Solids that can pass through solids
08 October 2005
Catherine Zandonella
Magazine issue 2520
Welcome to a world where teacups melt through saucers and everyone walks
through walls
IS it possible to walk through walls? Can solid objects really pass through
each other? Moses Chan thinks they can, and he says he has the proof. Chan
and his colleagues at Pennsylvania State University have created the world's
first "supersolids", bizarre crystals that slide through each other like
ghosts. It is a finding that promises to revolutionise the way we think
about matter. "It really changes one's concept of solids," says Jason Ho, a
solid-state theorist at Ohio State University in Columbus.
The idea that one solid object can flow through another contradicts all our
everyday experiences: no one has ever seen a teacup dissolve through a
saucer. And when you prop up the bar on Friday nights there is no danger of
you slowly melting into the surface and falling out the other side.
Solids get their reassuring rigidness from the orderly way their atoms are
arranged. Unlike..
Full Text at NewScientist (Needs Subscription)
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18825201.100
Comment:
'Matter' is mostly empty space.
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Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
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