Probing Question: What is a supersolid?

User rating: 2.7 / 5 after 7 vote(s)

Probing Question: What is a supersolid?
"Imagine you have an orchestra together, but everyone is playing their own tune, until they begin to follow a conductor. In a normal solid, every atom has its own behavior until very close to absolute zero. Then quantum mechanics takes over and dictates everyone to play the same tune."
That's physics professor Moses Chan's musical metaphor for his discovery that atoms in a solid can condense into what he likes to call "one giant atom," a new phase of matter called a supersolid. Together with post-doctoral associate Eun-Seong Kim, Chan found that when a particular type of helium gas has frozen into a crystal at a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, it exhibits a property only seen before in superfluids: no friction.


Full story »
All News summaries from Physics news
All News summaries for May 13, 2005

The Lightness of Electrons in a Twisting Metal Crystal

12 hours ago | User rating: not rated yet
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers at Princeton University's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center has observed electrons moving through a crystal of bismuth metal behaving like light.

Proposed Particle Help Explains Odd Galactic Photons

Jul 25, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
In 2002, a satellite called INTEGRAL was launched by the European Space Agency with an instrument on board to detect and measure gamma rays from space. Four years later, it yielded some intriguing data: An unusually high ...

Electron microscopy enters the picometer scale

Jul 24, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
Jülich scientists have succeeded in precisely measuring atomic spacings down to a few picometres using new methods in ultrahigh-resolution electron microscopy. This makes it possible to find out decisive parameters ...

Revolutionary materials reflect ancient forms

Jul 24, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
(PhysOrg.com) -- Although order is pleasing to the eye, it can quickly become boring. In Islamic architecture therefore, decoration often follows a strict yet aperiodic pattern. Similar structures also form ...

Shielding for ambitious neutron experiment

Jul 24, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
In science fiction stories it is either the inexhaustible energy source of the future or a superweapon of galactic magnitude: antimaterial. In fact, antimaterial can neither be found on Earth nor in space, is extremely complex ...
Goto Archive PhysOrg Forum Goto Archive Video Goto Archive Editorials Goto Archive Free Magazines Goto Archive Newsletter

News Archive