SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) demonstrated how particles, floating on top of a glycerin-water solution, synchronize in response to acoustic waves blasted from a computer speaker.
The study, published today (Monday, June 19) in the journal Nature Materials, could help address fundamental questions about energy dissipation and how it allows living and nonliving systems to adapt to their environment when they are out of thermodynamic equilibrium.
[...] "We show that individually 'dumb' particles can self-organize far from equilibrium by dissipating energy and emerge with a collective trait that is dynamically adaptive to and reflective of their environment," said study co-lead author Chad Ropp, a postdoctoral researcher in Zhang's group. "In this case, the particles followed the 'beat' of a sound wave generated from a computer speaker."
Notably, after the researchers intentionally broke up the particle party, the pieces would reassemble, showing a capacity to self-heal.
Ropp noted that this work could eventually lead to a wide variety of "smart" applications, such as adaptive camouflage that responds to sound and light waves, or blank-slate materials whose properties are written on demand by externally controlled drives.
[...] As the sound waves traveled at a frequency of 4 kilohertz, the scattering particles moved along at about 1 centimeter per minute. Within 10 minutes, the collective pattern of the particles emerged, where the distance between the particles was surprisingly non-uniform. The researchers found that the self-assembled particles exhibited a phononic bandgap -- a frequency range in which acoustic waves cannot pass -- whose edge was inextricably linked, or "enslaved," to the 4 kHz input.
Journal Reference:
Nicolas Bachelard, Chad Ropp, Marc Dubois, Rongkuo Zhao, Yuan Wang, Xiang Zhang. Emergence of an enslaved phononic bandgap in a non-equilibrium pseudo-crystal. Nature Materials, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/nmat4920
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @11:45PM
n/t
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @11:46PM
It's like we're all part of one big spiritual consciousness that's just the natural vibration of the universe... man.
I always wondered what'd happen to living cells with prolonged exposure to different resonances? [youtube.com] Anyone hook an AC up with a published paper?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snotnose on Thursday June 22 2017, @12:15AM (1 child)
Sound waves most definitely made us self assemble.
I came. I saw. I forgot why I came.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 22 2017, @12:27AM
I guess you were never scattered enough... I mean, in small bloody pieces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday June 22 2017, @12:15AM
As I always knew, disco waves makes teens self assembly!
Replication may also occur.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dbe on Thursday June 22 2017, @01:25AM (7 children)
The article is useless piece of PR that does not explain the whole setup, but it looks like it's basically a Rubens' tube?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubens%27_tube [wikipedia.org]
They just replaced the gas particles with these floating straws that congregate to the nodes location of the speaker frequency.
Or am I missing something?
-dbe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @02:24AM
Or, more generally, like any of the vibratory devices that are used to line up small parts in various production situations.
A quick google images for, vibratory parts sorter, turns up many pics of these clever and very reliable machines.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by KGIII on Thursday June 22 2017, @03:07AM (5 children)
Nah, this is pretty much already well established. The best way to describe it is that matter likes to wiggle. Even our most solid things, still has little wiggling particles in it. Matter loves to wiggle. It will keep on wiggling until it seeks disorder, it is the slow march of entropy.
Now, near the end of last year, some mathematicians got together and decided to do something very important. They proved, mathematically, that absolute zero is impossible to achieve. This was long theorized, it is now considered proven.
What that means is just what I was telling you above. Matter likes dancing. It's got energy. Energy isn't created or destroyed. So, matter is going to keep wiggling and, as our universe expands, is going to become so dissolute that things just won't be able to wiggle with each other.
Why am I typing this gibberish?
Well, if it's moving it has a frequency. Sound is just energy. It stands to reason that at least some particles are going to have a response to this transfer of energy. Nope, I don't know which ones will, or if some might not. Particles are fucking weird. But, it was already understood that at least some of them are going to react in a way which we can observe it. I'm guessing they all have some reaction, at some state. However, that is just a guess - I am not a particle physicist.
When you transfer energy, things happen. I am not sure if they'd have any effect on massless particles, however. There's at least a couple of those. Everything likes to wiggle and that means it has a frequency, even if we haven't yet observed it. This is, as near as I know, just observation of something pretty well established to be true. It's another piece of evidence and will increase confidence appropriately. I am unqualified to opine how much it will be considered confirmation.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Thursday June 22 2017, @03:09AM
Also, I'd be curious to know if it had any impact on entangled particles. Hmm...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday June 22 2017, @12:30PM (3 children)
OK but the phononic bandgap thingie, if I understood it correctly, seems more like an instance of the force/reaction duality we are used to witness elsewhere a lot.
As I understood it, scream at 4000hz loud enough and the particles will arrange in a complex manner to DAMPEN the 4khz frequency itself.
In other words, the particles cover their ears in a coordinated, elegant, WTF STFU.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @04:19PM
> DAMPEN
Really? The particles throw water at the 4KHz scream?
Damp & damping = remove energy from a system
Dampen & dampening = make wet
Sorry, it's a pet peeve.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Thursday June 22 2017, @04:58PM (1 child)
You say it as if they have a purpose for it. They don't.
When you throw a ball, it takes the only path it can take.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday June 23 2017, @04:26AM
I was ironic in the latter part of the comment, and there is no need to assign purpose or agency to particles. We witness similar phenomenons with action/reaction forces. Send 4khz, expect configuration damping 4khz.
Any aspect of an universe is ultimately arbitrary for those whose POV is in the same universe, and that's totally inconclusive wrt the origin of those aspects, so, relax.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pkrasimirov on Thursday June 22 2017, @12:26PM
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/06/19/sound-waves-direct-particles-self-assemble-self-heal/ [lbl.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @05:18PM
That subject line is a bit ironic....
Were the newagers right? Crystals and sound waves do heal? I wouldn't mind if they were right if only to screw with all the hard core know-it-alls. Take crystals and scientifically tuned flutes around just to mess with people. No maaaan, its sciieeeence!