Kevin's Watch

Anyone know anything about this story. I just caught a very small news report last night that scientists have created this above weird fluid that has the property of accelerating in the opposite direction from the force applied to it. This surely is a MASSIVE result in our study of the nature of matter and must [if true - it's not April fools day is it?] mark a significant milestone in our ability to manipulate stuff. I mean, what could you do with the material!

If you can't find it in a computer search, peter, it could all be a hoax.

They discovered Flubber!

They did - they did!

Thanks Murrin - at least I know now I wasn't dreaming. Can I make a tentative suggestion that from this day henceforth all projectile weaponry is made of this stuff.

Vraith wrote:But...but...

Wouldn't that imply the anti-curvature of space? Not flattening...but reversphere?

And...wouldn't negative mass imply, or even necessitate, anti-gravity?

Something along my train of thought V. Is this work going to link into the cosmological area of 'dark matter and energy'?

Is that the only area where quantum effects spill over into the larger world?

I'm Murrin wrote:www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39642992

I stand corrected!

Hashi Lebwohl wrote:Suffice it to say that Bose-Einstein condensates are weird. They aren't bound by Newtonian physics because their quantum effects are manifesting at the macro level.

Weird---but useful and informative. Becoming more so all the time, it seems. This is at least the 5th or 6th cool thing in the last year or so that starts with "Well, we start with B-E condensate, then..."

peter...no, not the only way/place. Most of us, when we thing quantum automatically think extremely small. But quantum-connected phenomenon happen due to other extremes. I mean, most stars are essentially quantum effects. Fusion happens because of quantum tunneling...which is possible because of extreme pressure/density.
I realize that might not be what you're asking, though. You might be asking something more like "Could the moon be rock AND cheese at the same time, until someone tries to eat it, collapsing its wave-function?"

Vraith wrote:
Weird---but useful and informative. Becoming more so all the time, it seems. This is at least the 5th or 6th cool thing in the last year or so that starts with "Well, we start with B-E condensate, then..."

Exactly. I think physicists have learned more about quantum mechanics because of condensates in the last 5 years than they learned in the previous 50 (probably an exaggeration but it seems like we are at another "level up" point, a time during which advances in knowledge are made at an incredible rate).

What we need to be able to produce is a room-temperature BE condensate--that would allow for considerably more experiments because researchers would no longer be constrained to such low temperatures. Not sure if that is possible, though--too high a temperature = too much vibrational energy = too high an energy state to become a condensate.

Hashi Lebwohl wrote: Not sure if that is possible, though--too high a temperature = too much vibrational energy = too high an energy state to become a condensate.

Yea, I think it's not? There may be some strange situation [[or just a gap in general knowing]] that I'm not aware of---but I believe that the definition of the condensate requires all the beasties to be in lowest possible quantum state---and any heat, pretty much by definition, means things are not in that state.

Though I ALSO think I recall that different critters have a different threshold temperature for being in that state [[though they're all still really, really damn cold]]---so maybe there potentially exists/could be created, some bugger with a critical temp/lowest state that is a normal temp?