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Frictionless Superfluid Found In Neutron Star Core
intellitech writes "NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has discovered the first direct evidence for a superfluid, a bizarre, friction-free state of matter, at the core of a neutron star (abstract). Superfluids created in laboratories on Earth exhibit remarkable properties, such as the ability to climb upward and escape airtight containers. The finding has important implications for understanding nuclear interactions in matter at the highest known densities."
Did they crack it open to look at its core?
Every time I see stories like this I have an urge to play Mass Effect 2.
She's a slut, so that's most likely a pretty safe claim to make.
So the universe creates a perpetual motion machine?
Last time I got close enough to a neutron star to confirm this theory, the tidal forces nearly killed me, despite being in a General Products #2 hull.
B. Shaeffer
Ok, so you have a container that you think is air tight. But something escapes it, so obviously your container needs to be tighter than air tight.
Now, if you can put this stuff in a seamless glass sphere, and it still leaks out, I'll be impressed.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
I believe, what their saying is that, a superfluid can escape a container that air can not. Not that the superfluid can escape an inescapable container.
Now, if you can put this stuff in a seamless glass sphere, and it still leaks out, I'll be impressed.
Normal helium can leak out of a seamless glass sphere, so I imagine you'd see supercooled helium leaking out as well from the same mechanism. Not that exciting, but gives you an idea of how hard some things are.
Yea except a gram of it will weigh a few million pounds.
"The finding has important implications for understanding nuclear interactions in matter at the highest known densities." So the core of a neutron star is now more dense than a black hole?
So the takeaway for the average Slashdot reader is that if the researchers can find away for this fluid to maintain its properties at or around [alive human] temperatures, you can reduce your Astroglide budget accordingly.
Liquid hydrogen also leaks thru containers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_hydrogen
I'm trying really hard to not make a KY joke out of this.
Prepare to be impressed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z6UJbwxBZI (see the 1min mark) & http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/lhel.html#c3 ~Fus
_____^_-________ Fus Was Here
Sloppy remnants of the Big Bang!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
>> . But something escapes it, so obviously your container needs to be tighter than air tight.
Try a congressional sub-committee, nothing valuable ever gets out of that.
Step 1: Collect friction-free matter from the core of a neutron star.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!
Try a congressional sub-committee, nothing valuable ever gets out of that.
Thats different because nothing of value is ever put in...
except for all that hot air, right?
So what we have here is actually "Astral Glide" right?
I believe, what their saying is that, a superfluid can escape a container that air can not. Not that the superfluid can escape an inescapable container.
So, we should hold off on naming it 'Houdinium'?
Leave a bottle of vegetable oil somewhere (back of an upper cabinet is excellent) for a long time (year or 2) without disturbing it.
When you finally do disturb it, you are likely to find that its exterior is sticky, and that it may be puddling around the base of the container.
Oil can climb, and it can get through seals you thought were tight. All it takes is thermo- and electro-dynamics.
Quantum-fluid frictionlessness not required.
Really? What, it just seeps out through the actual glass? Are the helium atoms small enough to squeeze through the gaps between molecules, or just really sneaky?
I continue to be awed by all of the wacky shit that is apparently everyday physics.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Superfluid helium can leak through containers that normal liquid helium can't.
Wouldn't it be more appropriate for you to call her a bitch, since she fucks everyone but you?
well, if you look at her 9 months later and she's having a baby, that's pretty good corroborative evidence.
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
I can't wait for the infomercials about this new superlubricant!
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but at best they can guess that's what it is. It's like looking at a picture of kim kardashian's ass (with clothes on!) and caliming to find sperm in her cooch.
No, it's like taking an infrared picture every day for a fortnight and finding her skin temperature is 0.4 degrees C higher than average. From that you can say with pretty good confidence that *someone's* sperm has been in her cooch in the last three weeks.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Correction, sub-committees are more like a black hole, because no matter how much money and time you throw at them nothing ever comes out, and sub-committees can take an infinite amount of both without trying.
Except what you posted a video to was a cylindrical container with an open top in which you are looking at capillary action/forces draw the liquid up the side walls of the container and then back down the sides to drip off the bottom.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Yep, pretty much. Practically speaking, it's one of the things that keeps a helium-based Stirling engine from being one of the most efficient methods of solar power production - the stuff leaks out at every opportunity.
Sex lube.
Again, that video is of a cylindrical container with an open top. The liquid "escapes" using capillary action/force in which the liquid is drawn up the sides of the container, out/over the top, and then back down the sides to then drip off the container.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Yep, that's how it goes.
:( )
Although I was disappointed to find that the "climbs the walls of the container" thing was actually just in a one-atom-thick layer. (At such scales, surface tension beats gravity, and with no viscosity to hold it in check, the fluid flows up the sides molecule-by-molecule. It looks like it's just dripping through a hole in the container.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
You mean like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z6UJbwxBZI
Or shes got a yeast infection.
Or she's got a viral infection.
Or she's got a bacterial infection.
Or you took your original reference pictures in the shade and the 'raised temperature' happened because you took the pictures in the Sun.
Or about a billion other reasons why the differences showed up that are more likely since she's a slut and probably pretty good at taking her birth control.
I can make random shit up that is apparently true when you have basically 0 factual information about what you are 'studying'. When you make it all up as you go its pretty easy to make all the pieces fit, you have to be a real idiot for your conclusions to fall apart when you're making up all the supporting evidence as well.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The energy is leaving the star via neutrino emission, which in turn is a result of the neutron superfluid inside the neutron star. That's the important discovery.
This is very interesting physics, because there is no way to produce these conditions in the lab, or anywhere outside a neutron star.
Of course you could just read the abstract and get all this information yourself, but this is Slashdot so knoledge takes a back seat to bad jokes and uninformed opinion.
Why is Snark Required?
Organic Superlube? Oh, it's great stuff, great stuff. You really have to keep an eye on it, though - it'll try and slide away from you the first chance it gets.
T. M. Morgan-Reilly, Morgan Metagenics
Now, if you can put this stuff in a seamless glass sphere, and it still leaks out, I'll be impressed.
So you wouldn't be impressed if they just put it in a seamless glass sphere, but only by it coming out again? Wouldn't the first part be equally impressive?
No it wasn't. It was flowing through the glass. The even SAY it in the video. Yes they top was open, but what was being shown was the liquids moving through the glass.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I can make random shit up that is apparently true when you have basically 0 factual information about what you are 'studying'. When you make it all up as you go its pretty easy to make all the pieces fit, you have to be a real idiot for your conclusions to fall apart when you're making up all the supporting evidence as well.
Which describes you, if you think this describes the situation in TFA.
The enemies of Democracy are
Superfluid? I thought we were blaming "Dark Matter" for crap we don't understand yet this week? Did I not get the memo?
My life is a bad joke, you insensitive clod!
No, it doesn't. It's at ~0K and once it hits that point the atoms become essentially still, aligning and allowing it to pass through the solid container. As Pratchett says: "Because of Quantum". Whilst that video is a short clip, if you watch the recent BBC Horizon episode - "What is one degree?" (I believe it was that episode). Unfortunately I don't know the quantum theory of superfluids to explain this any further but that is my understanding of it. Atomic alignment allowing one thing to pass another.
I haven't did the coke out nose thing on /. for a while. Thanks!
Blogging because I can...
when the fluid reaches the rim and starts to fall, won't it start being siphoned(siphoned?) out because of gravity and the attraction between the molecules? ... if it is, it will definitely be a sight to behold, a cup refuses to stay full.
I haven't did the coke out nose thing on /. for a while. Thanks!
Hey man, it looks like you've been doing a bit too much of the coke UP the nose thing for a while!
--sniff sniff--
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Em, did you listen to the video? "The moment the helium turns superfluid it leaks through". It's mostly leaking through the pours bottom, not climbing the sides. The very next segment of the video shows superfluid helium doing that, and it's dripping at a considerably slower rate than the previous demonstration.
Bada boom!
Based on observations of Cassiopeia A, Dany Page and his collaborators pinpoint the critical temperature of the neutron superfluid to half a billion degrees and argue that the protons in neutron-star cores are superconducting.
Hey folks, help me out here. My understanding of "superconduction" deals solely with electron pairs traveling through a special medium. How would protons in a neutron star be "superconducting"? Is that to say that protons move through the neutron star material with zero resistance? And if that's the case, what happened to all the electrons? I thought that the very definition of a neutron star was one in which gravity had caused the collapse of atoms, and that one byproduct of that collapse was that the protons and electrons merged to become neutrons themselves...
???
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Here is the paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.6142
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Superfluids can likely act as if they have infinitesimally thin viscosity. Even air has *SOME* viscosity. Even the best vacuum we can create has *SOME* viscosity. Make Sense? It's hard to design a container for it because we lack a valid test case. It would be like trying to design an air-tight container, but only being able to use sand as a test material. In addition to "Sand", "Water" would be helpful as a test case, "Pressurized Filtered Plain Air" would be as well.
Anyway. In our case, we can't fathom anything more difficult than "pressurized air" or "pressurized air with nuclear explosion inside" (more precisely), so we will likely never be able to design an open-able physical container that can contain a superfluid...
Anyway this would not be the end-all-be-all-of-everything. You could still play games like: "Well I can't contain you, but I have gravity on my side; and I can definitely play the "my container is larger" game, no problem", to beat a superfluid. There are also magnetic tricks you could play, etc. etc. etc...