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)."

Comments

Circus physics

[HomelessInLaJolla]

demonstrated a new form of matter that melds the characteristics of lasers and superconductors 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. The population doesn't get excited about higher order mathematics, spheroidal harmonics, oscilloscopes, or statistical s very well. A new form of matter, though, why that's something we should put on the front page!

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. I'm not seeing much in this article, though, which necessitates the material which they've created as being a new form of matter.

They've saturated a solid with a form of energy called "polaritons". Did anyone stop to think, oh, maybe fifteen years back, that maybe the conceptual m0del of a photon just needs a little brushing up? People thought that an atom was plum pudding at one time. We didn't end up with a million different atoms, atomitons, atomites, and gluoneoatomiquarks. Once the of the atom was refined well enough it has stayed, for the greatest part, the same atom.

I think the community should spend some time combining these polaritons, and fermions, and gluons, and quarks, and mesons, and bosons, all together with photons. It would probably make much of the math a lot simpler.

Granted, though, the headline news releases wouldn't be quite as dramatic. Physics isn't supposed to be caked with drama. That's what the rest of society is for. Let them keep it. Drama sucks.

Re:Big Supersymmetry Fan, Eh?

[HomelessInLaJolla]

It seems, frankly, downright wrong Most physicists have accepted that subatomic particles exhibit a dual wave-particle nature.

Maybe quantum mechanics invites bipolar trolls. If someone claims a wave, they can argue a particle. If someone claims a particle, they can argue a wave. If some claims duality then they can argue ambiguity.

All I suggested is that, rather than pronouncing new unprecedented discoveries every month, maybe the physicists ought to look into solidifying their dual wave-particle of photons. They'll find that all these other "new particles" and "new forms of matter" fit neatly with a which has been established for at least fifteen years.