Why there is no speed limit in the superfluid universe:
Helium-3 is a rare isotope of helium, in which one neutron is missing. It becomes superfluid at extremely low temperatures, enabling unusual properties such as a lack of friction for moving objects.
It was thought that the speed of objects moving through superfluid helium-3 was fundamentally limited to the critical Landau velocity, and that exceeding this speed limit would destroy the superfluid. Prior experiments in Lancaster have found that it is not a strict rule and objects can move at much greater speeds without destroying the fragile superfluid state.
Now scientists from Lancaster University have found the reason for the absence of the speed limit: exotic particles that stick to all surfaces in the superfluid.
The discovery may guide applications in quantum technology, even quantum computing, where multiple research groups already aim to make use of these unusual particles.
Journal Reference:
S. Autti, S. L. Ahlstrom, R. P. Haley, et al. Fundamental dissipation due to bound fermions in the zero-temperature limit [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18499-1)
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2020, @03:55AM (3 children)
It's all "upstart" bot-generated subs.
BTW, cod fillet tastes like ... nothing. NO TASTE. Guess it's why it's mostly deep-fried.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2020, @04:12AM (2 children)
Stories shown as "upstart" were manually submitted by a human via the IRC interface, which turns bare URLs into the "bot-generated" format you see in the subs queue, which human editors then clean up and post on the site. The bot is not magically crawling the web for stories and submitting them via skynet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2020, @04:40AM
Explain then why cod tastes like nothing, eh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2020, @06:46PM
A crawler that trawled for stories would be pretty awesome, if it could be trained to discriminate between trash and good stuff.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Wednesday September 23 2020, @04:23AM (3 children)
It's c (light speed).
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday September 23 2020, @10:35AM (1 child)
There is only a limit where there is a cop.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday September 23 2020, @10:57AM
Damn that Officer
StadankoEinstein.--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday September 23 2020, @03:22PM
Come on everyone knows that as you approach the speed of light, you just have to kick in the wormhole generator, so you can magically be in a different place, faster than the speed of light could take you there.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dltaylor on Wednesday September 23 2020, @05:22AM
The initially referenced article, hence the summary, both use "exotic particles". In the original "Nature Communications" article https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18499-1 [nature.com] (may be paywalled) the term is "quasiparticles".
Exotic particles makes one think of mesons, or other subatomic particles that are not readily observed in the macroscopic scale. "Quasiparticles" are well-known. Things like "holes" in semiconductors exhibit particle-like behavior, although there is no place for a "hole" in the standard model. In discussions of superconductivity, for example, you find the term Cooper Pairs, which is a quantum pairing of electrons, which, in effect, creates a single particle with its own quantum state.