Physicists spot quantum tornadoes twirling in a ‘supersolid’ | Hacker News Reader

Physicists spot quantum tornadoes twirling in a ‘supersolid’

quantamagazine.org

113 pointselsewhen16 comments

I’m way out of my depth in this subject, but I find this incredibly fascinating.

I had to read up on supersolids; still not fully understanding.

I once had a naïve perspective that we’d figured out all the “big” stuff in science, but I’m now of the perspective that we’re still only scratching the surface.

> ... "but I’m now of the perspective that we’re still only scratching the surface."

The problem with learning new stuff is that it opens a whole 'nother box of brand-shiny-new questions. :)

And often moves old hard truths into 'maybe, sort of, in some conditions' territory

Everything goes as deep as the Planck length (theoretically). The only thing we've figured out is that we still don't know much more than we know.

Deeper. The only significance of the Planck length is that at that scale quantum effects and gravitational effects matter equally. Essentially that's where our current theories break down.

Beyond that, the Planck length means nothing. It's not the smallest length possible, it's just that we don't know how to describe anything smaller at the moment.

My understanding is that it is impossible to probe anything smaller than a Planck length because the required energy to probe such a small distance would create a black hole. So it is almost as if the universe conspires to prevent probing anything smaller.

"""Aristotle said a bunch of stuff that was wrong. Galileo and Newton fixed things up. Then Einstein broke everything again. Now, we’ve basically got it all worked out, except for small stuff, big stuff, hot stuff, cold stuff, fast stuff, heavy stuff, dark stuff, turbulence, and the concept of time""" - Zach Weinersmith, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9666621-aristotle-said-a-bu...

> we’re still only scratching the surface

We can explain 99% of the world with solid, liquid and gas. Add plasma for another 9. Weird stuff like superfuids and supersolids are very unusual. They may be interesting for some aplications in the future. (I guess that when superconductivity was discovered that every major city would have a few superconductivity devices in it. (Google says 50.000 MRI worldwide.))

Even simple solids (specially semiconductors) have a lot of applications that use quantum mechanics, and there are many rabbit holes with more rabbit holes at their bottom. Most of them are explored or partially explored, but there are still many to explore in the future.

An eddy in the spacetime continuum? (apologies to Douglas Adams)

You should apologise. The line is supposed to be "Eddies in the space-time continuum", but putting "eddy" ruins the joke as it can't be parsed as "Eddy's".

And this is his sofa, is it?

The actual paper is hidden behind a Nature paywall. There is a preprint on arxiv here https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.18510

"Observation of vortices in a dipolar supersolid" (2024) https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.18510

- "Topological gauge theory of vortices in type-III superconductors" (2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41803662

- "Observation of current whirlpools in graphene at room temperature" (2024) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj2167 .. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40360691 ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41442489 )

- Aren't there electron vortices in rhombohedral trilayer graphene? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40919385

- And isn't edge current chirality vortical, too? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41765192

> isn't edge current chirality vortical, too?

- /? valley vortex edge modes chiral: https://www.google.com/search?q=Valley+vortex+edge+modes+chi...

- "Active particle manipulation with valley vortex phononic crystal" (2024) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03759... :

> The valley vortex state presents an emerging domain in condensed matter physics. As a new information carrier with orbital angular momentum, it demonstrates remarkable ability for reliable, non-contact particle manipulation. In this paper, an acoustic system is constructed to exhibit the acoustic valley state, and traps particles using acoustic radiation force generated by the acoustic valley. Considering temperature effect on the acoustic system, the band structures for temperature fluctuations are discussed. An active controlled method for manipulating particle movement is proposed. Numerical simulations confirm that the particles can be captured by acoustic valley state, and can be repositioned through alterations in temperature, while maintaining a constant excitation frequency.

there were missing waffles, next to the gnocci and spaghetti

Obligatory in mice, right?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com