New form of matter....

[Dr Mordrid]

a "fermionic condensate " that perhaps could be turned into a room-temperature superconductor;

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

Presuming that the BBC got got this story right, of course

Dr. Mordrid

[gt40]

Godd to see you back Doc.

[Umfriend]

Yeah, some of us were worried

[Tjalfe]

Cool

Good to see you back here again

[Dr Mordrid]

I've had serious problems with my broadband + cable TV services reliability to the point where we dropped the cable TV service in favor of Dish Network (satellite) and are looking for a new broadband provider.

It's to the point where after a couple of weeks of virtual non-service I started an Earthlink dialup just go get back online

As for Dish Network: it's very nice. The quality is very good, the reception survived Michigan ice and snow storms intact & without interruption and now I have access to the Research Channel.

It's even cheaper since I took advantage of a 3 room for $49 Christmas promo from Radio Shack (refunded on the first bill w/free installation). Even the monthly bill is lower vs. Comcast

Dr. Mordrid

[GNEP]

Welcome back Doc. Glad you're OK

atoms forced into a state where they behave strangely

So they either:

a) take the atoms out on the lash and get them beered up

b) parade pretty female atoms around in front of them.

[SitFlyer]

The 1st paragraph in that article,

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

leads me to believe, they actually wanted to name it Femonic, but knew that wouldn't go over to well

[Jon P. Inghram]

Too bad the article didn't explain just why this was different than a Bose-Einstein condensate, sounded like basicly the same thing.

[Marshmallowman]

I think the main difference is with a bose -einstein condensate your are talking about a condensate made up of the nucleus ...eg a bunch of boson's (protons and nuetrons)

Whereas with potassium you have a a lot of electrons which form the condensate. As electrons are the main form electrical conduction you may actualy be able to get the electrons to do something useful

Well that my best guess(2 cents worth), I am going to do some more reading up on this

[DukeP]

Just off my head - Bose-Einstein AFAIK is only photons - not exactely solid stuff to use and build skyscrapers of..

This, on the other hand, includeds rather more substanced baseparticles (electrons, protons and neutrons).

Still, the solution to life, the universe and everything prob. involves a combination theory.

~~DukeP~~

[KvHagedorn]

Alright.. what particle has the strongest attraction to a boson?
















that would be a boson's mate.

[Marshmallowman]

Yup I think your right, they have been making the Bose-Einstein using photons.

But photons, neutron and protons are bosons, and at low temps helium nuclie will beave like bosons and they have some formed helium type bose-einstein condensates.

see

http://home.achilles.net/~jtalbot/glossary/BEC.html

http://www.df.unipi.it/gruppi/struttura/Ari-pages/photo.html

The things fermion's are half spin particlaes where as bosons are integral spin(1,2....etc)

Also it will probably be a lot easier gett9ing usefull stuff out of electron(electrons are fermion's) than boson's

If that made sens I should be worried, I am to drunk to be thinking about this stuff

[Jon P. Inghram]

Bose-Einstein condensates aren't photons, that article is about coherent photon emissions from stars and they feel they are an optical counterpart to matter BEC's.

The lab created BEC's are just blobs of atomic nuclei that function in a coherent way, basicly an atomic equivelent to a laser. They can create a coherent beam of atoms, and when they bump into each other they form interference patterns.

http://www.bec.nist.gov/PDF/as_published.pdf

http://www.bec.nist.gov/index.html

[moreau]

The Bose-Einstein Condensate is a ground state solution for a many-body quantum system in which all particles in the system occupy the lowest energy state. Any boson (spin-1 particles like photons, Helium-4 atoms, cooper pairs) can exhibit this behavior.

Fermions (spin-1/2 particles like electrons, protons, neutrons, Helium3 atoms) are incapable of this on their own, excpet when they get together and behave collectively like spin-1 particles (see cooper pairs above).

The folks in Colorado (Wieman, et. al.) were able to use laser cooling to form the condensate in a collection of bosonic atoms. Rubidium, I believe. Ironically, the lasers used were the read lasers from cd-rom drives. Scientific lasers were too monochromatic!

As a matter of semantics, I would say that the formation of many-particle quantum states with unique properties isn't a new form of matter, per se.

CEM (the other Dr.M)