{"id":85344,"date":"2018-12-01T01:23:18","date_gmt":"2018-12-01T09:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/researchers-just-created-a-new-form-of-matter"},"modified":"2018-12-01T01:23:18","modified_gmt":"2018-12-01T09:23:18","slug":"researchers-just-created-a-new-form-of-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/researchers-just-created-a-new-form-of-matter","title":{"rendered":"Researchers Just Created a New Form of Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a new form of matter out there and it\u2019s called a supersolid. Born in the labs of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), this new matter is seemingly a contradiction. The supersolid combines properties of solids and superfluids \u2014 or fluids with zero viscosity, thereby flowing without losing kinetic energy. Supersolids have previously been predicted by physicists, but have not been observed in a lab until now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is counterintuitive to have a material which combines superfluidity and solidity,\u201d says team leader Wolfgang Ketterle<\/a>, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics at MIT and 2001 Noble laureate. \u201cIf your coffee was superfluid and you stirred it, it would continue to spin around forever.\u201d Their research was published in the journal<\/a> Nature<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To develop this seemingly contradictory form of matter, Ketterle\u2019s team manipulated the motion of atoms in a superfluid state of dilute gas, called a Bose-Einstein condensate, or BEC. Ketterle co-discovered BEC, which won him his Noble prize in physics. \u201cThe challenge was now to add something to the BEC to make sure it developed a shape or form beyond the shape of the \u2018atom trap,\u2019 which is the defining characteristic of a solid,\u201d Ketterle explained.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a new form of matter out there and it\u2019s called a supersolid. Born in the labs of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), this new matter is seemingly a contradiction. The supersolid combines properties of solids and superfluids \u2014 or fluids with zero viscosity, thereby flowing without losing kinetic energy. Supersolids have [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85344","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\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}