[HN Gopher] Physicists spot quantum tornadoes twirling in a 'sup...
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       Physicists spot quantum tornadoes twirling in a 'supersolid'
        
       Author : elsewhen
       Score  : 102 points
       Date   : 2024-11-06 18:46 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
        
       | jodacola wrote:
       | 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 naive 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.
        
         | blooalien wrote:
         | > ... "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. :)
        
           | jajko wrote:
           | And often moves old hard truths into 'maybe, sort of, in some
           | conditions' territory
        
         | stronglikedan wrote:
         | _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.
        
           | brummm wrote:
           | 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.
        
             | UltraSane wrote:
             | 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.
        
         | ben_w wrote:
         | """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...
        
         | gus_massa wrote:
         | > _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.
        
       | tetris11 wrote:
       | there were missing waffles, next to the gnocci and spaghetti
        
       | tigerlily wrote:
       | An eddy in the spacetime continuum? (apologies to Douglas Adams)
        
         | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
         | 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".
        
         | itishappy wrote:
         | And this is his sofa, is it?
        
       | daniel-thompson wrote:
       | The actual paper is hidden behind a Nature paywall. There is a
       | preprint on arxiv here https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.18510
        
       | impish9208 wrote:
       | Obligatory in mice, right?
        
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