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New Form of Matter Melds Lasers, Superconductors
sterlingda writes "Physicists at the University of Pittsburgh have demonstrated a new form of matter that melds the characteristics of lasers and superconductors. The work introduces a new method of moving energy from one point to another as well as a low-energy means of producing a light beam like that from a laser. The new state is a solid filled with a collection of energy particles known as 'polaritons' that have been trapped and slowed using a technique similar to that used to produce a Bose-Einstein condensate. The work is published in the May 18 issue of Science (subscription required to read beyond the abstract)."
You want "polaritons, and fermions, and gluons, and quarks, and mesons, and bosons, all together with photons". Tell you what, I'll get right on that. After all, it's only a matter of coming up with a Grand Unified Theory, and how hard could that possibly be? Why hasn't anyone taken this simple step yet? How could we, the physics community, have overlooked such an obvious solution to the problem of proliferating subatomic particles?
It's such an easy way to win a Nobel Prize and have my name right up there with Einstein and Newton and Dirac.
Evil will always win, because Good is DUMB
No need to be a jerk about it, though. Especially since the supersymmetric postulate seems to be almost, but not quite, as bad as string theory in terms of a lack of predictive power. For those offended by that comment - just tell me some test we could potentially perform that would invalidate the postulate. I confess that I don't have a detailed knowledge of supersymmetry yet, but I'm always struck by how every experimental test I've seen so far is just ruling out fractions of the model space.
I'm not sure about that Wikipedia quote, either. It seems, frankly, downright wrong. You might as well say that the distinction between a moebius strip and a plain loop is not quite clear when they symmetry properties make the distinction plain as day. With fermions you have a half-integer spin field and all that entails: anti-commuting operators/Grassman variables => the Pauli exclusion principle, 720 degree rotations are the identity (generally), a propagator that goes like 1/p, the conservation of the net number of fermions, and etc. With bosons you'll find: commuting operators/plain numbers => Bose-Einstein condensation, 360 degree rotations are the identity, a propagator that goes like 1/p^2, non-conservation of the net number of bosons, particles that are their own anti-particles, and etc.
From your first post it seems that you don't know the first thing about condensed matter physics, either. There's a proliferation of phases for a very good reason - because they're real. That phases are distinguished by different properties, whether a symmetry or not, a latent heat necessary to cross the phase transition boundary, and etc.
Think of it this way, even if we manage to find some underlying structure that melds fermions and bosons, they're still going to be as different as water and ice. So, even if we eventually unify fermions and bosons under a single umbrella, the distinction will still be useful; just like how chemists don't have to bother with neutrons and protons but instead use nuclei and their properties + electrons.
Frankly, I'd be surprised if you've made it as far as you claim in physics given that you seem to have a very rigid way of thinking about the world. That, or your the kind of @ss who gives the rest of us physicists a bad name.
Here's another good article I found:
http://optics.org/cws/article/research/27439
Again, a more energy-efficient laser sounds like it could be used for nuclear fusion, or even just for more energy efficient consumer electronics (eg. DVD players)
Isn't Laser-TV supposed to be coming out this Xmas? I'd read that Novalux is working on improving the power of their Necsel laser modules for that purpose. If polariton lasers are 10 times more efficient than laser diodes and can operate at room temp, then maybe they'd fill the bill.
Nah, you don't need to worry. This is a special class of micro black holes that exist more on the quantum level, so they behave differently. There isn't enough mass on Earth (probably in the solar system) to create a black hole of the sort that would give you a really bad day. It's sort of like our fusion experiments... without enough mass for the reaction to power itself through gravity, they aren't naturally self-sustaining. These micro black holes don't have the mass to influence anything or to exist without continuous energy input.