Scientists have uncovered hidden magnetic order inside the pseudogap, bringing us closer to engineering high-temperature superconductors.
Sometimes science can be painfully slow. Data comes in dribs and drabs, truth trickles, and veracity proves viscous.
The world’s longest-running lab experiment is an ongoing work in sheer scientific patience. It has been running continuously for nearly a century, under the close supervision of several custodians and many spectators – and it’s ever so slowly drip, drip, dripping away.
It all started in 1927, when physicist Thomas Parnell at the University of Queensland in Australia filled a closed funnel with the world’s thickest known fluid: pitch, a derivative of tar that was once used to seal ships against the seas.
The two largest planets in the Solar System – Jupiter and Saturn – have a lot in common. They’re made of very similar stuff, they spin at similar speeds, and radiate internal heat similarly. Heck, they even both hoard moons in a similar way.
However, there’s a difference between the planets that has long puzzled scientists: the giant, vortical storms that cap their poles.
Saturn has one huge storm on each pole.