Posted on 06/06/2006 9:59:36 AM PDT by Ben Mugged
A team of scientists working at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory's Pulsed Field Facility at Los Alamos has uncovered an intriguing phenomenon while studying magnetic waves in barium copper silicate, a 2,500-year-old pigment known as Han purple. The researchers discovered that when they exposed newly grown crystals of the pigment to very high magnetic fields at very low temperatures, it entered a rarely observed state of matter. At the threshold of that matter state--called the quantum critical point-the waves actually lose a dimension.
That is, the magnetic waves go from a three-dimensional to a two-dimensional pattern. The discovery is yet another step toward understanding the quantum mechanics of the universe.
Writing about the work in today's issue of the scientific journal Nature, the researchers describe how they discovered that at high magnetic fields (above 23 Tesla) and at temperatures between 1 and 3 degrees Kelvin (or roughly minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit), the magnetic waves in Han purple crystals "exist" in a unique state of matter called a Bose Einstein condensate (BEC).
In the BEC state, magnetic waves propagate simultaneously in all of three directions (up-down, forward-backward and left-right). At the quantum critical point, however, the waves stop propagating in the up-down dimension, causing the magnetic ripples to exist in only two dimensions, much the same way as ripples are confined to the surface of a pond.
"The reduced dimensionality really came as a surprise," said Neil Harrison, an experimental physicist at the Los Alamos Pulsed Field Facility, "just when we thought we had reached an understanding of the quantum nature of its magnetic BEC."
(Excerpt) Read more at spacemart.com ...
"Raiders of the Lost Dimension"
Are these raiders like shape shifting beings from another world in Dimension SIX? (666 becomes Six Six Six). I heard a rumor that these shape shifting beings now control the entire world. They control politics, wage wars and run economic systems to benefit themselves. America is being run like a huge plantation. We are all just worker bees in the great hive. The U.S. will become The North American Union. Canada will be linked by super highways to Mexico. The illegal drug trade will increase, not decrease. Billions in illegal profits will become trillions. The U.S. dollar will fade away to become "The Amero."
< / sarcasm>
Placemarker for earlier.
"Looked like a natural gravity well to me"
(g_d, I am a geek)
The LACK of knowledge we have of the workings of this universe cannot be adequately measured.
"You hear the music before it gets written"
Most music today sounds like it has not yet been written...
it seems to exist in a confused, undecided state...much like
Schrodinger's Cat.
I prefer my distances julienned - looks much prettier on top of the salad. But I'm still searching for a good quantum dressing.
Two dimensionality? Look up cheniere.org for Deborah Chung's room temperature superconductor. It converts ambient heat into electric current automatically between layers of high pressure laminate. It has reverse resistance, a seeming violation of the 2nd law of TD, but there it is, demonstrated in the lab just as this is. Then, no sooner is it announced than the University shuts it down on orders from DC(controlling vested interests)....Which is the greater addiction? Our dependence(ala big oil)on foreign oil, or the government's fuel taxing LUST? The love of money is the root of all evil....
Doesn't sund difficult. Should be easy to replicate if it's real.
I wonder why they used this particular material?
I heard the year 2525 in 1969.
See JNaudin website(he's in france), he gives materials, details of how to do it. The carbon weave tape requires VERY high lamination pressures. Big oil may smother the idea here in the US but foreigners? That's a different story...
Ping for later pondering.
The most recent research, published in today's issue of the journal Nature, shows that at the lowest temperature point at which the change of state occurs -- called the Quantum Critical Point -- the Han purple pigment actually loses a dimension: it goes from 3D to 2D.
Theoretical physicists have postulated that this kind of dimensional reduction might help explain some mysterious properties of other materials (high temperature superconductors and metallic magnets known as "heavy fermions" for example) near the absolute zero of temperature, but until now, a change in dimension had not been experimentally observed.
We live in three dimensions; up-down, front-back and left-right are the options. A sound wave, for example, "exists" in three dimensions and propagates in all of these directions simultaneously. If we could take a picture it would look like an expanding balloon. A wave in two dimensions looks like ripples on the surface of a pond. Ripples propagate on the surface only; they don't propagate perpendicular to the surface, which is the third dimension.
"As often happens in science, we found something we weren't looking for," said Marcelo Jaime, an experimental physicist at the magnet lab's Pulsed Field Facility in Los Alamos, N.M. "Much to our surprise, we found that when the temperature is low enough, the transition into the new magnetic state occurs in an unexpected way."
The experiment was performed at the magnet lab's DC Field Facility at Florida State University by Neil Harrison from the Pulsed Field Facility and Suchitra Sebastian from Stanford University, in collaboration with a team of scientists from these institutions.
They observed that at high magnetic fields (above 23 tesla) and temperatures between 1 and 3 degrees Kelvin (approximately -460 degrees Fahrenheit), the magnetic waves in three-dimensional crystals of Han purple "exist" in a three-dimensional world as per conventional wisdom. However, below those temperatures, near the quantum limit, one of the dimensions is no longer accessible, with the unexpected consequence that magnetic ripples propagate in only two dimensions. (Kelvin is the temperature scale used by scientists; zero degrees Kelvin is absolute zero, a temperature so low it is experimentally unreachable.)
A more appropriate title would have been "Riders of the Purple Wave" :)
Why this down right, flat out ... purple. I wonder, is this see 'just the 2D shadow' of a 3D thing?
Is that kind of like 'you can't prove a negative'?
It's some kind of crystal effect like a polarizer. This particular substance may have been chosen as one among many substances with metal content; many other substances would also have been tested just to see what happens. 3 K is approximately the background temperature of the universe at microwave frequencies, so this Bose-Einstein condensate is colder.
Could be :)
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