New fluid-like state of matter
Dig this: Some scientists have created a new form of matter using a bunch of regular sand and a falling marble. They packed the sand loosely in a container, dropped the marble in, and observed it using a super-fast, 5,000-frames-per-second x-ray camera. They found that the sand was behaving like an ultra-cold gas -- because the sand grains displayed very little randomness in the way they moved.
The thing is, normally you have to cool materials down to nearly absolute zero -- minus 497.6 degrees Fahrenheit -- to strip the randomness out of them. But this sand was just room temperature. You could do the same thing with a coffee can and marble in your kitchen, though you wouldn't be able to spy the particularly coolest feature of the jet of sand that sticks up in the air: It's hollow. As one of the scientists said in their press release:
"One of the biggest questions that we have still not solved is why this jet is so sharply delineated. Why are there these beautiful boundaries? Why isn't this whole thing just falling apart," Jaeger asked.
(Thanks to Steve Emrich for this one!)
Posted by Clive Thompson at December 07, 2005 07:46 PM
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My physics credentials are pretty much up to date, but I confess I cannot see what about this experiment constitutes 'a new form of matter'. Even 'state of matter' seems overstating it, although I suppose this technically could be seen as a previously unidentified phase. I guess all I'm saying is that this seems to me as a previously unknown behaviour of granular solids in air, not a new state of matter, per se (and certainly not a new form of matter!) Maybe I'm just chewing on semantics, though.
Perhaps I have excessively high expectations since the superfluid experiments! I want to see quantum weirdness, not merely astochastic dynamics. :)
Posted by: Chris Bateman at December 8, 2005 4:10 AM
Heh -- who doesn't want to see incredibly weird quantum behavior?
I think you're quite right to protest the use of the phrase "new state of matter" -- that's probably hyberbole that I latched onto myself, heh. But what charmed me is their identifying this previously unnoticed phase out of such common household materials, then drawing the parallel to the sorts of behaviors normally only seen under highly specialized experimental conditions.
Posted by: Clive at December 8, 2005 1:41 PM
I wonder what happens to that big long spike if the marble was sphereically imperfect. No spike is what I guess.
Posted by: nova9 at December 13, 2005 1:47 PM
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My physics credentials are pretty much up to date, but I confess I cannot see what about this experiment constitutes 'a new form of matter'. Even 'state of matter' seems overstating it, although I suppose this technically could be seen as a previously unidentified phase. I guess all I'm saying is that this seems to me as a previously unknown behaviour of granular solids in air, not a new state of matter, per se (and certainly not a new form of matter!) Maybe I'm just chewing on semantics, though.
Perhaps I have excessively high expectations since the superfluid experiments! I want to see quantum weirdness, not merely astochastic dynamics. :)
Posted by: Chris Bateman![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 8, 2005 4:10 AM
Heh -- who doesn't want to see incredibly weird quantum behavior?
I think you're quite right to protest the use of the phrase "new state of matter" -- that's probably hyberbole that I latched onto myself, heh. But what charmed me is their identifying this previously unnoticed phase out of such common household materials, then drawing the parallel to the sorts of behaviors normally only seen under highly specialized experimental conditions.
Posted by: Clive![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 8, 2005 1:41 PM
I wonder what happens to that big long spike if the marble was sphereically imperfect. No spike is what I guess.
Posted by: nova9![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 13, 2005 1:47 PM