{"id":239366,"date":"2026-06-20T06:11:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T11:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/tiny-objects-swimming-in-a-superfluid-of-light-move-against-the-flow"},"modified":"2026-06-20T06:11:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T11:11:16","slug":"tiny-objects-swimming-in-a-superfluid-of-light-move-against-the-flow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/tiny-objects-swimming-in-a-superfluid-of-light-move-against-the-flow","title":{"rendered":"Tiny objects swimming in a superfluid of light move against the flow"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/tiny-objects-swimming-in-a-superfluid-of-light-move-against-the-flow2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Superfluids are intriguing states of matter in which particles behave like a giant collective wave, allowing them to flow without any friction. When this fluid flows past a fixed obstacle at a velocity below a specific threshold, it moves around it without slowing down or exerting any drag. Above this critical velocity, however, the superfluid state starts to break down, and the energy from the flow dissipates in the form of ripples and vortices in the fluid.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at Sorbonne University, the University of Porto, C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur University and Paris-Saclay University recently investigated this phenomenon in a superfluid of light, a system in which light behaves like a superfluid. Their paper, <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/abstract\/10.1103\/ndj1-1j89\" target=\"_blank\">published in <i>Physical Review Letters<\/i><\/a>, shows that under specific conditions, a mobile obstacle in a superfluid of light can start swimming against the flow.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur project naturally came about as a collaborative effort to bridge theory and experiment, sparked during joint discussions when Pierre-\u00c9lie Larr\u00e9, now at LPTMS in Paris-Saclay, visited our lab in 2022,\u201d Quentin Glorieux, co-senior author of the paper, told Phys.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Superfluids are intriguing states of matter in which particles behave like a giant collective wave, allowing them to flow without any friction. When this fluid flows past a fixed obstacle at a velocity below a specific threshold, it moves around it without slowing down or exerting any drag. Above this critical velocity, however, the superfluid [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}