SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
Confirmed: New phase of matter is solid and liquid at the same time
Solid, liquid, gas … and something else? While most of us learn about just three states of matter in elementary school, physicists have discovered several exotic varieties that can exist under extreme temperature and pressure conditions.
Now, a team has used a type of artificial intelligence to confirm the existence of a bizarre new state of matter, one in which potassium atoms exhibit properties of both a solid and a liquid at the same time. If you were somehow able to pull out a chunk of such material, it would probably look like a solid block leaking molten potassium that eventually all dissolved away.
“It would be like holding a sponge filled with water that starts dripping out, except the sponge is also made of water,” says study coauthor Andreas Hermann, a condensed matter physicist at the University of Edinburgh whose team describes the work this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @05:14PM (3 children)
They can at the quantum level, with amplitudes that are one over root-2.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:10PM (2 children)
That probably went whoosh over most readers' heads :-)
simplified wave function of 2 electrons [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:27PM (1 child)
The bit that I like most about that wiki page on Slater functions is this:
shows a bit how far ahead theory is to practice in some science fields. They didn't have computers to calculate the overlap function, let allone correlation functions, for a system with 2 electrons.
In 1929. I think they used sticks with lines on them [wikipedia.org]. (never seen one myself, but I once had to work with a machine that had a nonius scale [wikipedia.org], and that was k00l also). I think i digress and have to sleep now.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Wednesday April 17 2019, @06:44AM
I studied this a bit in college (had to for BSEE) and the more I learn, the more I'm blown away by what they were figuring out theoretically way back. Very little empirical data, yet quantum mechanics, Heisenberg, Bohr, Einstein, Fermi, Pauli exclusion, etc. And we had Maxwell and his equations predating electronic circuits by many many decades. And the list goes on. Einstein proposed his derivation which resulted in E = m c^2 in 1905. Ever look at a 1905 car, or 1905 radio?
All the great physicists, esp. staring with Newton, wrote equations modeling what they somehow observed, postulated, dreamed up, correlated, substituted, manipulated, transformed, derived, etc. Slide rules were for actual numerical calculations- plugging in the numbers- which you do after all the derivation craziness.
I have some measuring tools that have Vernier markings- micrometers and calipers.