Post #138,524
1/29/04 10:45:57 AM
|

New Form of Matter Created
[link|http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/01/28/matter.new.reut/index.html|http://edition.cnn.c...w.reut/index.html]
The new matter form is called a fermionic condensate and it is the sixth known form of matter -- after gases, solids, liquids, plasma and a Bose-Einstein condensate, created only in 1995.
"What we've done is create this new exotic form of matter," Deborah Jin, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology's joint lab with the University of Colorado, who led the study, told a news conference. ... This is more likely to provide applications in the practical world than a Bose-Einstein condensate, she said, because fermions are what make up solid matter.
Beware the leader who beats the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils and hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."
- Julius Caesar
|
Post #138,702
1/29/04 7:29:12 PM
|

LRPD-o'the Year 2003?
Beware the leader who beats the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils and hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."
- Julius Caesar
Thanks, Todd - it just can't be said perfectly, in one phrase less.
|
Post #138,704
1/29/04 7:31:56 PM
|

Re: LRPD-o'the Year 2003? (new thread)
Created as new thread #138703 titled [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=138703|Re: LRPD-o'the Year 2003?]
[Checkbox dumbth]
|
Post #138,710
1/29/04 8:28:52 PM
|

I assume you dont keep up with babnews?
same old crap, con artists ripping off fools. Ah, hell, Catholic Church it start off that way. They All do. Jesus probably had three walnut shells one pea, then he's dead and can't be questioned, Gabriel Dupre
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
|
Post #138,725
1/29/04 10:06:03 PM
|

Todd, my man
—lose the signature: it's bo-o-o-gus (as the box observes in his typically delphic fashion).
cordially,
Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
|
Post #138,800
1/30/04 9:23:36 AM
|

Oddly - nobody is neutral on the sig
But I crave authenticity - so here's a new one from Mr Orwell.
.....To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone -- to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: .....From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink -- greetings!
-- George Orwell, 1984
|
Post #138,849
1/30/04 1:19:26 PM
|

Reads like an IWETHEY motto
Welcome to IWETHEY, where thought is free, men are different from one another and do not live alone, truth exists and what is done cannot be undone
|
Post #138,735
1/30/04 1:46:23 AM
|

Re: New Form of Matter Created
I've been thinking about this and I don't understand what they are claiming here.
Strange phenomena happen at low temperatures in fluids, and most of them can be traced to a pairing potential that comes into play between the objects in the fluid. These pairs are necessarily "Bosonic", meaning a lot of them can exist in the same quantum state, and the more that exist in that state, the more that tend to pile in, in a self-reinforcing phase transition called a "Bose-Einstein condenstation". One ends up with a "macroscopic Bosonic quantum state".
But "Fermionic" pairs are by definition impossible unless one has integral spin objects interacting with half-integral spin objects. Also, by the nature of Fermions, only one can exist in any given state so one can never have a "macroscopic Fermionic quantum state", even if the indicated pairing were possible.
There are neutron stars, which are made of degenerate Fermionic matter. So "Fermionic condensates" are certainly known.
I think what they must be talking about here is - in a Bose condensate near the phase transition point, there is a "borderland" of uncondensed Fermions (not Cooper paired) that run around in the condensate. Essentially this relatively small amount of free, unpaired Fermions would act like a gas, with the reference vacuum being the Bose condensate itself. Any colder and all the Fermions condense and vanish into this "vacuum", any warmer and all the pairs break up and one has normal matter. So this Fermi gas is happening right at and around the transition point. Nice.
This is very interesting experimentally, but hardly a "new state of matter", since the principles are well understood.
-drl
|
Post #138,840
1/30/04 11:59:54 AM
|

Hardly a "new state of matter" doesn't get more funding! :)
Alex
The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. -- Plutarch
|