Scientists Create Supersolid From Helium 408
jabberjaw writes "Nature is reporting that Pennsylvania State University researchers Eun-Seong Kim and Moses Chan have created a 'supersolid' from helium-4. Although a crystalline solid, the supersolid can flow much like a liquid. This is due to the fact that the empty compartments in the crystal move coherently, thus waves can progress through the lattice. The supersolid state can be compared to the superfluid state. Perhaps a condensed matter physicist can dumb the article down for layfolk such as myself?"
Haiku (Score:5, Interesting)
Becomes a supersolid
At low Celcius
But seriously, this stuff is really cool. What with the properties they described, I wonder if it could be useful in conducting electricity or forming a shock-absorbing barrier?
Re:Haiku (Score:2)
Re:Haiku (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks, but that was kind of obvious. It was the other parts that needed explaining.
Re:Haiku (Score:3, Informative)
Helium as a gas conducts electricity poorly for two reasons: 1) The electrons are in a very stable configuration, and, 2) as a gas, the atoms are too far apart for electrons to move from atom to atom, which is required for an electrical current.
Slightly OT (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Slightly OT (Score:5, Funny)
Then I have a good idea for an infinite motion machine. Put the liquid helium, as well a turbine, inside of a Klein bottle. As the helium tries to escape out of the hole it will only lead back into the bottle - meanwhile producing electricity through the turbine! Brilliant! I think I've just solved the Earth's energy crisis!
Re:Slightly OT (Score:2)
Re:Slightly OT (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slightly OT (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Slightly OT (Score:2)
No No No.. The fluid IS the inside of the turbine, the part that gets spun.. Isn't it magnetic or something?
Keep in mind that my knowledge about turbines is restricted to the superguy turning the handle on SchoolHouse Rock :)
Granted, Helium isn't magnetic - so superfluid something else ;)
Re:Slightly OT (Score:2)
Re:Slightly OT (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Slightly OT (Score:2)
Re:You will need a Hemholtz resonator??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmm Type-o's and cowards reply...Now the facts! (Score:3, Informative)
Helmholtz was born on 8/31/1821 in Potsdam, Germany. He ended his breathing on 9/8/1894 in Berlin, Germany.
Hence, he could not have been a Nazi...
PS, some info Helmholtz [st-and.ac.uk].
Re:Slightly OT (Score:2)
Supersolid? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Supersolid? (Score:3, Funny)
Sweet! (Score:3, Funny)
Dolemite
_________________
Re:Sweet! (Score:2)
Re:Sweet! (Score:2)
Excuse me, I think it's time for my medication..
Is this really new? (Score:2, Interesting)
It was a (Swedish) magazine article, so no links I'm afraid. Is this the same thing or entierly different?
Re:Is this really new? (Score:4, Informative)
I think what you're describing is a Bose-Einstein condensate [wikipedia.org], which is something entirely different.
Re:Is this really new? (Score:2)
Yep, the Wikipedia entry confirmed your suspicions, I was indeed referring to a Bose-Einstein condensate, in my own crude manner
Thanks!
Re:Is this really new? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is this really new? (Score:2, Informative)
Oh man (Score:4, Funny)
Hmmmm.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmmmm.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hmmmm.... (Score:2)
MANY more states of matter (Score:5, Informative)
The New York Times reported a "color gass condensate" when gold ions were bombarded with relativistic deuterons. In this condition, nucleons and quarks blur into a jello of gluons.
There are MANY more states of matter than solid, liquid, and gas. There's plasma, 2-dimensional fluids, 1-dimensional crystals, ambiplasma of partcies and antiparticles, photon crystals, and lots of others.
This is the golden age of physics!
Professor Jonathan Vos Post
Woodbury University
have an accounton
BTW, check out my "Periodic Table of Mystery Writers" at
http://magicdragon.com/UltimateMystery/periodic
rollovers and click to 100+ pages...
Re:MANY more states of matter (Score:5, Funny)
Woodbury University
have an accounton
and here I thought "absent-minded professor" was just a cliche
Re:MANY more states of matter (Score:3, Informative)
Re:MANY more states of matter (Score:2)
uhh... which I'll then send to you, yeah, that's it.
Re:I wonder... (Score:2, Funny)
You know your tired (Score:3, Funny)
Kind of a nice idea though...
I'm going to sleep now.
Liquid Metal (Score:5, Funny)
I hope they'll build one soon; it could be a great war machine AND sex toy
Re:Liquid Metal (Score:2)
Re:Liquid Metal (Score:2, Funny)
unfortunately... it probably wouldn't be the best P.R. move to have arnold come back in time and annhialate you every time during climax.
Re:Liquid Metal (Score:3, Funny)
Supersolids (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Supersolids (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Supersolids (Score:5, Informative)
Heisenberg implies that they (still) move, but has nothing to do with the fact they move all together. This latter fact is because helium atoms can all fall into the "same" lowest-energy state, because they are bosons and so do not obey the Pauli exclusion principle.
Re:Supersolids (Score:2)
Re:Supersolids (Score:2)
Surely if you stirred a spoon in a superfluid soup it would not swirl at all, because there's no friction for the spoon to set up a vortex.
Re:Supersolids (Score:3, Funny)
How exactly does the spoon start the soup swirling? If a superfluid has no viscosity, the spoon isn't able to disturb it, right?
Some thoughts on superfluids (Score:5, Interesting)
Other interesting properties of superfluids include rather odd magnetic fields (Helium-3 or 4 is odd to start with, and then chilling it down and spinning it does some interesting stuff), VERY odd conduction, etc, etc. I imagine that there will be future Nobel prizes given out for research in this area (I believe one already has been, a few years back). Studying how superfluids act can give us some very interesting insights into what actually happens in various media at tiny sizes. One example would be looking at fluid/solid interfaces, and trying to determine what precisely goes on there. The possibilities are endless...
That being said, isn't the official definition of a fluid "something that deforms continuously under shear stress"? As such, does this indicate that these supersolids do NOT flow continuously?
Re:Some thoughts on superfluids (Score:3, Informative)
(among others) for work on superfluid helium.
Swiss Cheese (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine a big block of swiss cheese (the kind of cheese that's got all the holes in it). Now those holes are basically "vacancies" of cheese. Now, imagine if the holes moved around.
Similarly, think of one of those pictures underwater videos of SCUBA divers... You know when they release a breath, and all the bubbles start moving up to the surface of the water... Those are likes 'holes' in the water. More specifically, they are "vacancies" and they move in a somewhat orderly manner (up). Of course, it makes more common sense that vacancies would move around in a liquid than in solids....
So, basically, they've found a state of matter where the vacancies move around in a solid. In a sense, they're claiming that they found a block of cheese in the refridgerator where the holes keep moving. And this is why there's going to be controversy over this claim: they're alot of people who are going to say "no way - cheese doesn't work that way..."
It would make for a crazy club sandwich... Yum.
FYI: I'm not a condenced matter physicist, although I do happen to have a degree in the History and Philosophy of Science...
Re:Swiss Cheese (Score:2)
Re:Swiss Cheese (Score:2, Interesting)
The notion of a vacancy only really holds for a crystalline solid, because in that case there's a regular lattice. The vacancy is when you'd expect an atom, but there isn't one.
What these people are saying is that somehow these holes are free to move, even though they're in a solid where, in general, the atoms and therefore the holes are fixed
Re:Swiss Cheese (Score:2)
Classic number puzzle (Score:3, Insightful)
Supersoldier (Score:2, Funny)
Maybe I'm just a bit jumpy, because I've just had my morning coffee... BTW, do you people also hear a clicking sound every time you phone your left-wing journalist friend? Strange...
Old news... (Score:3, Funny)
~Doc
a liquid solid (Score:2)
Re:a liquid solid (Score:3, Informative)
Supersolid == Crystal with Zero Shear Strength (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with commonsense notions of "solid" vs. "liquid" is that they don't reflect all the possible states of matter, only the ones that occur at room temperatures. Science usually finds these counterintuitive phenomena outside the usual conditions of everyday life (like when physicists proved that Newton's centuries old laws only work for "slow" speeds, so we need Eistein's equations to understand higher speeds).
In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Here goes with an explanation... (Score:5, Informative)
Suppose you have a metal. This has positive nucleii, bound electrons which screen most of the nuclear charge, and conduction band electrons which can move thorughout the lattice, but also help to screen the nuclear charge. The whole thing is electrically neutral.
Suppose then you have some cloud of negative charge. This charge will repel the local electrons, and will attract the local nucleii. The nuclear lattice will bend a bit towards the center of the charge cloud, generating a local region of increased positive charge density that is screened out by the cloud of charge, and the other electrons.
Now, suppose this charge cloud moves. You have the same attractions and repulsions, but the nucleii have more mass per unit charge than the electrons in the cloud, so they will take a bit of time to react. The induced positive charge region will then lag behind the negative cloud, and will tend to drag it back. If you had a second negative cloud following some way behind the first one, it might be attracted towards this positive region.
If you had two conduction band electrons with long deBroglie wavelengths, with the same sorts of velocities and at the right distance apart, then you can get this sort of action. Over a limited range, you can get electrons to apparently attract each other, via electron-phonon iteraction.
This pairing up of electrons is pretty weak. If this was the only thing holding them together then you would not get superconductivity in ordinary materials above a few millikelvin. However, one they start organizing like that, then they can all tend towards a lowest energy state, where they are all moving like a single enormous particle, with a wavelength that is so much larger than most of the usual things that scatter electrons. A more electrons join this single state, an energy gap opens up betweeen the electrons that are in the state, and the ones that aren't, and it becomes more energetically tempting for other electrons to go with the flow. This energy gap stabilizes the superelectron state, and lets superconductivity happen at kelvin rather than millikelvin.
We have lots of particles giving off heat, but it isn't solidification. We don't have electrons standing shoulder to shoulder like soldiers. One superelectron's wave will significantly overlap hundreds or thousands of other superelectrons. If they had rigid orientations, then a supercurrent could not flow down a wire that got thinner, any more than your cheese with holes in it could flow down a funnel. Also, the electron-phonon coupling only binds if the electrons move. So, forget marching soldiers, unless you have soldiers that can see what is happening a hundred ranks ahead, and automatically calculate a path that will give zero jostling with their neighbours. It is not really a state that exist in the macroscopic world, but you can sort of guess what it might be like: everyone been cool and mellow and getting along with their neighbour, until one guy borrows the lawnmower without asking, or drinks the last beer in the fridge, and then it all suddenly collapses.
Okay, now if I get the article, you can get the same sort of thing with holes in a superfluid. The helium atoms can form a similar cooperating superfluid. The forces that balance to keep the atoms flowing in a coordianted fashion are different, but the principle is the same. If the particules are moving, and enough of their fields overlap, then there will be a lowest energy state, and one enough of them have discovered it, and particles can find it faster than random thermal fluctions can chuck them out, then everhting moves smoothly.
Helium atoms as lots of little round fuzzy things. Normally they overlap with lots of their neighbours. As you squish two of them together, the repulsive nuclear forces starts to rise sharply. The strong repulsive forces from the nearest neighbours will be bigger than the others, and wil
How about in terms of elephants... (Score:2, Interesting)
It amazes me that people think of this (Score:3, Insightful)
They did this by filling the narrow channels of a porous form of glass (called Vycor) with helium, and freezing it by cooling it down and squeezing it to more than 60 times atmospheric pressure. A disk of the helium-filled glass was then set spinning. At about 0.175 C above absolute zero, the disk suddenly started to rotate more easily - precisely what would be expected if the helium became a supersolid.
Holy crap! Who comes up with stuff like this?!?! It reminds me of the great mystery of Maple Syrup, another "who the hell comes up with this stuff" example.
"Well Bob, if I suck the sap out of this here tree, but only at a certain time of year, and then save it up until I have a lot of it, I'm gonna boil it all for a couple of days until it turns into syrup."
Obviously, ancient peoples had a lot of time on their hands, to be able to devise maple syrup. Seems like a lot of random crap. Also seems like us modern peoples have a bit too much time on our hands too, with the supersolid helium and all.
Re:This physicist says: (Score:5, Informative)
Sure it could be. Here's the abstract from Eunsong Kim's talk about it two days ago at Penn State University, courtesy of our friend Google:
When liquid 4He is cooled below 2.176 K, it undergoes a phase transition--Bose-Einstein condensation--and becomes a superfluid with zero viscosity. Once in such a state, it can flow without dissipation even through pores of atomic dimensions. Although it is intuitive to associate superflow only with the liquid phase, it has been proposed theoretically that superflow can also occur in the solid phase of 4He. Owing to quantum mechanical fluctuations, delocalized vacancies and defects are expected to be present in crystalline solid 4He, even in the limit of zero temperature. These zero-point vacancies can in principle allow the appearance of superfluidity in the solid. However, in spite of many attempts, such a 'supersolid' phase has yet to be observed in bulk solid 4He. Here we report torsional oscillator measurements on solid helium confined in a porous medium, a configuration that is likely to be more heavily populated with vacancies than bulk helium. We find an abrupt drop in the rotational inertia of the confined solid below a certain critical temperature. The most likely interpretation of the inertia drop is entry into the supersolid phase. If confirmed, our results show that all three states of matter--gas, liquid and solid--can undergo Bose-Einstein condensation.
No , sorry , flowing = liquid. (Score:2)
Re:No , sorry , flowing = liquid. (Score:3, Insightful)
If something swims in the water and has fins, then it's a fish, not a mammal. I'm not arguing the biology, I'm arguing the definition of English words.
Lousy analogy (Score:2)
something that lives in water. However a solid DOES NOT FLOW. Ok? If it even flows a tiny amount like pitch then its STILL a liquid.
Consider the Pitch Drop Experiment (Score:2)
The first Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland, Professor Thomas Parnell, began an experiment in 1927 to illustrate that everyday materials can exhibit quite surprising properties. The experiment demonstrates the fluidity and high viscosity of pitch, a derivative of tar once used for waterproofing boats. At room temperature pitch feels solid - even brittle - and can easily be shattered with a blow from a hammer. It's quite amazing then, to see that pitch at room te
Re:This physicist says: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This physicist says: (Score:5, Informative)
That's a fallacy. The flow rate of ordinary plate glass is so slow that it would take billions of years before there would be a measurable change in thickness. Here are [abc.net.au] some articles [glassnotes.com] on the subject. [ualberta.ca]
Anecdotal evidence to the contrary, maybe. (Score:2, Interesting)
I can say for sure, but it looked like the glass had flowed in only 100 years or so. Maybe glass technology has changed. Maybe I misunderstood what was happening.
Re:Anecdotal evidence to the contrary, maybe. (Score:2)
Specifically this [abc.net.au]:
Re:Anecdotal evidence to the contrary, maybe. (Score:2)
The "glass flows" myth appeared because people saw the uneven thickness of old glass and assumed that it had started out of regular thickness and changed over time. That assumption is false.
However... (Score:2)
Re:This physicist says: (Score:3, Interesting)
it would take billions of years before there would be a measurable change in thickness.
So what you're saying is that they actually do flow. In reality they flow faster than "billions of years", but either way, it's a liquid.
Re:This physicist says: (Score:3, Informative)
Just because something flows slowly does not mean that it is a liquid. As I have stated elsewhere glass flows because it is an amorphous solid and the individual molecules of glass are weakly linked enough that they can rearrange to some extent. If there is a force acting upon these molecules then they will tend to be influenced by that force. This even happens in c
Re:This physicist says: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This physicist says: (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This physicist says: (Score:5, Informative)
You obviously did not read any of the 3 articles I linked to.
Plate glass used to be made by dipping a tube into molten glass (1000 degrees Fahrenheit or so), gathering up a blob, blowing that blob into a bubble, poking a hole in the bubble, and spinning the tube so that the bubble's hole opens up. Done correctly it makes a flat circle of glass with the end of the tube in the center. This glass is relatively even in thickness but it is still thicker in the middle then at the sides.
They let the glass cool and then cut it into squares with one side closer to the middle. This side is thicker than the rest of the piece and was usually placed toward the bottom of the window because it was reasoned that the heaviest part and strongest part should be at the base. It was not until the Float Glass process [glassonweb.com] was invented in 1959 that truly flat glass was available. Up until then there would almost always be some parts of plate glass that were thicker or wavy, giving rise to the flowing glass myth.
Re:This physicist says: (Score:2)
Re:This physicist says: (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, as one of the links [glassnotes.com] points out, you can disprove the theory by simple mathematics.
Cathedral window age = 500 years
Cathedral window sag = 1 cm
Theoretical sag rate = 500 years/cm
Egyptian/Greek/Whatever glass vessel age = 3000 years
Theoretical sag rate = 500 years/cm
Expected sag of 300 year old glass = 6 cm
As the link notes, if glass flowed over time, all the old glas
Re:Is glass liquid or solid? (Score:2)
Here's the simple answer (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Here's the simple answer (Score:2)
Re:This physicist says: (Score:2)
Re:This physicist says: (Score:2)
If I had a link to the video I'd give it to you, but it was on Discovery channel. If you still won't believe me I could tape it for you in case it airs again.
Re:This physicist says: (Score:2)
Re:Quantums vs. Pressure (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Quantums vs. Pressure (Score:2, Informative)
It's more like quantum mechanics takes over at a combination of low temperature AND pressure. It should really read "At very low temperatures and at 1 atmosphere, the behaviour ..."
This effect is similar to the changing of the freezing/boiling points of water at different altitudes (and therefore pressures).
Re:Quantums vs. Pressure (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Helium is a great chemical (Score:2)
From a practical perspective liquid hydrogen and liquid peroxide *are* pretty dangerous. While it's true technically that 'liquid hydrogen' isn't going to react with gaseous oxygen readily, it sure doesn't take very much to turn liquid hydrogen into gaseous hydrogen (i.e not very much heat). In other words if you hold a burning match over an open container of liquid hydrogen it's probably going to start a serious explosion well before the match
Re:Helium is a great chemical (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Helium is a great chemical (Score:2)
When I worked in the field, it was common to have nested dewars containing nitrogen, hydrogen and helium. LH2 liquifies at a temperature intermediate between N2 and He, and this arrangement reduced thermal losses.
Re:legitimate question (Score:3, Insightful)
However, a fluid or solid that "once stirred would continue swirling forever" sounds like an interesting possibility for a storage device. Imagine causing the fluid to begin spinning at a high rate using electromagnetic fields. Then, at some later time (i.e., peak demand periods), converting the kinetic energy of the fluid back into electricit
However (Score:2)
Re:legitimate question (Score:2)
I suspect that this may be a prescursor discovery which is related to the quest for producing a stable form of metallic hydrogen [llnl.gov]. Metallic hydrogen, which if found to be stable at temperatures higher than near absolute-zero, would have some excellent properties as a compact delivery form for hydrogen. Hydrogen, which I am sure you all know, is a promising clean chemical energy source but is hampered by its low energy d
Re:legitimate question (Score:3, Informative)
A shared quantum state is one where every electron shares a similar wave equation. This allows for the escape of many so called 'rules' of quantum physics, most importantly, the principle that prevents more than one electron from sharing the same energy state.
Since 4He allows for superfluid behaviour, the only possible explanation for 0-viscosity (or so we believe) is that every particle within the condensate is actually sharing the same wave equation.
Given that particles are sharing the exact same wave e
Here you go (Score:2)
Re:Practical Application = ?? (Score:2, Interesting)
However, a fluid or solid that "once stirred would continue swirling forever" sounds like an interesting possibility for a storage device. Imagine causing the fluid to begin spinning at a high rate using electromagnetic fields. Then, at some later time (i.e., peak demand periods), converting the kinetic energy of the fluid back into electricit
Re:Practical Application = ?? (Score:2, Interesting)
The not entirely unrelated science of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging found its way into medical imaging devices, leading to early detection and cure of many cancers.
Its possible that this technology could end up in some very sensitive detectors (see previous threads for the possiblility of perfect amplifiers) that allow Doctors to view biochemical processes as they happen in a living organism. This would lead to a complete revolution in medicine, understanding protein folding, alzhe
Re:Practical Application = ?? (Score:2)
When scientist first discovered that you could split some atoms under certain conditions, they didn't know what it could be used for... but today we know we can use it for a lot of things (including, sadly enought, weapons that can kill a city in a single instant).
Sometimes science has no other intended purpose than to push back the borders of ignorance, but the eventiall fallout from it is enourmous. Who would have thought that a few entusiasts playing with liquidfueled rockets in the 20's would - eventu