Physics
Scientists Create a New State of Matter Called Jahn-Teller Metals
We’re all familiar with the basic states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas, and if you want to get a bit fancy, plasma. These are the ones we encounter in everyday life, but scientists have discovered many other, exotic states of matter: Bose-Einstein condensate, quark-gluon plasma, or neutron-degenerate matter. These, however, can only be found in extreme conditions: where it is very cold, very hot, or very dense. Which is too bad, because some of these things have really interesting and useful properties. Bose-Einstein condensates, for example, could be fond uses in precision measurements and quantum computing. Now an international group of scientists led by Kosmas Prassides of Tokohu University in Japan has discovered a new state of matter which has been dubbed a Jahn-Teller metal, after the Jahn-Teller effect, which describes how deformations of molecules can result in changes to their electron configurations (and thus to their electrical properties).
A state of matter is determined by the arrangement of atoms or molecules in a substance. In a solid, for instance, molecules are arranged in stable shapes and so the atoms don’t have a lot of room to move around. Apply energy (heat), and the bonds between them break down, allowing the individual particles to move around more and more – that’s how we get to liquids and then gasses. Apply even more energy and you get a plasma (atoms are no longer able to hold on to their electrons), and eventually, at extreme energies, the very constituents of protons and neutrons break apart, and matter turns into a quark-gluon plasma. Meanwhile, on the other end of the temperature scale, at billionths of a degree above absolute zero, all atoms basically stop moving randomly and occupy the same, lowest possible energy level – this is what’s called a Bose-Einstein condensate.
This material is obtained by doping carbon-60 molecules known as “buckyballs” with rubidium atoms, an alkali metal which, interestingly enough, is also used to make Bose-Einstein condensates. The distances between the molecules, and thus the material’s properties, can be altered by simply applying pressure – and this is exactly what the rubidium atoms inserted into the crystalline structure do. A material which is usually an insulator at lower pressures can thus become a conductor. In this particular transition from insulator to metal, however, scientists have discovered something weird: while the material looks like an insulator, other measurements have shown it behaves like a conductor! It is this intermediate state that’s called a Jahn-Teller metal.
What makes this discovery so significant is that from here, there’s one more step required to turn the material into a superconductor, a material with zero resistance, which could prove incredibly useful in science and engineering. Jahn-Teller metals still exhibit superconducting properties at a very low temperature for any practical use, about 35 K (-238 degrees Celsius or -397 degrees Fahrenheit), however if scientists can figure out a way to control the Jahn-Teller effect, this could lead to the development of higher-temperature superconductors. Which could take us even closer to one of materials science’s ultimate goals: achieving room temperature superconductivity. But for now, we can simply welcome Jahn-Teller metals, this new and intriguing state of matter, into the world.
Physics
An interest They stepped on a rock and found something on Mars that had never been seen before
NASA’s curiosity has been looking into an interesting part of Mount Sharp for the past 10 months. It shows signs of a violent watery past, and chemical tests have shown that it contains many minerals, such as sulfates. The rover also broke open a rock by accident as it moved around. And inside it were crystals of pure sulfur.
On Mars, people had never seen pure sulfur before. Even though sulfates contain sulfur, there isn’t a clear link between how those molecules form and how the pure crystals form. Crystals of elemental sulfur can only form in a few different situations. And none of those were thought to happen in this area.
To find a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the middle of the desert, said Ashwin Vasavada, the project scientist for Curiosity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “That thing shouldn’t be there, so we need to explain it.” It’s so exciting to find strange and unexpected things when exploring other planets.
The Gediz Vallis channel is the name of the area that Curiosity is exploring. A groove across Mount Sharp has been interesting for a long time, even before the rover started climbing it in 2014. From space, scientists could see that there were big piles of debris. But it wasn’t clear what caused them. Was it landslides or floodwaters from a long time ago that moved the stuff along the channel?
The answer has been found through curiosity. Some column A and some column B. Water-moved rocks are smoother and rounder. Sharp and angular are those that dry avalanches moved. There are both kinds of rocks in the mounds.
“This was not a quiet time on Mars,” said Becky Williams, a scientist from Tucson, Arizona, who works for the Planetary Science Institute and is the deputy principal investigator of Mastcam on Curiosity. “There was a lot of exciting stuff going on here.” We expect a number of different flows to happen down the channel, such as strong floods and flows with lots of rocks.
Curiosity is still looking into the Gediz Valley. When the ball rolls around and shows off its unique features, we can get very excited about the science being done here.
To figure out if there is life in other parts of the universe, we start with Earth, where there is life now. Finding another Earth is a good way to find aliens. We have found more than 5,000 exoplanets, but we haven’t found Earth’s twin yet. This could change soon, though. Here comes the PLATO mission from the European Space Agency (ESA).
What does PLATO stand for? It stands for PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars. Its goal is very clear. It will look for nearby stars like the Sun that might have habitable worlds like Earth.
“One of the main goals is to find a way to compare Earth and the Sun.” The size of Earth is in the habitable zone of a star like the Sun. “We want to find it around a star that’s bright enough that we can really figure out how heavy it is and how big it is,” Dr. David Brown from the University of Warwick told IFLScience. “If you like, that’s our main goal.”
The telescope is not only an observatory for looking for planets, but it is also an observatory for collecting data on a huge number of stars. The mission team thinks that the fact that it can do both is a key part of why this telescope will be so important.
“You have two parts of the mission.” One is exoplanets, and the other is the stars. “From a scientific point of view, I think it’s pretty cool that these two parts are working together to make the best science we can,” Dr. Brown said.
One of the secondary goals is to make a list of all the planets that are Earth-like and all the star systems that are out there. One more goal is to find other solar systems that are like ours. Even though we don’t know for sure if our little part of the universe is truly unique, it does seem to be different from everything else.
Dr. Brown told IFLScience, “We have a bunch of other scientific goals.” “Really, how well do we know how planetary systems change and grow over time?” Planetary systems are something we’re trying to understand as a whole, not just one planet at a time.
PLATO is different in more ways than just the goals. It is not just one telescope. In fact, it’s made up of 26 different ones. Two of the cameras are fast, and the other 24 are normal cameras set up in groups of six with a small gap between them. This makes the telescope work better, has a wider field of view, and lets you quickly rule out false positives.
It can be hard to tell which of the things you find when you transit exoplanets are real and which ones are not. With the help of several telescopes, we were able to block out some of the mimics that we would have seen otherwise. “Plus, it looks pretty cool,” Dr. Brown said with excitement. “This big square with all of these telescopes pointing at you looks really cool!”
This week, Dr. Brown gave an update on PLATO at the National Astronomy Meeting at the University of Hull. The telescope is being put together and has recently passed important tests. There are no changes to the planned launch date for December 2026. An Ariane 6 rocket, the same kind that made its first launch last week, will take off from French Guiana.
Einstein’s theory of special relativity says that it is impossible to move faster than light in a vacuum.
Things that don’t have mass have to move at the speed of light. But things that do have mass can’t get close to 299,792,458 meters per second (983,571,056 feet per second) without using up all of their energy. Physicists and sci-fi authors have tried to get around this by using concepts like the warp drive. But it’s likely that these will be illegal because of those pesky physics laws. Traveling faster than light can cause paradoxes that break the rules of the universe.
You are not in a dark room, though, because there is something in this room right now that can slow down or stop light. It is possible for shadows to go faster than light, and they can even smash through it.
You might ask things like, “What the hell are you talking about?” Imagine that you have a flashlight that is strong enough to light up some of the moon. If you quickly move your finger across the front of the flashlight, the shadow it casts can move across the moon’s surface at speeds much faster than light.
If you wave a laser across the night sky, you can get the same kind of effect. Think of a huge dome that is, say, 100 light-years across and surrounds you. When this laser hits that dome 100 years from now, the points will fly across it at speeds much faster than light.
But these two examples are just tricks.
Astrophysicist Michio Kaku told Big Think, “There is no message, no net information, and no physical object that actually moves along this image. There is only the image of the beam as it races across the night sky.”
No, the laser point isn’t really moving. What you’re seeing are photons hitting the dome and then different photons hitting a different part of the dome 100 years later after you moved your laser.
The universe and physics stayed the same because nothing really moved faster than light, and no information was sent.
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