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Science Technology

First Experimental Success of a Superfluid 102

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the no-it-isn't-beer dept.
J writes "Researchers at Rice University have created and observed a state of quantum superfluidity. Cooled to temperatures near absolute zero, fermions overcome their natural tendency to repel one another. These half-spin particles become dominated by the Strong force and couple up in pairs that behave as one particle. Major benefits to matter in a superfluid state include superconductivity, a state where electrons would flow freely with no resistance, thus preserving the most amount of electrical charge during passage and providing the ability to save billions of dollars in 'lost electricity'. Although the conditions set for this experiment are very unlikely to be able to exist outside of a laboratory, we now know that superfluidity is a concept that can exist. Future research in this topic is assumed to be finding a material that exists in a superfluid state at room temperature."
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First Experimental Success of a Superfluid More

First Experimental Success of a Superfluid

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  • Ok, I'm confused (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bioteq ( 809524 ) <mikeNO@SPAMnanobit.net> on Sunday December 25, 2005 @07:24AM (#14335535)
    I read the article.

    I read it well.

    But on the side (right side) there was a related news story thing and within one of the links it stated,

    "(June 25, 2005) -- MIT scientists have brought a supercool end to a heated race among physicists: They have become the first to create a new type of matter, a gas of atoms that shows high-temperature superfluidity. ... "

    So, being curious, I clicked the link and oddly enough, it basically stated the same exact stuff. The difference, though? It said MIT did it.

    Who are the actual people who did this? Did MIT do it first and Rice got the credits? Am I mis-reading both articles and they're completely different?

    TFA: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/05122 3090405.htm [sciencedaily.com]
    MIT Article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/05062 4100818.htm [sciencedaily.com]

    • Re:Ok, I'm confused (Score:5, Informative)

      by Chaffar ( 670874 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @07:33AM (#14335553)
      From TFA:

      The research, which appears online this week, is slated to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Science, together with a paper from MIT reporting related results.

      The content of both articles is beyond my comprehension of physics, but it looks like they're both aware of each other's work...

      • You know, that makes alot of since now.

        Thanks for pointing that out as it would seem that I am apparently blind now and not able to read. I guess that is part of being up at 5:45 in the morning.

        Again, thanks man.
      • Not only are they aware, they did it together! Since the fields are intertwined I think it is only logical, but I suggest we wait until we see an article in Science.

    • Re:Ok, I'm confused (Score:5, Funny)

      by dtmos ( 447842 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @07:58AM (#14335594)
      It's called "quantum entanglement of research labs," and is impressive because of the incredible mass of such objects :)
    • I read the self-same story in New Scientist [newscientist.com] some time ago...

    • New news has just come to light! (Score:4, Informative)

      by fireboy1919 ( 257783 ) <rustypNO@SPAMfreeshell.org> on Sunday December 25, 2005 @08:20AM (#14335624) Homepage Journal
      Science Daily are a bunch of 'tards who do no fact checking. It was MIT who discovered it, but it wasn't recently.

      Wikipedia knows. [wikipedia.org]

      My guess is that some discovery occurred, but the reporters who have only the vaguest understanding of science, didn't understand it.

      In the spirit of Christmas, I'll forgive the mistake today. As long as they take care of the problem by tomorrow. :)

    • Fermionic lithium-6 (Score:4, Informative)

      by nanopolitan ( 937120 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @08:22AM (#14335630) Homepage Journal
      Helium in superfluidic state has been known for a long time, and studied quite extensively. So, superfluidity is not the issue here.

      This achievement, it seems to me, is about getting superfluidity in a bunch of fermions (such as electrons, or, in this case, 'fermionic' lithium-6), and that too in a system in which the up-spins are not the same as the 'down-spins'.
      • Thanks for making me have to read the article. :-)

        I was suspecting something worthy of quack watch from the botched summary.

        A super fluid above two degrees kelvin, might be less dangerous to play with (or not, there are many factors.).

        for the uninitiated, the freaky thing about superfluids is that they can, and will flow UP, Makes handeling them a bit on the, um .. , interesting side,

        I found liquid He more of a mind trip than using a vacuum to boil ice water. Both look very wrong, and provide partial val
      • Hey now, don't upstage me! I actually wrote a decent summary about what the article didn't delve into. (submitter here) ;)

        • Oops! I just realized the error in my comment: the up-spins are not the same as the 'down-spins'.

          That, of course, is self-evident. It should read "the number of upspins is different from that of downspins.

      • Thank you for throwing in the clarification on what element was involved. I haven't yet read TFA, but I was a little confused on the experimental existence of superfluidity, which I was sure had been done years ago.
      • " Helium in superfluidic state has been known for a long time,"

        When talking about superfluidic helium, one is usually referring to Helium-4, which counts as a boson, not a fermion (has even number of fermions).
        But Helium-3 (which does count as a fermion) has ALSO been seen in the superfluid state, years ago. It takes a cooler temperature than for Helium-4, but it was indeed done years ago. I suppose the main article here is really about achieving superfluidity at higher temperatures, much like those c

        • Re: I suppose the main article here is really about achieving superfluidity at higher temperatures ...

          I am sorry, but you supposed wrong. The main article states clearly that the temperature of these experiments is "about 30-billionths of a degree above absolute zero. That's far colder than any temperature in nature..."

          You are right about the other things, though -- including the fact that helium-3 being fermions. He-3 becomes superfluid at 2.6 milli-Kelvin (source: Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]). The truly special thing i

    • So, being curious, I clicked the link and oddly enough, it basically stated the same exact stuff. The difference, though? It said MIT did it.

      Who are the actual people who did this? Did MIT do it first and Rice got the credits? Am I mis-reading both articles and they're completely different?
      So basically, you're saying that the people in the article is superfluous?
    • It's a little known quantum effect, the two of those schools are now quantum entangled, mirroring each others results. Don't worry, it will pass when the experimen is done.
    • I'm confused too! the word "quantum" in the article is a link. I clicked on the link for more information and it took me to a Skin Care from Europe website? auto-generated word ads gone wrong?

      --jeffk++
    • And on top of that, The University of Colorado actually did all of this first, narrowly beating the MIT team...

  • Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheCreeep ( 794716 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @07:26AM (#14335537)
    News for nerds. Stuff about matters?

  • been there, done that. (Score:4, Funny)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @07:29AM (#14335544) Homepage
    I read that and was thinking "Suprafluid", and I was all "Damn I can make a suprafluid by boiling a pot of water".

  • Question (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 25, 2005 @07:35AM (#14335557)
    How is this different from a Bose-Einstein condensate?

    Fermions are the group of particles that include leptons (the family that includes electrons and neutrinos), and hadrons (the family that is composed of quarks--makes up nucleons like protons and neutrons). They follow the Pauli Exclusion principle, which states that no two particles can have the same quantum numbers. This article states that it gets around the Pauli Exclusion principle because the particles "link up" by opposite spins. It doesn't exactly say how that occurs. What particles are we talking about? Electrons, protons, or neutrons, or a composite of particles?

    I'm not exactly sure how a Bose-Einstein condensate creates a single quantum state, but is this more of the same?

    • Re:Question (Score:5, Informative)

      by XchristX ( 839963 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @08:17AM (#14335618)
      The phrase "link up" is misleading. What happens is that the Fermi sea becomes unstable to the formation of statistically correlated pairs of electrons below a certain temperature. They never violate the Pauli Exclusion principle, but the spin-statistics behavior changes so that they can be thought of as Bosons.


      "I'm not exactly sure how a Bose-Einstein condensate creates a single quantum state, but is this more of the same?"

      Again, the Slashdot article is poorly worded, or the chao who wrote it doesn't really understand what he's talking about:

      In a BEC, all the Bosons occupy one single particle quantumstate, and you thus have a highly coherent many particle state that is not averaged out over large length scales.

      • Re:Question (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jZnat ( 793348 )
        I had to simplify the concept behind it because most people at Slashdot don't understand particle physics. The Pauli Exclusion principle (half-spin => cannot have the same quantum number) isn't violated, but actually is taken advantage of in a superfluid state. The fermions don't combine, but they become more "powerful" when their spins work together in such a way.

        Also, I tried to write it as quick as possible thinking that someone else would submit a version that didn't have any extra details. Of cou

    • Re:Question (Score:2, Informative)

      by dawhippersnapper ( 861941 )
      [Jin describes her team's work as the "first molecular condensate" and says it is closely related to "fermionic superfluidity," a hotly sought after state in gases that is analogous to superconductivity in metals. "Fermionic superfluidity is superconductivity in another form," says Jin. Quantum physicists are in a worldwide race to produce fermionic superfluidity because gases would be much easier to study than solid superconductors and such work could lead to more useful superconducting materials.]
      http://w [sciencedaily.com]

  • Next slashdot story (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheCreeep ( 794716 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @07:40AM (#14335566)
    "Scientists in Antarctica discover superfluid at room temperature"

  • Uhm... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I admit I didn't read the article, but superfluidity itself isn't really new. I can easily produce superfluid He by adiabatic cooling... I think the phase transition happens at 3.something K.
    • He superfluid is so old it was in my college textbooks.
    • I read the press realease and things didn't sound like what I remember from a decade ago when I was in school, so I and it turns out that He(4) is superfluid at a higher temeperature than I remembered, 2.3K instead of 2K and He(4) becomes liquid at 4K

      http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/212_fall2003.web.dir/R odney_Guritz%20Folder/properties.htm [uaf.edu]

      The news is that they did this with fermions instead of bosons. A press release from 2004 that seems to be a little more detailed. If this really does turn out to be fermion
      • Thanks for clarifying that. There wasn't enough room in the article title to mention "fermionic", and besides, we all know that fully factual stories always get rejected. :P
    • How the hell did an anonymous coward not reading the fucking article, and getting the jist of the article wrong, get modded interesting???

      The superfluidity isn't new. Duh. The experiment described looks within a superfluid at what happens when you have an uneven match of spins of particles in the fluid. The results: when the number of extra (unpaired) particles with up spins was under 10%, they mixed throughout the superfluid. When they increased the number of unpaired particles above 10%, the extra-

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @07:55AM (#14335588)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • High Tc Superconductors are a better candidate for that.
    • It seemed like they were trying to say the accomplishment is proving the superfluid state exists, creating hope for finding a liquid in this state at room temperature.
    • This is going to make some sweet audiophile grade speaker cables though. Now I just have to figure out the cash-value of my soul so I can cut a check to MonsterCable.
    • That does, of course, depend on finding a way of cooling the conductor to near absolute zero along it's entire length, using less energy than would be lost during transmission on a normal cable. In other words, it's a pretty ridiculous suggestion

      Well, you're replying to a moron. His quote, "Thus preserving the most amount of electrical charge during passage" should have tipped you off to the fact that the submitter has no fucking clue how either electricity or superconductivity work.

      Why waste energy cr

  • force (Score:5, Funny)

    by br33zy ( 698735 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @07:59AM (#14335596)
    May the Strong force be with you.
  • "Future research in this topic is assumed to be finding a material that exists in a superfluid state at room temperature." Room temperature superfluidity has already been achieved by our government years ago. It's called inflational currency. Of course, funding is the real "superfluid" we're after.

  • Likely soon...Not! (Score:3, Funny)

    by rts008 ( 812749 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @08:18AM (#14335621) Journal
    "... Future research in this topic is assumed to be finding a material that exists in a superfluid state at room temperature." Yeah right. And headlines the same year: 1. Duke Nukem Forever released. 2. Bill Gates turns M$ open source. 3. Table-top cold fusion powerstations in production. Can't wait, and will be anxiously holding my breath!

  • Very confused article! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ancient_Hacker ( 751168 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @08:20AM (#14335623)
    This is a very confused article!
    • Superfluidity isnt new, it's been around for 50+ years.
    • Superfluidity is only tangentially related to superconductivity.
    • Superfluidity is not particularly useful in and of itself.
    • Superfluidity among ferminons *is* new and interesting to physics geeks.
    As to its applications to daiily life, well, unlikely in the short run.
    • As far as I know -- superfluidity among fermions isn't that new, either. Superfluidity among bosons made perfect sense, but at first superfluidity among fermions did not... but it was seen in He-3 (2 protons, 1 neutron -- fermion).

      Superfluidity in He-4 (2 protons, 2 neutrons -- boson) can easily be explained using Bose-Einstein statistics and a bit of math. To non-physics geeks, it can be explained roughly as the entire system residing in the same ground state, since any number of bosons can occupy a state

  • Misleading Post (Score:5, Informative)

    by dtmos ( 447842 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @08:21AM (#14335625)
    Although the conditions set for this experiment are very unlikely to be able to exist outside of a laboratory, we now know that superfluidity is a concept that can exist.

    Superfluid materials are well-known; the first example, the boson [wikipedia.org] helium-4, was discovered in 1937. The superfluidity of helium-3, a fermion [wikipedia.org], was shown to be a superfluid in the 1970s.

    Superfluidity occurs when particles pair up (half spin-up and half spin-down) to produce a material without viscosity, in a manner analogous to that of the electron Cooper pairs [wikipedia.org] of superconductivity. The novelty here is that superfluidity has been shown to occur in particle populations in which there is an unequal number of spin-up and spin-down particles, and the discovery of a phase change in which "when unpaired spin-up atoms rose above 10 percent of the total sample, the unpaired loners were suddenly expelled, leaving a core of superfluid pairs surrounded by a shell of excess spin-up atoms" (from TFA).

    • Key word is "fermion". I guess I didn't stress that enough in the article, or the editors butchered it. Bosonic superfluidity isn't new of course, but that's natural. Also, I guess the bit about the unsymmetrical fermions being ejected from the "pool" would have been useful to include in the summary, but oh well...
      • No problem--not writing what you mean to say happens to us all. Just look at my comment--"The superfluidity of helium-3, a fermion, was shown to be a superfluid in the 1970s," indeed. And that after previewing and editing a half-dozen times! I feel responsible for the loss of several English teachers, whose heads I have just caused to explode.

  • This is amazing.. (Score:4, Informative)

    by magnumquest ( 894849 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @08:58AM (#14335685)
    Well to the people who said 'Superfluidity is old news' It is true superfluidity has been around for many years (discovered by Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, John F. Allen, and Don Misener in 1937). However the 'study of superfluidity' (also known as Quantum hydrodynamics) is a recent advancement. (and a very important one I might add)

    For those wondering about its 'practical uses', Superfluidity not only unleashes possibilities for new technologies dealing with energy and heat transfer (superconductivity), it also brings us another step closer to developing a better means of energy production. (Check out the link below for more details)

    For those of you with a background in atomic physics; If some how (using further experimentation in Superfluidity of helium) we can proove the possibility of electrons in quantum states 'lower' than n=1 (i.e. n=1/2, 1/4 etc) the amount of energy we can produce using hydrogen would increase by almost 70% compared to our present technology (greater than the amount produced by nuclear means) This in turn means that the race for nuclear energy going on in the east (russia, iran, cuba, north korea, china, india etc.) would end.

    For more information on the possibility and importance of fractional primary quantum numbers click here. [physicsweb.org]

    • Crackpot alert! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 25, 2005 @11:09AM (#14335948)
      Randall Mills is a medical doctor and well known crackpot who has been bilking investors out of their money for years now with his "hydrino" theory, which rests on the idea that there are energy states in the atom lower than the ground state (as the above poster mentioned). The only problem is that no such states actually exist as far as all experiments are concerned, except mysteriously Mills' own experiments, which no one has ever reproduced and the details of which he refuses to release. His hydrino theory itself is based on his "Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics", found in his 1200-page self-published book, which purports to unify electromagnetism, gravity, Newtonian mechanics, general relativity, and quantum theory.

      +4 Informative, my ass.

      (And to address another point, I cannot think of any "new technologies" in "energy and heat transfer" that have been "unleashed" by superfluidity.)
      • Randall Mills is a medical doctor and well known crackpot

        And he seems to appear regularly on slashdot unfortunately. MODPARENTUP
      • Apparently you missed the 'whole' point of the Science. Randall Mills can be 'whoever' the media claims him to be. At first thought I read similar stories as the above poster mentioned about Randall Mills being a 'crackpot'. However, my 'statement' was, 'IF' we can 'proove' the existance of SUCH states using studies in Quantum Hydrodynamics -> We would end up with a revolutionary break through in energy production.

        As for simply dissing a scientist because a couple of blogs say he should be dissed, or
    • However the 'study of superfluidity' (also known as Quantum hydrodynamics) is a recent advancement.

      Not that recent. In 1973 I attended a lecture given by Lars Onsager on the quantum mechanics of superfluids.

      • Obviously some one probably heard about the Brave new world by aldous huxely long before it was published, doesn't mean we should discredit its actualy publicity date hehe. Study of superfluidity is a recent advancement, we didn't have a intensive and extensive studies being done back in 1973 in these fields. Infact in 1973 there were only 4 universities in the world that accepted Quantum Mechanics as an acceptable theory to be tought at the undergraduate level. Again I would say, people here at slashdot re
    • Interesting to see J F Allen's name up on Slashdot. He was still around when I was an undergraduate at St Andrews university in the late 80's. He made a number of very interesting 'event' lectures there, and was my father's Ph.D. supervisor back in the very early 60's working on superfluid helium.

      Apparently, with a machine that looked like something that Jules Verne might have used, they managed to cool He down to around 2K where it became superfluid and able to do interesting things like flow upwards and s

  • Link to paper... (Score:3, Informative)

    by n0mad6 ( 668307 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @09:26AM (#14335720)
    ...describing result here [arxiv.org].

  • Lost and Found electricity (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mulletproof ( 513805 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @09:35AM (#14335743) Homepage Journal
    "Major benefits to matter in a superfluid state include superconductivity, a state where electrons would flow freely with no resistance, thus preserving the most amount of electrical charge during passage and providing the ability to save billions of dollars in 'lost electricity'."

    And how much electricity does it take to keep this stuff at absolute zero? Just curious, because, y'know, there'd have to be an aweful lot of 'lost energy' gained to make up for the drain that process creates.
    • Beside all the discussion in other threads about high Tc supraconductors, the article is wrong in whats causing the loss of current: It's the resitance of the conductor, not the loss of charge. Beside some exotic phenomenas in high energy physics (CPT conservation) the charge is always conserved. But the electrons give loose thier momentum by collisions with impurities in the conductor and therefore cannot contribute fully to the current after the collision. That's one of the effects causing the finite resi

  • Ahh, these lazy scientists (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @11:30AM (#14335998)
    Future research in this topic is assumed to be finding a material that exists in a superfluid state at room temperature.

        They will get right on that after they're done creating a room temperature superconductor, don't worry about it.
  • Major benefits to matter in a superfluid state include superconductivity, a state where electrons would flow freely with no resistance

    Thus fulfilling my dream of plugging an extension cord into itself.

  • Nothing new to the Irish (Score:4, Funny)

    by Belseth ( 835595 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @12:44PM (#14336173)
    The Irish have known about superfluids for centuries we just refer to them by different names. There's Ale, Lager, Stout and some consider Pilsner a superfuild but not me personally. Some superfuilds can be entangled into my personal favorite, the Black and Tan. It's nice to see the rest of the world catching up in this fascinating science. I plan to do a little personal research at the corner lab/pub shortly.
  • There is no "strong force" involved in this; "strongly interacting" in this context just means that the particles are interacting a lot.
  • ...is that one may now be able to run 16 Kicker L7's on a Fosgate amp bridged mono at a (near) 0-ohm load stable!

    We're talking breaking the 200db barrier, here!

    That's progress!
    • We're talking breaking the 200db barrier, here!

      #include <nitpick.h>

      The maximum volume that you can transfer over atmospheric air is less than 200 dB. I forget the actual value though. There is a maximum because pressure variations can only go down to zero from the mean of 1 bar.

  • my cat... (Score:2, Funny)

    by metroplex ( 883298 )
    I have already observed a superfluid. My cat often is in a state of superfluid.
  • Cooled to temperatures near absolute zero

    So that explains why the background of the Universe is 3deg Kelvin. To keep stuff like this from happening. And now we had to go and mess with it!

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