New form of matter created in lab

[papau]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3441643.stm

New form of matter created in lab

By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor

Scientists have created a new form of matter saying it could provide a new way to generate electricity.

The fermionic condensate is a cloud of cold potassium atoms forced into a state where they behave strangely.

The new matter is the sixth known form of matter after solids, liquids, gasses, plasma and a Bose-Einstein condensate, created only in 1995. <snip>

To make the condensate the researchers cooled potassium gas to a billionth of a degree above absolute zero - the temperature at which matter stops moving. <snip>

They confined the gas in a vacuum chamber and used magnetic fields and laser light to manipulate the potassium atoms into pairing up and forming the fermionic condensate... the way the potassium atoms acted suggested there should be a way to turn it into a room-temperature solid. <snip>

[KuroKensaki]

1. Three words.

Well, two words and a compound word.

Room temperature superconductor.

Three more words: Ho lee shit.

[Dudley_DUright]

2. One of the "Holy Grails" of solid state physics research

While this is great news for basic science, I don't think room temperature superconductors are right around the corner. I was at the 1987 APS Meeting in New York when ceramic High Tc superconductors were announced (the so called "woodstock of physics", if you can imagine such a thing). There was high hopes for rapid progress toward a room temperature system, but progress has slowed considerably in recent times.

[papau]

3. This is not one of the Bush priorities - sigh

:-)

[Sentath]

5. If you look @ the last line of the post

It looks like it may be a path to condensed plasma batteries

[papau]

4. AP write up - somewhat better explanation

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-New-Matter.html

Colo. Scientists Make New Form of Matter
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: January 30, 2004


Filed at 10:55 a.m. ET
BOULDER, Colo. (AP) -- <snip>
Industry probably won't have a practical use for fermionic gas for decades. Eventually it might help engineers achieve superconductivity, or the state in which electricity flows without resistance, at everyday temperatures. That would dramatically improve computers and electrical power generation, as well as systems like mag-lev trains.

Fermions represent a class of elementary subatomic particles that includes electrons, and they are among the building blocks of atoms and molecules. According to a law of quantum mechanics, no two identical fermions may occupy the same quantum state.

On Dec. 16, researchers at the joint lab known as JILA used lasers to trap the small cloud of potassium atoms. By limiting their natural motion, they cooled the atoms to 50 billionths of a degree above absolute zero, or minus-459 degrees F.

Normally, subatomic fermions in these atoms would repel one another. But the researchers said that when they applied a magnetic field to the ultracold atoms, the atoms briefly matched up in pairs and created a condensate, behaving in a coordinated wave pattern.<snip>
Last year, the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York reported it created a new form of cold matter called quark-gluon plasma that strongly resembled the stuff of the universe one-thousandth of a second after its birth.<snip>

[Atlant]

6. Did anyone else think of "Ice-9" when they read this? :-)

> the way the potassium atoms acted suggested there should be a way
> to turn it into a room-temperature solid.

Did anyone else think of "Ice-9" when they read this? :)

Or have I read WAY TOO MUCH Vonnegut?

Atlant