if you actually google "vdw bonds," as I did, then this page comes up as a first choice (i.e. I'm Feeling Lucky).

Think of it as a test. If someone's too clueless to figure out what vdw means, do we really even want them to be reading /.?

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear moderators, Please, in the future note that under no circumstances should a comment which begins, "True dat," ever be modified as insightful. For the love of god, we must have some standards! -Anon.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[nosfucious]

OK, give me a cure for the common cold. Or for that matter AIDS, influenza, Herpes/Cold Sores, Malaria, Cot death, British and Irish Lions lack of scoring ability, etc. Plenty more been spent on these that 2 Billion.

Sometimes you've gotta have luck. Sometimes it's just not you, not this day, not this life.

If fact isn't it only Smallpox that has (theoretically) been eradicated?

Noted that you asked about physics, and I gave chem/biol scenarios.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

he goes through most of the time making insightful posts then about once every few days he posts an obscenity ridden illogical world berating crazed lump of psychobabble and loses all of his karma.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, for example I wanted to know how well latex paint would adhere to my cement garage walls, so I googled "Latex Bondage", and hit "I'm Feeling Lucky"... needless to say, I never got back to painting... ;^)

(OK, I stole that from someone funnier than me...)

Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

that matters?

Re:Stuff

[julie-h]

Whats a matter?

Re:Stuff

[coolGuyZak]

doesn't matter.

Vogon message

[MMHere]

That's just the Vogons posting notice of the interstellar space highway to be built through here next millennium.

Foolish MIT scientists; they've mis-interpreted the posting. Superconductivity has been proven impossible by the science planet #$(*&^#@$^%.

Re:Vogon message

[Frenchman113]

No no, the Earth was already destroyed. This is all hallucinations and in direct violation of some part of some bible (I bet someone out there is thinking that). It'll be interesting to find out what significance this has, assuming there is any. As a side comment, a good household cleaning revealed an old AOL floppy that was apparantly "for Windows 2.5". It is now in my trash where it shall no longer hurt me or my PC.

Does it have a name?

[cytoman]

Does this new form of matter have a name to it, yet? By the way, what are the 'old' types of matter? Solid, liquid, gas, plasma??

Re:Does it have a name?

[wertarbyte]

Here's the futurama quote: Matter, Anti matter, Whatsa Matter.

Re:Does it have a name?

[bucky0]

It's called a Bose-Einstein Condensate. The wavefunctions of the individual particles start to act real funky in that realm.

Re:Does it have a name?

[m4g02]

I think you are missing many form of matter already discovered, this should be the seventh.

One year ago scientists created the sixth one, look at this previous slashot news story.

Re:Does it have a name?

[Anonymous Coward]

So if this id a "gas of atoms", that means it's basically a gas, right? And gas is already a form of matter, so how is this new? What's the criteria for determining if something is a unique form of matter?

Re:Does it have a name?

[ConceptJunkie]

I hereby dub it: Gliquid

Now you owe me a nickel every time you use that term.

Re:Does it have a name?

[gregski]

from the article

"The team observed fermionic superfluidity in the lithium-6 isotope comprising three protons, three neutrons and three electrons. Since the total number of constituents is odd, lithium-6 is a fermion."

So this is a fermi condensate, and not a boson condensate.

Re:Does it have a name?

[grammar fascist]

I hereby dub it: Gliquid

Is the "G" silent?

Now you owe me a nickel every time you use that term.

Fair use. :p

Re:Does it have a name?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a fermionic condensate. Not Bose-Einstein condensate. The gas is fermionic (half integer spin) and behaves very very differently than a bosonic condensate (integer spin). Namely, bosons are not subject to the Pauli exclusion principle (exchange forces, yadda yadda).

Re:Does it have a name?

[anthony_dipierro]

No, lithium-6 is a fermion, not a boson, so it's called a Fermion condensate. It's been theorized for years but apparently no one has actually succeeded in creating it until now?

Re:Does it have a name?

[axonal]

It shall be named, "Gas but not quite gas..."

Re:Does it have a name?

[Mac Degger]

Bing! You hit my mayor gripe with the blurb; plasma was the first truly new state of matter discovered. Not to take away from the interesting discovery the MIT-ans have made, but it most surely isn't the first new state of matter found.

Byline: to talk about a 'state of matter' I've found is quite illusory. Different configurations and concentrations of atoms/molecules produce different behaviours...lumping them into 'states of matter' just doesn't do reality justice, even though it simplifies things for those who don't delve into that kind of thing (ie non-physicists).

Re:Does it have a name?

[pallmall1]

How about Fart? For Fermions At Reduced Temperature, of course.

Re:Does it have a name?

[JohnnyBigodes]

I though it was MIT that had found this out, not Google!

Re:Does it have a name?

[initialE]

I vote "Midichlorians"

Re:Does it have a name?

[bucky0]

You're right, I stand corrected.

Re:Does it have a name?

[Guppy06]

Cantaffordium

Re:Does it have a name?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the pairs of fermions form a bound state (cooper pair), it will be a boson (spin integer and a half + integer and a half = spin integer). Those bosons can then form into a bosonic condensate.

Re:Does it have a name?

[blitz77]

They succeeded in making a fermion condensate in January 2004 so they've been created for more than a while now.

What this article is talking about is the discovery of superfluidity in a fermi gas-ie, flow without resistance. More information can be found about it from physicsweb

Re:Does it have a name?

[anthony_dipierro]

You've just described (in very little detail), how a Fermion condensate works.

Re:Does it have a name?

[anthony_dipierro]

Ah, I see. "Although indirect evidence for superfluidity in Fermi gases has been seen before, low-temperature physicists have been searching for definitive evidence in the shape of quantized vortices in a rotating gas." This is a much better article than the one pointed to by Slashdot. To say the scientists "created a new form of matter" is sensationalistic fluff. What the scientists did is prove that a fermionic consensate exhibits superfluidity.

Re:Does it have a name?

[Anonymous Coward]

No shit?

IAAP

Re:Does it have a name?

[cjsm]

gliquid is a good name for a new state of matter in between a gas and liquid. These term needs to be patented, trademarked, and copyrighted in every coutry of the world. I estimate a cost of 20 million for goverment and legal fees, including my cut for this advice.

50 NanoKelvin == High-Temperature !?!?

[ka9dgx]

From the article:
"It may sound strange to call superfluidity at 50 nanokelvin high-temperature superfluidity, but what matters is the temperature normalized by the density of the particles," Ketterle said. "We have now achieved by far the highest temperature ever."

I was quite disappointed... I expected something new that I could actually use... oh well.

--Mike--

Re:50 NanoKelvin == High-Temperature !?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read further - immediately after that comment:

"Scaled up to the density of electrons in a metal, the superfluid transition temperature in atomic gases would be higher than room temperature."

So maybe it could actually be used.

Re:50 NanoKelvin == High-Temperature !?!?

[MidnightBrewer]

That comment is, unfortunately, slightly out of context. They were trying to help people relate to why they were excited about 50 nano-Kelvins, which is still arguably really, really cold. The idea is, if you scaled the temperatures up to something that normal people could relate to, then this breakthrough in superconductivity could be likened to something at above room temperature (where the previous upper limit was room temperature itself.)

In other words, still no practical application.

perpetual motion

[Anonymous Coward]

If you start a superfluid rotating and it flows without friction, will it ever stop?

If you start a current flowing in a superconducting loop and there's no electrical resistance, won't it flow forever?

If so isn't this perpetual motion? Couldn't it be used to store energy efficiently assuming you wouldn't have to cool the superconductors to room temperature.

IMHO, that would be the only true purpose of perpetual motion.

Re:perpetual motion

[Anonymous Coward]

McFly?

If you start a superfluid rotating and it flows without friction, will it ever stop?

Doesn't exist.

If you start a current flowing in a superconducting loop and there's no electrical resistance, won't it flow forever?

Doesn't exist.

Re:perpetual motion

[Lew Payne]

|| If you start a superfluid rotating and it flows without friction, will it ever stop?

Yes, it will stop... taxes diminish it by roughly 8.5%, depending on locality.

Re:perpetual motion

[r2q2]

Hey. Except you are putting a shitload of energy to sustain it yea. So its not perpetual motion just motion of matter at an odd state. If you could sustain it indefinatly then it would work. Haven't you read the laws of thermodynamics??

Re:perpetual motion

[temojen]

Most designs for perpetual motion machines fail because they're designed to allow you to perpetually extract energy from them, not store energy forever. Sure, a flywheel in intergalactic space could rotate indefinitely, but the moment you try to extract energy it can't anymore. Kinda makes it useless.

Re:perpetual motion

[temojen]

Doesn't exist.

You haven't read the article, have you? Both of these exist, they just have to be really cold to work, which requires energy to maintain.

Re:perpetual motion

[sillybilly]

First of all, as previously mentioned, 50 nanoKelvin, i.e. 0.000000050 K degrees is nowhere close to room temperature. The definition of temperature is what they are playing with to call this "hot", saying the density is low.

Otherwise I think even superconductor rings lose energy over time, because they have a magnetic field, which can induce current in moving conducturs, which in turn generates an opposing magnetic field that generates a back emf slowing the superconducting electrons down. That's how you take back the electrical energy stored in them, but that's also how anything conducting moving in its magnetic field "steals" energy and loses it through ohmic resistance.

Even mechanical superfluids interact with their environment, if by nothing else, by electromagnetic radiation, to the nearest wall, which then conducts the heat/cold away. (Unless of course you have full thermal death in the Universe, everything being at the same exact temperature, and at this temperature your thing is superfluid.)

Therefore, because of interactions with the imperfect/lossy environment, perfect perpetuum mobile things only exist in an environment that's:
a) either perfectly isolated,
b) or perfectly nonlossy itself

In this world nothing macroscopic is perpetuum mobile, you can only talk about close enough, such as using good bearings on a 10 ton cylinder spinning in a vacuum chamber, where your losses could be made, well, negligible for a decade. Tough it'd be interesting to see these superfluids used as bearing lubricants.

Re:perpetual motion

[captain_craptacular]

Kinda makes it useless.

Not useless, just a really expensive/extravigant battery.

Re:perpetual motion

[bucky0]

Superconducting rings don't lose energy over time. They actually both reject external fields and contain internal E&M fields so. There's also an experiemnt where some people took a superconducting ring, started a current in it, and left it alone for a couple years, periodially checking it's current. It remained the same.

Mechanical superfluids don't transfer energy since we keep the container vessel at a fixed temperature. The fluid equlibrises (sp?) to that temperature and then no heat flows. It's misleading to say that it's perpetual energy since you have to put energy in to cool the vessel down. Regardless, they do have _zero_ viscosity which could turn out to be useful somewhere.

Re:perpetual motion

[kaze dcat]

But type 1 superconductors sheilds magnetic flux so there is no magnetic field that induced current.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity

Re:perpetual motion

[Anonymous Coward]

If you start a current flowing in a superconducting loop and there's no electrical resistance, won't it flow forever?

Doesn't exist.

Look up how MRIs work. Big superconducting ring with a continuous current flowing through it.

Re:perpetual motion

[Anonymous Coward]

I did an experiment once where I told people the difference between "its" and "it's" and left them alone for a couple of years. They never learned...

Re:perpetual motion

[lee1026]

but how did they measure the current? I would think that a amp meter would involve in some resistance. wouldn'y that ruin the experiment?

Re:perpetual motion

[archgoon]

This seems like an honest question, why was it modded down?

Re:perpetual motion

[StressedEd]

You don't use an ammeter, instead measure the magnetic field generated by the current in the ring. It would remain constant if the current remains constant.

Re:perpetual motion

[FidelCatsro]

So they don't exist unless a perpetual energy source exists ;)

Re:perpetual motion

[Tatarize]

Firstly, no if it remains a superfluid it will not stop.

Secondly, yes it will flow forever. Some scientists checked exactly this. They ran it for a few months. It still had the charge.

Eh, who needs a slight electrical energy or kinetic energy? I suppose there might be a related idea to this that would allow a battery of huge energy with a different basic design than the ones we've had for a few hundred years. Along with the huge number of other potential improvements if we get this stuff to run. There are plenty of great What-if things, but they are all conditional on "What-if we got this crap to run at room temperature."

Most PMM are suppose to create more energy to constantly be extracted. They are all fake (violates conservation of momentum and 2nd law of thermodynamics). In a sense you could say the Earth and the Sun are a PMM. We don't seem to be stopping anytime soon. Furthermore, energy is destroyed, it's rather converted to a less orderly form over time. So if you ever move you can never fully stop.

The point of PMM is to steal this energy all the time. That's not possible. But, yeah, in any frictionless situation crap always keeps moving.

Re:perpetual motion

[fireboy1919]

Haven't you read Newton's laws?
"An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force."

Perpetual motion is trivial to accomplish. Just start something moving in an environment without outside forces to affect it - such as, for instance, in outer space between galaxies.

I know what you're thinking - you've heard about thermodynamics and people say that it's impossible and all, but you just haven't heard the whole story. It's impossible to have something moving forever in an environment full of friction because friction=energy loss. If something could work forever even with an energy loss, then it must be generating energy constantly, which is the thing that breaks the law of thermodynamics.

The energy to sustain it is to keep it cold and start it rotating. You could start it rotating in space - which is already about that cold, and it would forever.

Re:perpetual motion

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the Earth and the Sun aren't a PMM.
1) The Sun is constantly using up its energy. 5 billion more years and it's going to be quite dead.
2) The sun causes tides on Earth. That's why you get the tide maxima during a full moon and a empty (I know there's a word for this, but whatever) moon. Tides mean friction, friction means a loss of energy in useful forms. So the Earth is (very) slowly slowing down its rotation about its own axis.
3) There's a little bit of gas out there, enough to slow us down very slightly in the orbit around the sun.
The point is, any form of energy loss, any form at all, completely invalidates the whole idea of a PMM. So saying that something is 'mostly' a PMM is like saying that this new form of matter was 'mostly' at 0 degrees K. Perpetual means perpetual, not longer-lasting than an everlasting gobstopper.

Re:perpetual motion

[fimbulvetr]

Space is not empty. This rotating device you describe - if you send it into space, it will come into contact with external debris, forces and energy. The winner has already been decided - entropy.

Re:perpetual motion

[eth1]

I'm curious how you'd measure the current of a superconducting ring without disturbing it. I suppose you could measure the magnetic field it creates, but it seems like that would disturb the field, and thus disturb the current.

Re:perpetual motion

[geekoid]

if it is frictionless, how do you get it rotating?

Re:perpetual motion

[fireboy1919]

You could be right. There is a good reason to believe there isn't: there's almost nothing between the Earth and the moon, and there's even less the further we get away from the Sun. So the space between galaxies is most likely totally empty.

And if things are moving away from each other as we believe, then it is also likely that something between galaxies will never come into contact with anything else.

Re:perpetual motion

[Lew Payne]

|| if it is frictionless, how do you get it rotating?

Elementary, my dear Watts-n-SWR. You rotate the bell jar that contains it. You place your camera on
the rotating bell jar. As a result, the gas is spinning but the observation platform is not.

In summary... it's all a matter of perspective.

Re:perpetual motion

[Tatarize]

1) The sun may be using up it's energy but that energy is not the energy being used to let the Earth revolve around it.
2) The moon causes the tides on the Earth. The sun provides the ocean with heat. When the moon is gone is called a new moon. The friction isn't the issue. There's no friction between the Earth and Moon so whatever is done in the closed system that is the Earth is rather moot. Although it can be used to generate energy so you are minorly correct, but it's such a small amount that the universe would end sooner it's not going to cause any problems.
3) So just remove the small and tiny variables. The fact is the Earth isn't going to stop revolving around the Sun until the Sun swollows us or something hits us.

Sure, the universe is going to end so nothing is perpetual. But, if you can stay in motion from the first second until the end of spacetime. That should count for something.

Matter

[RabidJackal]

Does this superconductive matter stuff really actually matter?

Re:Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this superconductive matter stuff really actually matter?

It must. It's being reported at Slashdot which, as we all know, only resports stuff that matters.

Re:Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter

Re:Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

of course not, ever heard of someone being mattered"? It doesn't matter, it's materialises

I'll ask my local government to condemn it

[Snarfangel]

I'm pretty sure I can put it to much better use than MIT.

Re:I'll ask my local government to condemn it

[DigiShaman]

Of course. Matter is property too. Thus, the government can redistribute it elsewhere it sees fit. Didn't you know?

Note: I'm in a foul mood today. Gee, I wonder what other news could have caused this?

Re:I'll ask my local government to condemn it

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. Matter is property too. Thus, the government can redistribute it elsewhere it sees fit. Didn't you know?

What's more, if it weren't for pesky rules like Prop. 2 1/2 (in Massachusetts), the government wouldn't even have to use eminent domain. They can just set property taxes to whatever they want!

What's yours suddenly becomes theirs -- and no doubt will soon belong to Wal-Mart or whomever it is that owns your local representative.

Yes, young leftists, I feel the anger flowing within you. Strike big government down with all your hatred, and your journey to the Dark Side will be complete!

Yeah but...

[imstanny]

can it solve the mysteries of all those scientists googling for dating advice?

Check out the guy on the right

[DongleFondle]

See the picture at top right on the article and check out these nerds. Okay the first 3 or your every day run of the mill science nerds and then you get to the guy on the right, Andre Schirotzek. Isn't this guy a little attractive and built to be a scientist at MIT? No scientist that looks like that and creates a new form of matter can get away without becomming a superhero/villian through some bizarre mixup in an experiment.

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[Humorously_Inept]

He's the HVAC tech that got them to 50nK. Brrr.

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[deglr6328]

A little attractive? yeah. wow. I'd totally hit it. Oops! wrong site!.... :)

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[The Bungi]

Really, I didn't notice. I was looking at the cool contraption.

... but that's just me.

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[Anonymous Coward]

haha, i had the same thought...

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[DongleFondle]

Maybe someday we can even start reading the articles as opposed to just looking at the pretty pictures.

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[thesilverbail]

OMG !! It's Gordon Freeman !!

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[pudding7]

lol. I thought the exact same thing. Bet he gets the nerd-ladies!

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[Daktaklakpak]

yeah, all he needs is a crowbar and a hazard suit.

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[Anonymous Coward]

Every physicist in the world reads slashdot. It's only a matter of time before this comment comes to his attention.

Maybe some day someone will post a story on this site about how attractive and built I am. =)

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[Anonymous Coward]

He's only a grad student. He'll be eliminated from the ranks of science in the postdoc or untenured prof stage, to be sure. Hell, he'll be lucky even to pass his thesis defense. We have to maintain our nerd image, after all.

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[coopaq]

Isn't this guy a little attractive and built to be a scientist at MIT?

Every good science team needs the "Picks stuff up/Puts Stuff down and can Procreate" guy.

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[Anonymous Coward]

Who knew an ultra-cryogenic matter scientist could be so hot?! :-)

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[Bake]

Err... So?

I know this is a troll, but ... *gulp* hook, line, sinker...

It's not like people think, "holy crap, I'm a handsome, well built; oh darn, there goes my interest in science and my IQ got divided by two!".

Well built and fit-as-hell actor Dolph Lundgren holds a masters degree in chemical engineering. He was also offered a Fulbright scholarship to study at MIT. He turned that down to pursue a career in acting.

Is it just me or does there appear to be a US specific mantra that a lot of people chant on this website that in order to have something useful between your ears you simply CAN NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES be in good shape, or in this case "poor guy, he's got muscle tone, he probably needs help doing simple additions".

</rant>

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[corrosive_nf]

He sure is...

Was team leader for the United States modern pentathlon team at the 1996 summer olympics.

Was once engaged to Grace Jones

Holds a master's degree in chemical engineering. Was offered a Fulbright scholarship to study at MIT.

He married Anette in Stockholm.

Was once a bodyguard for Grace Jones

He was European Heavyweight Karate Champion in 1980-81.

Australian Heavyweight Karate Champion in 1982.

He dated model Paula Barbieri, also O.J. Simpson's ex-girlfriend.

Speaks five languages: Swedish, English, German, French and Japanese.

Born in 1957, but claims birthdate of 1959.

Officially announced his retirement from acting to spend more time with his family. [April 19, 2002]

Children, with Anette Qviberg: Ida and Greta.

I.Q. is 160

Was one of the last celebrities modelling for photographer Victor Skrebneski, notably a Chicago International Film Festival poster.

He obtained his third degree black belt (third Dan) in Kyokushinkai Karate in July 1998 in Stockholm, Sweden, after a four to five months training with his former teacher Brian Fitkin.

Sports natural blonde hair in all his films, save for The Punisher (1989) where it is dyed jet black to match that of the comic character.

He was the first actor cast for the 1987 cult sci-fi film Masters of the Universe (1987).

Was considered at one point for the role of Marvel Comics superhero Captain America.

Was considered for the role of Ben Richards in The Running Man (1987). The part eventually went to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[pipingguy]

HVAC techs aren't the guys that get things to cryogenic temperatures. For that type of extreme you need something other than a plumber and that guy that fixed your air conditioning system.

On the other hand, obtaining liquid nitrogen might not be so difficult. I wonder if LOX is more stringently controlled these days (ref: http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/~ghg/).

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[Humorously_Inept]

It was meant as a joke. You'd need an impossible compressor, condenser and refridgerant to get to temperatures nearing absolute zero. I know this. It was a humorous follow up to the parent, which suggested that nerds were typically bereft of good looks.

As for obtaining liquid nitrogen, it was fifty cents a litre in the basement of the chemistry building when I was in university and they'd let you carry it away in a Thermos so long as you didn't close the lid on it.

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[pipingguy]

Sorry, I'm just all fired-up on cryogenics recently. Looks like I'll be on an LH2 job soon, so I'm all excited and stuff.

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[cstacy]

Isn't this guy a little attractive and built to be a scientist at MIT? No scientist that looks like that and creates a new form of matter can get away without becomming a superhero/villian through some bizarre mixup in an experiment.

Wherever you go to get your degree, there you are.

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[identity0]

"Hallo, I am ze repairman... I hear you are havink a problem with deine cooling?"

Attractive female grad student: "Oh yes, I need you to cool down.... my experiment on gas superfluidity. Oh, please don't mind my friend Sherry, she's just over using the shower."

(cue porno music)

ba-bum-ba-ba-ba-bum-buuum-buuuum...

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[kwoff]

There are many physicists who are in excellent shape, as you might expect from someone who is intellectually excellent.

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[Pollardito]

thanks for adding your 2 cents to the discussion, Mrs Schirotzek

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[Paul Crowley]

Unfortunately the bad news is that if it's villain, then the mixup has to leave him hideously deformed...

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[geekoid]

"He turned that down to pursue a career in acting."

oops.

"Is it just me or does there appear to be a US specific mantra that a lot of people chant on this website that in order to have something useful between your ears you simply CAN NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES be in good shape, or in this case "poor guy, he's got muscle tone, he probably needs help doing simple additions"."

I blame "Wargames" for that.

Re:Check out the guy on the right

[Tekgno]

Not just a US specific mantra, here in Australia I have similar problems.
I have my bachelors in computing and am pursuing my honours in same, I have a 2nd Dan in Taekwondo and predominately work in the security industry either as a security guard or crowd controller (read bouncer).
Some stupid woman was going off at me because I checked the ID of her daughter simply to see if she was old enough, apparently I am supposed to be psychic and know she is old enough. As she walked away she made some smart arse comment about an IQ test.

In Solviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

50 billionths of a degree Kelvin above absolute zero was a warm January afternoon.

Re:In Solviet Russia

[wheelbarrow]

You were lucky. My father kept the house so cold that I peed snow.

Re:In Solviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

That's shorts weather in Minnisota.

Re:In Solviet Russia

[rossdee]

Wouldn't have minded some 50 nano kelvin air here today, it got up to about 310K in MN this afternoon - even the mosquitoes thought it was too hot.

Re:In Solviet Russia

[knigitz]

In Societ Russia the matter makes you.

many more ...

[vlad_petric]

See this index .

My favorite one - Neutronium

Re:many more ...

[winkydink]

My favorite: Degenerate matter, though I thought it was mostly found in hot-sheet motels.

Re:many more ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I love wikipedia
but it's a shame that for some articles you need a decent knolege of the subjects field to understand them

it would be realy nice to see links that state
You need to know this to understand this.

i would do it but i'm stu'pud

Re:many more ...

[Anonymous Coward]

See this entry. Linking to wikipedia isn't really any more informative then linking to google (or any other repository of information).

Is the new form of matter...

[SpyPlane]

a grain of salt?

Re:Is the new form of matter...

[tolkienfan]

your sig is 51 years ahead of it's time

Superfluid Gas at High Temp

[WillAffleckUW]

of course, the high temp they mention is what most of us would call dang cold ...

So you're still going to have problems using this to homebrew your next superconductive massively parallel home computer network - unless you live inside a really cold freezer (the ones here are only -80 C, which is way warmer than that, and you need a parka for that).

Technology used

[badmicrophone]

A "Magneto-optical trap".

http://www.npl.co.uk/quantum/projects/project1-1/m ot.html

one of my fav physics tools because it uses lasers and magnets! it's just so science-fictiony!

----
Check out my music video!

Re:Technology used

[Fear the Clam]

A "Magneto-optical trap".

That's how you catch "Magneto-optical bears".

Re:Technology used

[Alsee]

lasers and magnets! it's just so science-fictiony!

Ok, the laser part I get... but aren't frikin' magnets about one step above silly-putty on the science-fictiony scale?
Chuckle.

-

Re:Technology used

[The One and Only]

Thank you, Admiral Ackbar.

It May Be New But...

[Nom du Keyboard]

It may be new, but I'll bet the Supreme Court will let it be siezed under emminent domain.

Re:It May Be New But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez, I was just going to complain about this being filed under "Education" and I decided that was too stupid to bother with. How the hell much time do you have on your hands?

And you're going to be the new Eminent Domain Troll, why not learn the correct fucking spelling instead of what that illiterate CmdrTaco let through?

Re:It May Be New But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sightly off topic but I have to wonder when intellectual property will fall under emminent domain? Sounds silly but taking some one's land for a shopping mall sounds rediculous but it happens and now the Supreme Court has said it's okay. Scary times.

Re:It May Be New But...

[Nom du Keyboard]

And you're going to be the new Eminent Domain Troll, why not learn the correct fucking spelling

Hey, I'm the first to argue that /. needs a spell checker function for posts.

Join me and become the second to argue it.

I'd even support a GRAMMAR -1 moderation if there was the ability to go back and correct posts afterwards.

Re:It May Be New But...

[Nom du Keyboard]

I have to wonder when intellectual property will fall under emminent domain?

IP can already be taken by the government in several different ways:

1: Compulsory licensing. The government insists you must license your property, and they set the price. This has happened to the music industry in the past, which is why music is so widely available now.

2: Revocation of your patent protection. Now anybody can use it.

3: Seizure of your patents for National Defense.

4: Threat of ruinous litigation from an adversary with the ultimate in deep-pockets unless you capitulate to their demands.

I don't think they need any further ways to take your IP if they really want to do so.

50 NanoKelvin = Very High-Temperature!

[MS-06FZ]

I mean, it's not shorts and t-shirts weather, but it's not too shabby for New England...

Re:50 NanoKelvin = Very High-Temperature!

[gstoddart]

I mean, it's not shorts and t-shirts weather, but it's not too shabby for New England...

I guarantee you, in many major Canadian cities you'll still find someone in shorts and a parka at that temperature. :-P

Re:50 NanoKelvin = Very High-Temperature!

[Simon Garlick]

Pfft. Perfect for rugby.

Give him a promotion

[Nom du Keyboard]

Dan Kleppner, director of the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms

He should be promoted to Untracold Molecules for this breakthrough.

Re:Give him a promotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, all the guy wants is to retire happily to Florida-based MIT-Harvard Center for Warm and Nice Atoms with his family.

Re:Give him a promotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm.. you do realize what the center's acronym would be...

that guy is an MIT scientist?!?

[game kid]

Shiiit. Even Ty Pennington wants some of the Andre, I'm sure.

Expect a massive increase in female Slashdotters in the coming hours, as muscle-lovers everywhere learn of him.

Waiting for the two-hour live special...

[mkcmkc]

It has been said that this could solve the mysteries in superconductivity.

That's good, because Giraldo Rivera ain't cutting it.

Mike

Check out the mini tornadoes

[Anonymous Coward]

If they could can this stuff at room temp, they could give the "scrubbing bubbles" people a real run for their money.

Noted engineers interested in this new form of...

[Winckle]

matter include Montgomery Scott, Miles O'Brien and Geordi LaForge.

Cooling Techniques

[Jazzer_Techie]

In order to achieve 50 nanokelvin, you have to use "laser and evaporative cooling techniques". The article failed to explain how that worked, so here it goes. Temperature is essentially a measurement of the average kinetic energy (energy of motion) of a bunch of atoms/molecules. So when you're working with small samples of gas, cooling it down is essentially slowing it down. In laser cooling, a laser with a material-specific frequency is shown towards a sample of gas which is moving toward it. The photons striking the gas are absorbed and then re-emitted. Some of the kinetic energy goes into the re-emitted photons and therefore the gas sample cools. Evaporative cooling is similar to what you'd expect. The gas sample is placed into an inverted "cone". (Note: Not a physical container, but made of lasers and magnetic fields.) The faster moving atoms/molecules move upwards and out while the slower moving ones settle to the bottom. The end result is a supercooled gas at the bottom of your "cone". I am not a physicist, but this is how it was explained to me by one of Ketterle's grad students. I went on a tour of the lab a week before this discovery was made. Surprisingly, it was a sweltering 90 degrees in the room.

Re:Cooling Techniques

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between "sweltering" and "chilly" is negligible on an absolute scale. When you're cooling something down to 50nK you don't really care whether it starts at 305K or 290K.

Could it be that the lab was so sweltering because of all the high-energy cooling equipment?

BTW, I don't think I've ever seen shone/shown homonym confusion before.

Re:Cooling Techniques

[miller701]

Schroedinger's ice cream cone?

Re:Cooling Techniques

[eric_brissette]

Man, it sounds like those guys have so much fun.

Re:Technology used - form = function

[WillAffleckUW]

A "Magneto-optical trap".

http://www.npl.co.uk/quantum/projects/project1-1/m ot.html [npl.co.uk]

one of my fav physics tools because it uses lasers and magnets! it's just so science-fictiony!

Ah, but you should have seen the new device they're using to mix micromolar quantities of ligands that I just saw - it's got three input dispensers on a head at angles, a top mixing chamber, and then a long thin tube which is heated by microwaves.

It actually looks like the Romulan Cloaking Device after installation ... kind of tech.

Can someone sum this up?

[lawpoop]

How many forms of matter do we have now? What are the criteria to distinguish types of matter?

Re:Can someone sum this up?

[HTH NE1]

It's hard to tell how many since it becomes harder to tell when one announcement is just a dupe of another.

Re:Can someone sum this up?

[Eightyford]

Matter can exist in four phases (or states), solid, liquid, gas, and plasma plus a few other extreme phases, like critical fluids and degenerate gases.

Re:Can someone sum this up?

[WillAffleckUW]

Matter can exist in four phases (or states), solid, liquid, gas, and plasma plus a few other extreme phases, like critical fluids and degenerate gases.

Or ...

Matter can exist in the following states/phases:
crispy, extra crispy, deep fried extra crispy, regular, soggy, liquid, burnt to a crisp, fumes, and ozone. Degenerate gases need not apply, at least not here.

Re:Can someone sum this up?

[wpmegee]

Solid, liquid, gas, plasma, neutron star, and now this.

Re:Can someone sum this up?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe this brings us up to 8 states of matter.
Solid, liquid, gas, plasma, quark-gluon plasma, Bose-Einstein condensate, Fermionic condensate, and now superfluid Fermionic gas.

Re:Can someone sum this up?

[nmpeglit]

Well, it seems that it depends who you ask. Particle physicists will say that matter can be split into elementary particles. These particles can be divided into two categories, fermions and bosons. Fermions are all the elementary particles that are building blocks of nature e.g electrons are fermions, quarks are fermions etc... They have a half integral spin. Bosons are all the carriers of forces. Photon is the carrier of the electromagnetic force and has integral spin. Hence it is a boson. The idea is that these two different categories of particles have a nice property. Fermions obey the Fermi - Dirac statistics while bosons obey the Bose - Einstein statistics. What this means is that an infinite amount of bosons can coexist in the same quantum state while this does not apply to fermions ( technicallities omitted ). This is known as Pauli's exclusion principle. That is why an infinite amount of bosons can add up and create a macroscopic force and why all matter has not condensed to a drop of infinite density. Neat huh?

Now, particle physicists will say that all these fermions and bosons and their combinations ( you can have baryons and mesons etc etc - doesn't matter what these are ) are "ordinary matter". Electron - Electron pairs ( Coopper pairs ) that are formed in superconductors ( and make the phenomenon possible ) or whatever weird combination of ferminos and bosons you come up with are called "states of matter" or something like that but not a new form of matter. You have ordinary matter there, part of the so called Standard Model. It is just elecrtrons and atoms and so on but combined in a different way and with different external conditions ( like pressure and temperature ). So they are just different states of matter.

There are some cosmology related problems these days. One of these is that the ordinary matter that experts can see with their telescopes amounts to a tiny fraction of the matter that they calculate there is out there. Let's say 5% ( I do not really remember the exact number, but it is quite small ). What is the nature of the rest 95%? There are some speculations but what experts say is that "it is a new form of matter". No protons, no electrons, no neutrinos. Nothing that can emit radiation ( that's why the name dark matter ). Fascinating... No need to say more about this, interesting stuff however, you can google it or have a look at wikipedia for dark matter, cosmological constant and each page will bring another and so on.

The conclusion: Not a new form of matter but a new state of it. And by the way, superfluidity is a phenomenon discovered around the '30s. Certainly there are many interesting things about it and is not a "job done" however keep in mind that laboratories are also very aware of public relations. If this is a breakthrough or an important discovery, experts will decide and time will tell.

Cheers!

Re:Can someone sum this up?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the 'pedia:

The most familiar examples of phases are solids, liquids, and gases. Less familiar phases include plasmas and quark-gluon plasmas, Bose-Einstein condensates and fermionic condensates, strange matter, liquid crystals, superfluids and supersolids and the paramagnetic and ferromagnetic phases of magnetic materials.

Phases are sometimes called states of matter, but this term can lead to confusion with thermodynamic states. For example, two gases maintained at different pressures are in different thermodynamic states, but the same "state of matter".

Re:Can someone sum this up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bose-Einstein Condensate is considered the fifth major form of matter.

Re:Can someone sum this up?

[Goldsmith]

I don't actually get to decide this kind of thing (who does?), but if I did, I would say...

It's not really a new form, it's just Bose-Einstein condensate which has been repackaged. We don't have bosonic solids and fermionic solids as separate forms, I don't see why we should have bosonic condensate and fermionic condensate as separate forms.

That leaves us with:
solids, liquids, gasses, plasmas, condensates

With condensates being any form of matter which is quantum mechanically degenerate. That would include this stuff, neutron stars, BEC, and so on.

Re:Can someone sum this up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Very nice summary, thank you sir. Just a little of my understanding as a supplementary: superfluidity, closely related to superconductivity, has a lot to do with long range order of the matter (coherence, phase-correlation and all that), and as we all know, lower temperatures tend to produce more ordered states, and that's why both phenomena typically only present at low temperatures. Particularly, superfluidity was pretty much limited to liquid helium 3 and 4, and liquid hydrogen. That's why this discovery is actually a big deal. Before reading the related paper (hey, it's /.), I'd guess for now that it has something to do with ions pairing that make them effectively bozons, which would definitely be interesting for physicists, but calling it a "new matter" is more marketing than science -- IMHO at least. But what would an AC know anyway?

* above was written with extremely non-professional terminology, posted as AC so my professor will not shoot me on sight.

Re:Can someone sum this up?

[Dave AM]

How about just adding the term "super" to the front of any gas, solid, or fluid whenever the atoms in a substance begin to all interact as one?

So all condensate would simply be "super."

What must I do to be the first person to predict Superplasma? May I simply make the argument that all the other forms exist, so it is the only one left undiscovered?

What's the use? The geniuses at MIT will take all the credit anyway...

They'll make some ridiculous claim that it's a "quantum heat matrix" that both binds and shakes the atoms to make superplasma both a plasma and a condensate at the same time.

Karma whoring is not informative.

[Some Random Username]

The article works fine, this is not informative at all, its redundant.

Re:Karma whoring is not informative.

[Heliologue]

So because the link still works when you post (one of the first few responses), he's just a karma whore? Don't be a douche.

Re:Karma whoring is not informative.

[Dolda2000]

Karma whoring is not informative.

Why is there a contradiction between karma whoring and the post being informative?

The important part is whether people (or mods, more accurately) appreciate the post. What do the posters intentions matter? What if I write a +5 Insightful post just for the sake of karma -- Would the fact that I did it for karma that make it less insightful? Or could it be that it is the actual content of the post that matters?

In my opinion, copying the article is informative regardlessly of whether the article is slashdotted -- it's one less click to read it.

Re:Short synopsis for the not so lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Or when you go REAL high...
We feel temperatures differently, than how they really are. We actually measure some sorth of logarithmic scale (well, with our current theories physics uses the inverse of it :-P, but to me that just sounds like plain old bullshit).

Meaning that if you put 10C extra when it's 0.005C it does much. However, if you add 10C to 1500C it doesn't do shit.

Thus meaning, that if we want to know more, we need to get to the extremes of temerature (just imagine fusion etc). But note too, that -most of the time- there are methods to 'trick' nature. Meaning we might be able to get these same effects on temperatures that are 50 times higher (still very cold) (& note COLD fusion)

(meaning you are right)

Re:Cooling Techniques or Hot Lasers in the Freezer

[WillAffleckUW]

In order to achieve 50 nanokelvin, you have to use "laser and evaporative cooling techniques". The article failed to explain how that worked, so here it goes...

Darn, and I was hoping it would be someone standing next to a giant laser on a tripod, holding a bellows to cool a tray of liquid nitrogen icecubes ...

Stuff

[servognome]

that's matter

BEC

[vivin]

Explanation of what "funky" means... The wave-functions of the particles start collapsing, essentially describing one giant particle. You are unable to distinguish one particle from the other, since they have the same wave-function - they collapse into the lowest possible quantum state.

I thought gasesous superfluids (Bose-Einstein Condensate) had already been created in 1995:

Bose-Einstein condensate is a gaseous superfluid phase formed by atoms cooled to temperatures very near to absolute zero. The first such condensate was produced by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman in 1995 at the University of Colorado at Boulder, using a gas of rubidium atoms cooled to 170 nanokelvins (nK). Under such conditions, a large fraction of the atoms collapse into the lowest quantum state, producing a superfluid.

Wikipedia article

Re:BEC

[bradkittenbrink]

Personally, I prefer this definition.

Re:BEC

[anthony_dipierro]

I thought gasesous superfluids (Bose-Einstein Condensate) had already been created in 1995

lithium-6 is a fermion, not a boson.

Re:BEC

[lazy genes]

Some BEC experiments reported an unexplained increase in mass.Some Quark gluon plasma experiments reported an unexplained decrease in mass. Is there is a limit to what space-time can indure?Could these experiments be bending space-time? I noticed this 6 months ago.Glad to get THAT OFF MY CHEST.

Re:BEC

[Anonymous Coward]

Pr Wolfgang Ketterle, who led the team, is a world-class physicist and one of the leading specialists of Bose-Einstein condensation.

finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

slashdot finally lives up to its tagline!

Re:Not another one!

[harkabeeparolyn]

So does this new form of matter really... matter?

Go back to sleep. When the affordable android Natalie Portman fuck-toys appear, we'll let you know.

And GOD says "what took you so long?"

[Anonymous Coward]

GOD created humans to have something to laugh about.

I bet we are funny.

and would make great pets

Conservation of Mass

[JeiFuRi]

I thought matter can't be created (nor destroyed) according to conservation of mass...so how can it be that they created matter...

Possibly.

[jd]

It depends on how high temperature they can get. At this temperature, no, it doesn't matter.

If they can get liquid oxygen to act as a superfluid, then it might make liquid-fuel rocket motors much more predictable and therefore safer.

Once you get to room temperatures, it would not be impossible to build a subway system that used it, giving you next to zero friction, reducing costs and increasing speeds.

Depending on the limits of room-temperature superfluid gasses, it might also be effective at disrupting hurricanes. You wouldn't be looking at creating enough energy to disrupt the hurricane - superfluid gasses wouldn't directly interact with it, no friction! Instead, you're looking for a way to reduce the stability and cohesiveness of the structure by introducing something that simply isn't stable as a single gigantic vortex.

Lastly, it'll improve NASCAR racing, as they can pump room-temp superfluid gasses from the pits onto the track, eliminating air resistance and downforce, causing the cars to massively accelerate.... ...before spinning hopelessly out of control into the retaining wall and exploding. (Ok, it's not an improvement from the perspective of the drivers, but you'd probably see more fans in the stands.)

Re:Possibly.

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Not to mention a huge increase in the efficiency of any machine with moving parts (including guns), frictionless spacecraft re-entry, submarines that can go as fast as their engines can push them, and here's an interesting one, would that even cause a wake?

Taking it further into the realms of wild specuation, since frictionless substances reduce the effects of whatever is moving relative to its surroundings, would this make it possible to push faster than light speeds? Also if we assume gravity as a type of friction, if we could apply the same notion to create anti-gravity devices or at least zero to 9 million in 2 seconds kind of pickup?

Re:Possibly.

[Alsee]

NASCAR racing... spinning hopelessly out of control into the retaining wall and exploding. (Ok, it's not an improvement from the perspective of the drivers, but you'd probably see more fans in the stands.)

Sounds to me like you'd suddenly see about a dozen fewer fans in the stands.

Sure you might start with more fans in ths stands, but would what you describe

-

Re:Possibly.

[Alsee]

Akk, I meant to delete that last malformed line.

-

Re:Possibly.

[Anonymous Coward]

frictionless spacecraft re-entry

Er... gonna be rather difficult to slow down a spacecraft during reentry under those conditions.

Not to mention that it's not the fact that the spacecraft surface has friction, it's the volume of air being pushed aside that's the issue.

Re:Possibly.

[jd]

True, but the cynical would argue that the dead are less inclined to sue.

Splorgasma

[winkydink]

It has a much nicer ring.

High temperature, my ass

[nxtr]

By their definition, with $100 in my bank account, I am a millionaire.

Re:High temperature, my ass

[ColaMan]

If it was some super-dense form of $100 which, which expanded out to a million bucks in normal monetary systems, then, yes you would be a millionaire.

Kind of like the exchange rate when you go to Indonesia - a hundred USD gets you a million rupiah.

Re:High temperature, my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

In some extremely poor countries, you propably are.

Btw. Can you please make the human-check a bit easier. It says to me: "You failed to confirm you are a human.".

Degenerate gases?

[jmichaelg]

Is that what one has after gay sex?

Re:Degenerate gases?

[Eightyford]

Like the Senator?

Re:Degenerate gases?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're thinking of santorum.

Re:Degenerate gases?

[Anonymous Coward]

are you thinking of amyl nitrate?

O'Brien's no engineer

[XanC]

He's just the puke who runs the transporter. And apparently one of the few on the ship who's not even an officer.

Re:O'Brien's no engineer

[Winckle]

In TNG yes, but in DS9 he was an engineer wasn't he?

Re:O'Brien's no engineer

[XanC]

Oh, maybe so; I didn't watch that one.

Just looked it up in the Encyclopedia... It seems to go back and forth. In one sentence it says he "signed up for Starfleet," indicating an enlisted man. Then it says he was the "tactical officer aboard the USS Rutledge" early in his career.

Later he was promoted to "chief of operations" on DS9, whatever the heck that means.

It also says that Encounter at Farpoint and All Good Things... show him as the "battle bridge conn officer".

So who knows; let's call him an engineer.

Re:O'Brien's no engineer

[arodland]

For various reasons, it's more likely that DS9 would be "right" on this matter; in any case, in late TNG, and more consistently in DS9, he's represented as being a Chief Petty Officer, and DS9 consistently says that he's enlisted. So either write the Rutledge bit up to a lack-of-foresight error, or assume that the junior tac position is one that could be filled by an NCO.

Re:O'Brien's no engineer

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a DS9? Some sort of optical networking technology? TNG? Some sort of food additive?

Did you look at the url?

[Some Random Username]

Its web.mit.edu dude, get real. There is no need to copy and paste the article here. And even when there is a need, you'll notice people do it AC to not be karma whores.

Re:Did you look at the url?

[Anti_zeitgeist]

Well, how about us guys who work for the city and cant get to websites other than .org, .edu, or .gov. I know in this case it is a .edu so it doesnt really apply....but when its an article on a .com website i can't read it unless someone posts the entire article up on slashdot....or unless i wait till i get home.

Re:Did you look at the url?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, perhaps you need to check that stuff on your own time, not on city's rate payer's.

It Should Matter...

[__aaclcg7560]

Shouldn't we recycle the old matter before making new matter? No reason to be polluting the environment with new matter when we haven't figured out what to with the old matter yet.

Slashdot:

[Klowner]

News for Nerds. Stuff about matter.

Image Gallery

[Anonymous Coward]

Image Gallery

(Schirotzek is sooo cute. I'm in geek love)

Re:Image Gallery

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so loudly! Someone might slash him with the Magneto-Optical Trap!

ok, i'm not a physicist...

[cryptocom]

...or even really really smart, but isnt this similar to a Bose-Einstein Condensate?

Re:ok, i'm not a physicist...

[udowish]

It basically is

How is this different

[tenchiken]

How is this different then Bose-Einstein Condensate which has been around since 1995 when the University of Colorado embarrassed MIT by getting there first? Is this just MIT and sour grapes?

Re:How is this different

[Anonymous Coward]

Sour grapes. Because science and funding really work like that.

Re:How is this different

[arodland]

As mentioned in another post, this is a Fermi condensate, where Fermions are "those things that aren't Bosons". Fundamentally different and potentially nifty.

Re:How is this different

[PhysSurfer]

If you were to read the article, you would also see that CU Boulder was one of the first to obtain a Fermionic condensate.

The reason this is new is that this is a superfluid state, which hadn't been observed in a Fermionic gas.

Re:How is this different

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gives a fucking damn who found it first? I'm so tired of this pointless and mindless competition. Knowledge is knowledge, I'm so damn tired of the elitism and pride that gets in the way of the simple quest for knowledge for humankind.

Bah. This isn't new.

[Anonymous Coward]

MIT has been spouting new forms of gas for years; this isn't anything new!

Seriously, *salute* MIT! Well done indeed.

This Quote Makes Me Wonder

[frank_adrian314159]

"...what matters is the temperature normalized by the density of the particles"

Does this mean that a star's core might be superconducting given a low enough temperature and a high enough density? From a relativistic standpoint, what happens as you shove more mass in? The mass/energy is getting greater, but does the normalized value of the temperature start decreasing? I think that this finding is going to be interesting for more reasons than just superconductivity. Of course, not being a physicist, I might be (heck, am probably) wrong.

Re:This Quote Makes Me Wonder

[Brannoncyll]

Superconductivity is (theorised to be) caused by the matter making a phase transition where two electrons become bound together by phonons (quanta of vibrational energy) in what are known as Cooper pairs. I dont know for sure but i imagine that most materials can do this, although the binding energy of the Cooper pair will vary from material to material, and hence the critical temperature. However the temperature at the core of a star is stupidly high and thus Cooper pairs will not form.

Re:This Quote Makes Me Wonder

[boojum.cat]

Neutron stars have superfluid cores. Superfluidity isn't quite the same as superconductivity, but it's related. See http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answer s/970213.html, for example.

-- Steve

Obligatory Half Life reference...

[holiggan]

Hey, as long as they don't trigger a ressonance cascade... ;)

Re:Not another one!

[wo1verin3]

>>Go back to sleep. When the affordable android
>>Natalie Portman fuck-toys appear, we'll let you
>>know.

Can you add me to that list as well please?

Naw. He's promoting Jessica Simpsons movie.

[zymano]

HeeHaw.

IP ban

[Mr. Underbridge]

I'm sorry, you're far too knowledgeable of science - or anything else, for that matter - to be posting on slashdot. Please cease this behavior, and go, like, publish something.

It would be nice though, if all problems in science were perfect spheres, homogeneous, hard, and always engaged in perfectly elastic collisions? Oh, and frictionless?

Re:IP ban

[libcoder]

Hey, I totally know, science can be so hard to study. I just took physics and I still can't find a single store that sells the massless string he told us so much about.

Re:IP ban

[XchristX]

Heh, reminds me of a joke... A poultry farmer was puzzled by the fact that his chickens were dying for no apparent reason, so he called in a Biologist, a Chemist, and a Physicist to try to figure out what's going on. The Biologist took samples of blood and other bodily fluids from the chickens, made slides, studied them under a microscope, but found nothing awry. The Chemist did various qualitative and quantitative chemical analyses on the samples to look for any problems, but found none. Finally, all eyes were on the Physicist who, after spending a few minutes in deep thought, suddenly got very excited and started to scribble notes on a page. After a few more minutes, he shouted out "YES! I've solved it! I know what's happening, but it only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum at absolute zero."

Re:IP ban

[Anonymous Coward]

bird flu.

Get the paper here

[Anonymous Coward]

The paper.

Overview of optically trapped Fermi gases

[Anonymous Coward]

here (pdf)

How about a server after Slashdotting?

[noidentity]

They should study the form of matter a server becomes after being Slashdotted. As a bonus once the news story is posted here, their server will also become this new form of matter.

Neutron star superconductors

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, neutron stars are thought to have superconducting (and superfluid) cores. They also may be superconductors of the strong nuclear force ("color superconductors").

On a related note, "Exploring Superconductors and Neutron Stars on a Desktop using Ultracold Fermi Gases".

Uranus...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uranus also produces a gas of atoms that shows high-temperature superfluidity...

Re:Uranus...

[ElDuderino44137]

u promised not to bring that up agian ...
if i promised to lay off the beanie' weanies ...

So, then...

[Mechcozmo]

Does this mean that, at those temperatures, we can get some freakin' crazy overclocks?

So what is this now? Number 7?

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Solid, liquid, gas, plasma, bose-einstein condensate... I think there was one more in the hot range.

Now THIS is news!

[5plicer]

THIS is the kind of news that belongs on Slashdot! Great find :)

Re:Technology used...AND

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

one of my fav physics tools because it uses lasers and magnets!

You can mount it on the head of a shark.

any practical uses.......

[euro_hiker]

so how long before I can buy a 600" BEC TV? OK, I know I can't make a TV out of it, but it there anything I can make out of it? A Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster perhaps? Or maybe a cool "crazy frog killing" ray gun? (I know it may be a shock, but I am not actually a physicist!)

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a lot cooler when NIST did it five years ago and won the nobel prize.

Yay for reproducing the experiment?

Matter of Fact

[Ranger]

"They have become the first to create a new type of matter, a gas of atoms that shows high-temperature superfluidity."

Sounds like they've been lighting farts again.

So plasma conduits are obsolete

[ecloud]

Bummer.

high-temperature superfluidity

[arootbeer]

This is obviously some new usage of the phrase "high-temperature" that I hadn't heard about yet...

OMG YUO ARE FUNNY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people would scoff and say that your comment was a worthless non sequitur, but a good fart joke always makes me roffle!

Preprint

[doru]

For more details, the preprint of the Nature paper can be found here.

Re:Preprint

[Anonymous Coward]

No, really?

Super

[AuntMatilda]

Superconducting supercritial superfluids? Bah! I want "hyper", I want "diemsional" and I want it made into a film with Sandra Bullock. Make it happen!

Re:Super

[Shin Chan]

I present to you another sexually frustrated geek *Points at parent*

Re:Not another one!

[hostyle]

Nevermind. It doesn't matter.

But what about superfecal matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

will fm expelled under diarrhea be superfluid?

come on, don't whine

[cahiha]

Science likes to tantalize you with incredible possibilities that float just outside your reach ;)

I think that's just whining. The amount of progress made over the last 30 years alone is astounding: enormous chip densities, DLP chips, single atom imagery, high temperature superconductors, the human genome, amorphous metals, etc.

I fully expect superconductivity, superfluidity, and super-strong materials to become more mainstream over the next decade--that has become more engineering than science at this point. There even is a possibility that some form of desktop fusion will become a reality for energy generation, although that will still require some fundamental insights.

Whatsa matter

[Anonymous Coward]

"Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness, experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death - life is only a dream - and we're the imagination of ourselves." - Bill Hicks

MIT

[cahiha]

MIT isn't just computer geeks, you know. People in mechanical engineering, civil engineering, chemical engineering, and related disciplines tend to be much less geeky. And even among computer geeks, there is a significant population that hangs out at the gym in their spare time.

Hi dad !

[lemonjus]

Hi dad. Meet my date. he created a new form of matter !

Intelligent Design?

[jimijon]

Just wondered how this fits in the evolution vs. creationism vs. intelligent design debate? Seems to me that everytime we invent something from our dreams we creationists. Now put our little creations together into something that is useful and we are intelligent designers, finally, have someone improve on the design and we are evolutionists.

Science IS a religion.

[MCraigW]

Religion is a belief system used for explaining things that we cannot easily explain on our own. Why am I here? What happens after death? Where did the universe come from? Science is a religion in that it is a belief system used for explaining things that we cannot easily explain otherwise. Unfortunatly Science does not (yet) answer all the questions we wish to answer. We accept things in religions (including science) on faith. We may believe that there is evidence of those things. I've never seen God, but then again, I've never seen an electron either.

Re:Science IS a religion.

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Well I never have seen God, or a single electron, but the other night I saw the movement of a whole bunch of electrons, you might have heard of this phenomena it is called lightning. Were is the evidence of this God you speak of? Is there a detailed and agreed upon method for determining the existence of God? Or is it turtles all the way down?

Re:Science IS a religion.

[MCraigW]

Interesting that you should mention lightning. I recall a story from an anthropology class that used lightning as the example. The story goes that an anthropologist was studying natives when there was a storm and lightning struck and killed one of them. The natives said that the gods struck him dead. The anthropologist asked them about these gods: Have you ever seen these gods? No. You see, the anthropologist explained, lightning is an electrical charge, made of electrons. The natives asked: Did you ever see an electron? No, answered the anthropoligist. The natives said: ohh... gods. Anyway, the point is that lightning is as much evidence of gods as it is of electrons. Those that believe in gods (or God) would argue that the shear complexity and beauty of everything is evidence of intelligent design, not something that came about by mere chance. BTW, I'm an athiest. I consider athiesm to be as much a religion as any other.

Re:Science IS a religion.

[Rei]

Apparently you can trap God in a Penning trap...

Re:Science IS a religion.

[greay]

With electrons, you can formulate & conduct an experiment with reproducable results that reinforces the theory. You can't do that with God. Those experiments are the evidence that God doesn't have.

And atheism is NOT a religion. You're using the term far too loosely. Religions need rituals, a community of followers... None of which atheism has. They need a belief /system/, which atheism doesn't have. It merely has a condition.

There's a big difference between someone who believes that the sun exists, and a devotee of a solar cult.

Re:Science IS a religion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! I can make God in a laboratory with a large Tesla coil! That must make me more powerful than God! Who-hoo! Who wants a zap?

And for my next miracle...

Religion and Science

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the biggest downfalls in regards to religion, is that they tend to get so defensive. Religion and science can go together very well. If G-d created the universe, then no honest scientific discovery can refute it. When the scientific method is employed, honest discoveries happen. As a religious person interested in science, I get excited whenever some new discovery discovery is made. Religious folk (especially apologists in general) fail when scientific theory is stated as fact, therefore becoming dogma. This was what Galileo's main problem was. Aristotlism stated as dogma (his theories on logic were great, but his physics were based in a less advanced society).

gather round kids...

[avi33]

...and you'll find an artifact from the early days, before the politics section, blind haughty sniping, and google/apple worship/flamewars.

The first clue is the relatively low userID. Not quite down in the 5 digit range, but well ahead of all the riffraff in the 800s.

The userID is just an indicator. The real proof is the content.

See, once upon a time, you could go to this space and the crowd posted about physics, astronomy, algorithm optimization, mechanical coefficients, Personal Homepage Preprocessor, the latest mersenne prime, and diversions like star wars via telnet.

Yep, the CS majors were paper millionaires, the English majors were making mid-five figures right out of school, and you could sit at your desk and learn all about pi bonds and tensile strength like you were in a 400-level lecture.

A quick scan today reveals a torrent of one-liners trolling for a funny mod if they're lucky. sigh.

Re:Short synopsis for the lazy - Gortex Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

"* Its not uncommon for me to run in a Gore-tex suit. Comprising of nylon (itself a miracle material from the early 1900s) fabric covering a Mylar membrane with microscopic holes in it"

Gore-tex is a dispersion-polymerised PTFE (Teflon)
Mylar is polyester.

exDuPonter

Simple explanation.

[geekoid]

this is when you get a bunch of them in a small place and they start arguing about 'Rules of acqusition'...oh wait, I thought you said Ferangi.

Nobel Prize

[Henk Postma]

Just to point out that the leader of this research group, Wulfgang Ketterle, 2nd from the right in the picture, shared the physics nobel prize in 2001 http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/2001/

"for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates"

Basically the current article is about the same type of system that landed him The Prize

And it is called....Jello

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wait...

Re:Noted engineers interested in this new form of.

[MCraigW]

Oh come now. How do you think they make transparent aluminum?

Re:Noted engineers interested in this new form of.

[Winckle]

According to STIV they use an apple 2 and a qauint keyboard

MOD PARENT UP

[coopex]

Genius I say.