An unearthly demonstration of the eternal feud between superconductivity and magnetism
By Becky FerreiraPosted 06.04.2012 at 5:31 pm 6 Comments
Enthusiastic crowds jostled to get a better view of the quantum levitation display at Innovation Square on Saturday, a day-long celebration of science held at MetroTech Plaza in Brooklyn as part of the World Science Festival. Run by Boaz Almog, an inventor and physicist at Tel Aviv University, it was the first public demonstration of its kind in the U.S. and by far one of the most popular events at the Square. Almog carefully dunked puck-sized discs into jars of liquid nitrogen and allowed onlookers to nudge them into hovering orbits. To the touch, the disc felt like a rough piece of ice.
In a case that's somewhat chicken-and-egg, one of the many reasons computer scientists and physicists are pursuing a working quantum computer is to model quantum systems themselves. Modeling some quantum properties for systems even with a just a few dozen particles is impossible on even the biggest conventional supercomputers, and the pursuit of new materials and next-level science requires that we find a way to do so.
Red wine can efficiently turn iron compounds into superconductors, a finding Japanese researchers stumbled upon at a boozy party last year. Now they have figured out how. Tartaric acid in the wine — especially in a French Beaujolais, from the gamay grape — seems to be the culprit.
Today in relatively obscure but nonetheless meaningful scientific pursuits: two researchers at the Max-Planck Institute claim to have turned hydrogen into metal. That may seem unremarkable, but the fact is hydrogen--being an alkali metal--should exhibit the qualities of a metal under the right circumstances. Yet no one has ever coaxed the universe’s most abundant element into showing metallic qualities until now. Perhaps.
Girls might just have a new best friend. Diamonds are commonly known as one of the hardest (and shiniest) rocks on the planet, but new simulations show that three other stable forms of pure carbon would sparkle even more than diamonds. If we knew how to synthesize them, that is.
Gases, as we all know, don’t generally offer a lot of resistance. That is, if you try to walk through a cloud of gas, you’ll pass right through it. The same is true for two clouds of gases that meet each other: they pass right through each other. But MIT physicists have observed the first exception to the rule by creating two clouds of ultra-cold gases that bounce right off each other like solids.
While studying the weird behavior of high-temperature superconductors, scientists may have found a new phase of matter, separate from solid, liquid, gas and plasma. Electrons in a pre-superconducting state apparently form a strange, distinct order, lining up in a way that has never been seen before.
The cores of neutron stars are the densest observable known matter in the universe, so dense that a single teaspoon of neutron star core would weigh some six billion tons. That density makes them fascinating to those seeking to probe the properties of matter, and NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory has made an interesting discovery doing exactly that, finding the first direct evidence that matter there can take on a superfluid state.
His manipulation of atoms chilled to near-absolute zero could help create high-temperature superconductors
By Martha HarbisonPosted 11.02.2010 at 4:30 pm 4 Comments
This year's Brilliant 10 honorees join the illustrious ranks of Marie Curie, Werner Heisenberg, Francis Crick and James Watson in proving that youth isn't always wasted on the young. Whether by virtue of their fresh perspective, their youthful energy or the simple desire every kid has to mess with stuff, these researchers have always been the sort of minds that improve our world. After all, they'll inherit it. Check out the rest of the Brilliant 10 honorees here.
Outside his lab at the Maryland campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, physicist Ian Spielman is enthusiastically talking about his recently published breakthrough in atomic physics. I'm trying to keep up. His research solved a decade-old problem that had stumped the best minds in the field. He explains to me that through the creative use of radio-frequency radiation and laser light, he made neutral atoms move as if they held an electric charge, manipulated by a magnetic field that didn't actually exist. I nod, mouth slightly ajar. What?
The bright green energy future that surely awaits us exists in concept, but as we all know there are key pieces of technology that we still haven't quite figured out, like higher-capacity battery tech or better biofuel processing methods. Similarly, one of the key technology gaps hampering the U.S. energy grid is a lack of understanding regarding superconductors -- materials that can carry electricity with no energy loss. Now, DOE scientists may have cracked a critical part of the superconductor mystery, opening the door to a grid that can carry electrical current over great distances without drastic energy loss.