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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)."
Problem being, they have to do these experiments to get us off of the planet in the first place...
Good luck combining fermions with photons. Photons are very much a type of boson, which means they're very much _not_ fermions. Perhaps the biologists should just combine mitochondria and chromosomes too, you know, to simplify the math?
Over the last ten years I've watched the news releases about physics--and it seems that physics is wh0ring itself out just for news headlines.
Perhaps you should actually read the scientific journal articles if you're serious about this, instead of reading the popular reviews which are by definition "dumbed down" such that non-PhD's can understand in layman's terms what is going on.
Did they really demonstrate a new form of matter? What did we have at one time? Solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. We could have mixtures of the forms--like a suspension was a fine mixture of a liquid with a gas.
Did you actually read the JOURNAL article, or are you just extrapolating bullshit based on a popular science review of the actual journal article? If you actually didn't think physicists were 'whoring themselves out' your post would make you look significantly less ignorant.
You quote liquids and gases as being two distinct forms of matter, yet they're actually the same if you look on a phase-diagram plot. So why do you list them as being two separate phases?
Oh wait, that's right, you can go CONTINUOUSLY from liquid to gas, without any phase transition, along a proper thermodynamic trajectory of course! What makes them look like separate states of matter is whether you have a phase transition as you alter the system. And the phase-transition line (in pressure-temperature space) actually ends in a critical point (see here , such that you can choose a proper p-T trajectory either WITH or WITHOUT the phase transition.
Would you call a superconductor a new state of matter? It certainly is quite different from the metallic state, with a well-defined phase transition as you cool below Tc. What about a Bose-Einstein Condensate? What about a phase-transition from superconducting-like nature to BEC? These have all been well studied, and all are acknowledged as states of matter.
The fact that you question whether it's a new state of matter, and you refer merely solid, liquid, gas, and plasma without any reference to phase transitions, really shows your limited understanding of this subject. And that makes it all the more humorous that you actually go on to claim physicists are whoring themselves out.
make world, not war