Posted on 03/08/2025 5:21:03 AM PST by BenLurkin
A supersolid is a paradox of physics — a material that is both solid and liquid at the same time. This contradictory form of matter was first proposed more than 60 years ago, and, for a long time, people thought it was too nuts to actually exist. But we’re talking about the realm of quantum mechanics, and normal expectations should be thrown out the window.
In 2007, researchers at ETH Zurich and MIT unveiled the world’s first supersolids, starting with superflooding sodium and rubidium, respectively.
Now, an international team of researchers has unveiled an entirely new route to supersolidity, harnessing light-matter particles known as polaritons to create an exotic, flowing crystal.
In other words, this is a supersolid made not from atoms, but from light itself.
...
Instead of using ultracold atoms, they used laser light and a specially designed semiconductor. They fired a laser at a piece of gallium arsenide, a material etched with precise tiny ridges. When the light hit the ridges, it interacted with the semiconductor to create polaritons — quasiparticles (a collective excitation of a large number of particles that behaves as if it were a single particle) that are part light and part matter.
These polaritons were confined by the ridges, forcing them into a crystal-like arrangement. But unlike ordinary solids, this structure also allowed the polaritons to flow without resistance, exhibiting zero viscosity.
The result was a supersolid made entirely of light — a first in the history of physics.
(Excerpt) Read more at zmescience.com ...
It’s all grease to me.
These last years have been, in part, about "messaging" that science is a thing, not a process, and can / should be used to enforce government aims, like Fauci and the others tried.
Still unjabbed, my bride and I must be anti-science. Or maybe science deniers?
How can anyone understand a system that operates differently depending on if it is being observed or not observed? This stuff gives me a headache.
A liquid takes the shape of its container, but not its volume. I can’t think of any way that is meaningfully true about a volume; even fine details of rocks retain their shape after hundreds of millions of years. Under enough pressure, solids become plastic, but neither elastic deformation, microcracking nor dislocations are true fluidity.
Democrats: “there must be some way to tax this!”
"You know, you know, the thing...."
"If you don't support Borgs, you ain't black"
"Corn pop was a bad Borg....C'mon man"
It’s particles and waves too.
In (amorphous) glass yes, old church windows have been measured to be slightly thicker toward the bottom, but in crystalline solids not so much.
That has always been my understanding of molecular structures.
Photon torpedoes (in Star Trek) are matter/antimatter bombs.
I understand light to be either a wave or a particle, but not a “field”.
Or at least never heard it described using that word.
Lol we had that as kids. And slime too
Polaritons are hybrid particles that are part light and matter. I am just an engineer and not a physicist but still find these physics topics fascinating. Thanks for posting.
We are just scratching the surface in trying to understand the universe God has created.
Decent overview of polaritons here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqJOQnJ4lEY
Silly putty?
Thanks BenLurkin.
My third grade teacher, Mrs. Bullion, told us in 1968 that light was made of particles and waves at the same time.
What else is new?
Lightsabers coming soon.
Im confident that that skit was directly inspired by a Shaklee sales pitch. In the 70s they had a floor cleaning dish soap that also “with only a drop in each cup removes the acid from my coffee.”
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