Foo - sixth form of matter found!

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040128/sc_nm/science_matter_dc_1



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

I wonder if keithnordstrom knows these guys, I believe it's in his neck of the woods.

:eek:

Whoa girl! This is too much. I gotta go lay down and ponder over this one.

:D

Koff

CB
Just thing a no friction bicycle!
Thanks
Joe

http://www.nature.com/nsu/nsu_pf/031110/031110-16.html

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-10/pdf/vol52no10p17-18.pdf

Here's a little blurb on the Bose Einstein condensate vs. a fermionic condensate.

May be silliness on my part but it sounds to me that they've succeeded in discovering a new state of matter rather than a new form of matter. I'm guessing that it's just one of those things when someone not well versed in science has to take what a bunch of geeks say and translate it into something intelligible to the masses.

May be silliness on my part but it sounds to me that they've succeeded in discovering a new state of matter rather than a new form of matter. I'm guessing that it's just one of those things when someone not well versed in science has to take what a bunch of geeks say and translate it into something intelligible to the masses.


It is a new state, form, type whatever, the english language can be very inexact about the description of matter....this fermionic condensate is a cloud of cold potassium atoms forced into a state where they behave strangely. Thus, instead of a sold state of potassium, it is in fermionic condensate state!

So when should we expest to start seeing the first fermionic condensate bicycle frames.

If I eat a bunch of bananas (high in potassium) and fart in a sub zero room is that considered fermionic condensate?

So when should we expest to start seeing the first fermionic condensate bicycle frames.

If I eat a bunch of bananas (high in potassium) and fart in a sub zero room is that considered fermionic condensate?

No, that's just universally considered rude and in bad taste, as always some things NEVER go out of fashion! Thank Goodness! :eek: ;) :p

No, that's just universally considered rude and in bad taste, as always some things NEVER go out of fashion! Thank Goodness! :eek: ;) :p


:roflmao: Dammit, I was gonna say that!

I saw the article when it came out, but haven't had time to read it thoroughly. From what I saw, this sounded exactly like a BEC. Anybody know what the difference is?

A physicist explained it in a simplistic manner for my feeble mind/

All particles belong to one of two camps: the bosons live on one side of the tracks, and the fermions on the other.

If you open up an auditorium to a waiting crowd of fermions, they will file in in an orderly fashion, filling up the first row before beginning to fill up the second row, and so on in proper grade-school fashion. No two fermions are allowed to share the same seat -- the same quantum-mechanical state.

If you open up the auditorium to a crowd of rowdy bosons, however, the result will be very different. Bosons have no personal-space issues; not only are they able to share the same quantum state, they actually pursue it. The throng of bosons will eagerly seek to pile up on top of one another in the middle of the stage as soon as possible.

The utility of such a boson-pile to physicists is that it does en masse the same weird quantum mechanical things that bosons do all the time in isolation. It's difficult to observe just one boson, but very easy to observe a whole bucketful. When you supercool liquid helium-4 (each atom of which is a boson), you open the auditorium door and give the atoms a chance to pile up on stage. The phase transition that occurs as all the atoms enter the same quantum state is called condensation, or, more specifically, Bose-Einstein condensation. A bucketful of supercold liquid helium displays funky quantum-mechanical behavior at scales visible to human eyes. Bose-Einstein condensates flow without viscosity through the tiniest pores, and they creep up the side of containers in thin films. When you spin their container, they stubbornly choose to rotate at only certain discrete velocities, bucking common sense.

A fermionic condensate, as you might now expect, is the result of supercooling a fermionic substance. These space-conscious particles don't undergo a sudden phase transition like their amicable cousins, but they do condense in their own way.

Imagine again the auditorium buzzing with energetic fermions. There are precisely as many seats as fermions, but it's warm in there and no one wants to sit still. Some are walking in the aisles, others are buying nachos, and others are loitering in the street outside. Seats go unused, energy levels unfilled. As the temperature falls, the restless fermions succumb, and begin to fill in their seats and stay put. Below some critical temperature, not even the fermion nearest the door has the inclination to leave. Below this temperature, the fermions are said to be condensed -- locked rigidly in their energy levels, packed as tightly in their seats as they can be packed.

While not as spectacular as Bose-Einstein condensation, fermionic condensation holds its own surprises. The one on most physicists' minds is a process known as "Cooper pairing," by which two fermions can team up to put on a boson act. The behavior of these pairs, disguised as cozy bosons among hordes of aloof fermionic brethren, is the cause of important phenomena like superconductivity. Electrons are fermions, and only when they form Cooper pairs can they conduct electricity without resistance. The electrons in a superconductor are, in fact, one form of a fermionic condensate.

Here's a good article from Physics Today:

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/...2no10p17-18.pdf

A physicist explained it in a simplistic manner for my feeble mind/

"Feeble mind". Uh-huh. :rolleyes:


http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/...2no10p17-18.pdf

That link didn't work for me, but my brain hurts 'n' stuff already anyway.

My brain hurts too....

I like Nachos

...disguised as cozy bosons...

Wow - I get it - thanks- but "cozy boson" makes me giggle...


mmmm.....nachos.....

I like Nachos

I like nachos too. Good thinking food. Gummy bears taste better, but their goodness distracts me and I can't stop eating...hey! We're talking about fermions here, not food!

Thanks CB.

Can I have my warp drive now?

Warp 9, engage!