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The tiny sliver of metal above, measuring as long as the human hair is wide, may be barely visible to the naked eye, but its implication to science is so staggering that it is hailed as the greatest scientific breakthrough of 2010.
Behold, the world’s first quantum machine:
It’s not much to look at. In fact, you can barely see it with the naked eye, and it doesn’t work unless it’s cooled down to just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. But when researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara created their tiny vibrating "springboard," that represented "the first time that scientists have demonstrated quantum effects in the motion of a human-made object," said Adrian Cho, a news writer for Science.
"On a conceptual level, that’s cool because it extends quantum mechanics into a whole new realm," he said. "On a practical level, it opens up a variety of possibilities ranging from new experiments that meld quantum control over light, electrical currents and motion to, perhaps someday, tests of the bounds of quantum mechanics and our sense of reality."
One of the more bizarre principles of quantum mechanics is that something can be in two states simultaneously: both on and off, both 1 and 0. Under just the right conditions, UCSB’s aluminum nitride oscillator took on a single quantum of motion, so that it vibrated both a little and a lot at the same time.
UCSB’s Aaron O’Connell, John Martinis and Andrew Cleland reported their results in March in the journal Nature. At the time, Cleland told me that "we were just trying to demonstrate quantum effects in a big thing."
"But a possible application would be if you try to detect these acoustic vibrations at the quantum level," he said. "You could do it with this. You could use it as a quantum microphone, or a quantum loudspeaker." Such devices might also be used to read out the results of a quantum computer’s calculations.
No word on whether Schroedinger’s cat is jumping for joy/already dead, but you can celebrate this achievement with the NeatoShop‘s latest physics T-shirt:
Look Out Schroedinger’s Cat, It’s a Trap! by Mike Jacobsen – $14.95
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by Frederick B. Reitz, Ph.C.
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington Illustrations by Marian Parry
I report here the first evidence that domestic cats exhibit quantum tunneling.
Subatomic particles can make seemingly impossible, instantaneous “jumps” from one place to another. This has been known in theory for well over half a century. Numerous examples of it have been observed and meticulously documented. Known as “quantum tunneling,” this strange phenomenon had previously been thought to occur only on very small scales.
In this paper I report instances of the spontaneous relocation of entire cats. Though cats are arguably quantal to the extent that they tend to exist as discrete entities, the appreciable magnitude of some of the cats in question constitutes a novel aspect of the tunneling phenomenon.
The physical literature contains many reports of electrons and similar particles spontaneously jumping or “tunneling” from one place to another via so-called “forbidden” routes. This phenomenon has enjoyed much attention since the advent of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). In all reports to date, the particles in question have ranged in size from extremely small to very, very small, with rare cases involving particles that are merely quite small. more …
Christoph Neimann illustrated the laws of physics as they apply to our daily lives. I can really relate to this one.
But back to Newton: he discovered that any two objects in the universe attract each other, and that this force is proportional to their mass.
The Earth is heavier than the Moon, and therefore attracts our bodies with a much greater force.
This explains why an empty refrigerator administrates a much smaller gravitational pull than, say, one that’s stacked with 50 pounds of delicious leftovers.
He also explains physics as it relates to waking up, subway crowding, and hair loss. Link -via The Daily What
Some physicists have proposed that the entire universe is not real, but a holographic illusion. Now astrophysicist Craig Hogan is building a machine to test that hypothesis:
Possible evidence for this model appeared last year in the unaccountable “noise” plaguing the GEO600 experiment in Germany, which searches for gravitational waves from black holes. To Hogan, the jitteriness suggested that the experiment had stumbled upon the lower limit of the spacetime pixels’ resolution.
Black hole physics, in which space and time become compressed, provides a basis for math showing that the third dimension may not exist at all. In this two-dimensional cartoon of a universe, what we perceive as a third dimension would actually be a projection of time intertwined with depth. If this is true, the illusion can only be maintained until equipment becomes sensitive enough to find its limits.[...]
“So we want to build a machine which will be the most sensitive measurement ever made of spacetime itself,” says Hogan. “That’s the holometer.”[...]
In the holometer, this loss of sync looks like a shaking or vibrations that represent jitters in spacetime itself, like the fuzziness of radio coming over too little bandwidth.
The holometer’s precision means that it doesn’t have to be large; at 40 meters in length, it is only one hundredth of the size of current interferometers, which measure gravitational waves from black holes and supernovas. Yet because the spacetime frequencies it measures are so rapid, it will be more precise over very short time intervals by seven orders of magnitude than any atomic clock in existence.
Link via The Agitator | Image: Paramount
Shaun the Sheep stars in a cute physics game in which you guide the sheep home. You have obstacles to cross, and three sheep of different mass. While you figure out a strategy, enjoy the artwork and sound effects. Link -via Metafilter
The game Flabby Physics is so simple it will drive you crazy! Just use your space bar to hit the star. That’s it. Good luck! Link -via b3ta
The Nobel Prize committee has announced the 2010 Nobel Prize laureates for Physics. The honor will be shared by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene“. However, this is not the first physics prize for Andre Geim.
Congratulations to Andre Geim, new Nobel Prize winner in physics. He becomes the first to win, as an individual, both a Nobel Prize (this year, together with Konstantin Novoselov, for experiments with the substance graphene) and an Ig Nobel Prize (in the year 2000, shared with Sir Michael Berry, for using magnets to levitate a frog).
You can see a video of the levitating frog at Improbable Research. Link
Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) tested Einstein’s theories about relative time in a physical setting. Time goes faster at higher elevations, and slower for moving objects. The experiments involved a comparison of two identical atomic clocks.
The NIST experiments focused on two scenarios predicted by Einstein’s theories of relativity. First, when two clocks are subjected to unequal gravitational forces due to their different elevations above the surface of the Earth, the higher clock—experiencing a smaller gravitational force—runs faster. Second, when an observer is moving, a stationary clock’s tick appears to last longer, so the clock appears to run slow. Scientists refer to this as the “twin paradox,” in which a twin sibling who travels on a fast-moving rocket ship would return home younger than the other twin. The crucial factor is the acceleration (speeding up and slowing down) of the travelling twin in making the round-trip journey.
NIST scientists observed these effects by making specific changes in one of the two aluminum clocks and measuring the resulting differences in the two ions’ relative ticking rates, or frequencies.
In one set of experiments, scientists raised one of the clocks by jacking up the laser table to a height one-third of a meter (about a foot) above the second clock. Sure enough, the higher clock ran at a slightly faster rate than the lower clock, exactly as predicted.
The second set of experiments examined the effects of altering the physical motion of the ion in one clock. (The ions are almost completely motionless during normal clock operations.) NIST scientists tweaked the one ion so that it gyrated back and forth at speeds equivalent to several meters per second. That clock ticked at a slightly slower rate than the second clock, as predicted by relativity. The moving ion acts like the traveling twin in the twin paradox.
So if you want to age more slowly, you should run as fast as you can on a beach or a valley below sea level. The time you gain would not offset the difference in the time you put in, but you might live longer due to the benefit of the physical exertion. Link -via reddit
(Image credit: Loel Barr)
At a 1997 soccer match, Roberto Carlos scored a goal against the French national team that seemed physically impossible. The ball seemed to curve around the French players. Physicists couldn’t explain the ball’s movement:
A group of French scientists, perhaps desperate to prove that at least the laws of physics weren’t actively rooting against their national team, have been able to figure out the trajectory of the ball and, with it, an equation to describe its unusual path.
It all comes down to the fact that, when a sphere spins, its trajectory is a spiral. Usually, gravity and the relatively short distance the ball travels cover up this spiral trajectory, but Carlos was a mere 115 feet away and kicked the ball hard enough to reveal its true spiral-like path. As you can see in the diagram above, the ball would have kept spiraling if gravity (and the netting) hadn’t gotten in the way.
At the link, you can see a video of the kick.
Link | Image: New Journal of Physics
John's
post about scientists measuring the shortest
interval of time ever inspired me to actually Google a question that
I've pondered for quite some time: is time quantized?
For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of quantization, one of the fundamental things ever discovered in physics occurred in 1900 when Max Planck worked out that energy is not infinitely divisible - there's a minimum unit of energy that is indivisible. That unit of energy (a "quantum") is so small that for us humans, it seems like energy (say, how hot something is) is a smooth gradient.
So, back to my original question: is there a fundamental unit of time, which is not further divisible into smaller units? In other words, is there a quantum of time?
Some physicists pegged the smallest unit of time that have any physical meaning as Planck time, the amount of time for a photon to travel the distance of 1 Planck length (a unit of length, equal to 1.6 x 10-35 m, where gravity, space time and "regular" physics cease to be valid and the effects of quantum mechanics dominate). 1 Planck time is about 10-43 seconds).
The closest answers that I found was provided by Scientific America circa 1999:
"The brief answer to this question is, 'Nobody knows.' Certainly there is no experimental evidence in favor of such a minimal unit. On the other hand, there is no evidence against it, except that we have not yet found it. There are no well-worked-out physics theories incorporating a fundamental unit of time, and there are substantial obstacles to doing so in a way that is compatible with the principles of General Relativity. Recent work on a theory of quantum gravity in which gravity is represented using loops in space suggests that there might be a way to do something roughly along these lines--not involving a minimum unit of time but rather a minimum amount of area for any two-dimensional surface, a minimum volume for any three-dimensional region in space and perhaps also a minimum 'hypervolume' for any four-dimensional region of space-time."
The article describes 3 more answers (tldr: "dunno") to the question: Link
Do we have any physicists in the audience that can provide a better answer? Say that there is a quantum of time - what does that mean to our understanding of reality?
All this time, it turns out that we may just be living inside a black hole. Physicist Nikodem Poplawski of Indiana University posited that inside each black hole there could exist another universe:
"Maybe the huge black holes at the centre of the Milky Way and other galaxies are bridges to different universes," Poplawski says. If that is correct – and it’s a big "if" – there is nothing to rule out our universe itself being inside a black hole. [...]
How would we know if we are living inside a black hole? Well, a spinning black hole would have imparted some spin to the space-time inside it, and this should show up as a "preferred direction" in our universe, says Poplawski. Such a preferred direction would result in the violation of a property of space-time called Lorentz symmetry, which links space and time. It has been suggested that such a violation could be responsible for the observed oscillations of neutrinos from one type to another.
Featuring a group of friends running on top of the water, "Liquid Mountaineering" was an international sensation on YouTube, getting more than 4.5 millions hits in just over a month. But this week it was confirmed a hoax by the shoe company prominently featured in the video. It’s a viral advertisement. But it looked so real! Popular Mechanics takes a look at the biomechanics of walking on water and why the Jesus Lizard can do it and we can’t.
Jamaican runner Usain Bolt, the current world record holder for the 100-meter sprint, ran 10.4 meters per second. But J.W. Glasheen and T.A. McMahon, two Harvard biologists who studied how the basilisk runs on water, found that in order to mimic the lizard, a human would need to run at almost 30 meters per second, “a velocity beyond human ability.” A man would also need “an average power output almost 15 times greater than the maximum sustained power output for humans.”
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by telegraph.
This is a physics-based game in which you design your own tools to accomplish tasks and collect cogs (which help you accomplish more tasks). At first, I thought it might be difficult to understand, but there are hints, prompts, and do-overs along the way. Before long, I was really into it and had to force myself to get back to work! From Aardman Studios, the folks behind Wallace and Gromit. Link -Thanks, Evan Duval!
Chinese scientists claim that they have teleported material over a distance of ten miles with 89% fidelity:
Teleportation over distances of a few hundred meters has previously only been accomplished with the photons traveling in fiber channels to help preserve their state. In this particular experiment, researchers maximally entangled two photons using both spatial and polarization modes and sent the one with higher energy through a ten-mile-long free space channel. They found that the distant photon was still able to respond to changes in state of the photon they held onto even at this unprecedented distance.
However, the long-distance teleportation of a photon is only a small step towards developing applications for the procedure. While photons are good at transmitting information, they are not as good as ions at allowing manipulation, an advancement we’d need for encryption. Researchers were also able to maintain the fidelity of the long-distance teleportation at 89 percent— decent enough for information, but still dangerous for the whole-body human teleportation that we’re all looking forward to.
Link via DVICE | Journal Article | Image: Paramount
The book Geekspeak: A Guide to Answering the Unanswerable, Making Sense of the Insensible, and Solving the Unsolvable by Dr. Graham Tattersall poses, and answers, those questions that no one else seems to address -until now. Can you tell how heavy a bus is by looking at it? What size wings does an angel need to fly? What are the best words to use in a personal ad? How much could sea levels rise?
Geekspeak is an essential tool that will help you exercise your brain and solve the unsolvable, make you sound intelligent so you can impress your friends, and enable you to better understand the fascinating world in which we live in ways never thought possible before.
This is one of those books that makes being a geek fun (which geeks already knew) and makes real-world math accessible to those who might avoid it otherwise. To give you a taste of Geekspeak, we have obtained permission to reprint a chapter for your perusal. Fly Wheels looks at measuring biological power in mechanical terms in order to compare the two.
This odd story marries archeology with physics. Roman lead ingots mined 2,000 years ago are an archaeological treasure. They are also perfect for shielding a nuclear particle detector for cutting-edge physics experiments.
The 120 lead ingots, each weighing about 33 kilograms, come from a larger load recovered 20 years ago from a Roman shipwreck, the remains of a vessel that sank between 80 B.C. and 50 B.C. off the coast of Sardinia. As a testimony to the extent of ancient Rome’s manufacturing and trading capacities, the ingots are of great value to archaeologists, who have been preserving and studying them at the National Archaeological Museum in Cagliari, southern Sardinia. What makes the ingots equally valuable to physicists is the fact that over the past 2,000 years their lead has almost completely lost its natural radioactivity. It is therefore the perfect material with which to shield the CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) detector, which Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) is building at the Gran Sasso laboratory.
Link -via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
(image credit: INFN/Cagliari Archeological Superintendence)
If you like geeky physics flash games, you’re going to love 1cup1coffee.com.
Here are some of my favorites:
If you try one, come on back and let me know what level you got up to! I have yet to finish any of them, but am really close on Demolition Dude.
A team of Russian physicists claims to have, for the first time, synthesized element 117. This element does not occur in nature and the sample was created in a laboratory:
A team led by Yuri Oganessian of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, reports smashing together calcium-48 — an isotope with 20 protons and 28 neutrons — and berkelium-249, which has 97 protons and 152 neutrons. The collisions spit out either three or four neutrons, creating two different isotopes of an element with 117 protons.[...]
The researchers briefly spotted signs of element 117 during two runs of collisions lasting 70 days each. In their paper, the researchers report observing the heavier isotope of element 117 decay with a half-life of 78 milliseconds; they measured the lighter one’s half-life at 14 milliseconds.
The new element, which has yet to be named, slips into a place on the periodic table between elements 116 and 118, both of which have already been discovered. Such superheavy elements are usually very radioactive and decay away almost instantly. But many researchers think it is possible that even heavier elements may occupy an “island of stability” in which superheavy atoms stick around for a while.
Atlanta-based photographer Erik Dixon got a tattoo illustrating the inverse square law, which “…is the physics equation for the fall off rate of light radiating from a source point. Something I use every time I shoot. This also applies to gravity and sound.”
If you were to get an intellectual tattoo, what would it be?
Link | Photo: Erik Dixon/Geeky Tattoos
The LHC began shooting subatomic particles at each other on Tuesday underground across the borders of France and Switzerland, and the world did not end.
Following two false starts due to electrical failures, protons whipped to more than 99 percent of the speed of light and to energy levels of 3.5 trillion electron volts apiece around a 17-mile underground magnetic racetrack outside of Geneva a little after 1 p.m. local time. They crashed together inside apartment-building sized detectors designed to capture every evanescent flash and fragment from microscopic fireballs thought to hold insights into the beginning of the world.
The soundless blooming of proton explosions was accompanied by the hoots and applause of scientists crowded into control rooms at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which built the collider.
Link -via Boing Boing
See the video. Link
Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York are cooking up a recipe that may reach seven trillion degrees Celsius at its peak! It’s called the Pioneering High Energy Nuclear Interaction eXperiment, or PHENIX. The heat is produced by slamming particles of gold together at close to the speed of light. The result is a glop of subatomic particles they call plasma.
Particle physicists, cosmologists, and even string theorists are all trying to understand why quarks and gluons, the building blocks of protons and neutrons (which in turn build atoms), behave this way at such high temperatures. Why doesn’t the mixture turn into a gas, like water turns to steam at 100 degrees Celsius? How hot would it have to be to vaporize? And if the universe was filled with this liquid goop shortly after the Big Bang, how did it eventually turn into stars, planets, and people?
“We get giant discussions and even some vociferous arguments,” says Jacak. “The big question for us is what is going on inside [this substance] and how does it work. On the experimental side we’re trying to measure its properties, and one of the first properties you could measure is its temperature.”
The subatomic substance only exists for a tiny fraction of a second at a time,so it must be done over and over again. Link -via Digg
Go get your protective tin foil hat, because you’re going to need it. German scientists have been trying to understand why their equipment that measures gravitational waves has been picking up a particular sound. One possible answer that they’ve come up with is that the entire universe is a holographic illusion:
For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time – the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into “grains”, just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. “It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time,” says Hogan.
If this doesn’t blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: “If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.”
The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.
The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard ‘t Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.
This article at Discover Magazine has nothing to do with the science fiction stories we are so familiar with. Author Sean Carroll looks at time travel as a physicist. He says if time travel were possible (and it might be), there would be no paradox, because we cannot change what has already happened. Ever. Then it gets weird.
Imagine that we have been appointed Guardian of the Gate, and our job is to keep vigilant watch over who passes through. One day, as we are standing off to the side, we see a person walk out of the rear side of the gate, emerging from one day in the future. That’s no surprise; it just means that you will see that person enter the front side of the gate tomorrow. But as you keep watch, you notice that he simply loiters around for one day, and when precisely 24 hours have passed, the traveler walks calmly through the front of the gate. Nobody ever approached from elsewhere. That 24-hour period constitutes the entire life span of this time traveler. He experiences the same thing over and over again, although he doesn’t realize it himself, since he does not accumulate new memories along the way. Every trip through the gate is precisely the same to him. That may strike you as weird or unlikely, but there is nothing paradoxical or logically inconsistent about it.
(image credit: Biwa Studios)
We’ve seen space wars fought in movies and TV shows for almost a hundred years now, but what would a real-life space battle be like? It wouldn’t be like the movies, that’s for sure!
In principle, yes, your enemy could come at you from any direction at all. In practice, though, the Buggers are going to do no such thing. At least, not until someone invents an FTL drive, and we can actually pop our battle fleets into existence anywhere near our enemies. The marauding space fleets are going to be governed by orbit dynamics – not just of their own ships in orbit around planets and suns, but those planets’ orbits. For the same reason that we have Space Shuttle launch delays, we’ll be able to tell exactly what trajectories our enemies could take between planets: the launch window. At any given point in time, there are only so many routes from here to Mars that will leave our imperialist forces enough fuel and energy to put down the colonists’ revolt.
That’s just the beginning of the difference we would see between a movie battle and what would happen in the outer space we have. Read more at Gizmodo. Link -via Digg
Points for you if you already understand this physics-based bumper sticker. The effect is called blue shift. From Wikipedia:
Blue shift is the shortening of a transmitted signal’s wavelength, and/or an increase in its frequency, due to the Doppler Effect, which indicates that the object is moving toward the observer. The name comes from the fact that the shorter-wavelength end of the optical spectrum is the blue (or violet) end, hence, when visible light is compacted in wavelength, it is shifted towards the “blue” end of the spectrum. Since the longer-wavelength end of the visible electromagnetic spectrum is red, the opposite effect, of a lengthening of a signal’s wavelength, is referred to as redshifting.
While the terms “redshifting” and “blueshifting” imply significantly redder or bluer light, only the most distant galaxies and those moving at speeds far above average emit light that arrives with perceptible red or blue tinges. For the most part, shifting is not a visible phenomenon.[1]
Researchers Qiang Chen and Tie Jun Cui of Southeast University in Nanjing, China created a device that partially simulates the effects (to a limited scale) of a black hole. It bends light differently from a the way that a black hole does, but it will readily absorb it:
The hole is the latest clever device to use ‘metamaterials’, specially engineered materials that can bend light in unusual ways. Previously, scientists have used such metamaterials to build ‘invisibility carpets’ and super-clear lenses.[...]
The new meta-black hole also bends light, but in a very different way. Rather than relying on gravity, the black hole uses a series of metallic ‘resonators’ arranged in 60 concentric circles. The resonators affect the electric and magnetic fields of a passing light wave, causing it to bend towards the centre of the hole. It spirals closer and closer to the black hole’s ‘core’ until it reaches the 20 innermost layers. Those layers are made of another set of resonators that convert light into heat. The result: what goes in cannot come out. “The light into the core is totally absorbed,” Cui says.
Link via Popular Science | Image: NASA
There’s a strange hexagon shape at the north pole of the planet Saturn. It was spotted 20 years ago, and Cassini confirms it’s still there. Is it some alien fortress/outpost? Or something surprisingly cooler?
The entropy of the universe may be 100 times worse than expected. Ron Cowen writes in Science News that recent research suggests that the universe will degrade faster physicists had previously thought:
An analysis by Chas Egan of the Australian National University in Canberra and Charles Lineweaver of the University of New South Wales in Sydney indicates that the collective entropy of all the supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies is about 100 times higher than previously calculated. Because supermassive black holes are the largest contributor to cosmic entropy, the finding suggests that the entropy of the universe is also about 100 times larger than previous estimates, the researchers reported online September 23 at arXiv.org.[...]
In the case of the universe, Egan says, “we’d like to know [when and] if the entropy will eventually reach a maximum value, marking the end of all dissipative processes, including life.” Physicists have dubbed that maximum entropy “heat death.”
I know nothing about physics, therefore I propose that people take alarmist, unjustified responses to this disastrous news.
Link via Gizmodo | Image: NASA
You’ll find a discussion in this forum.
Absolute Zero is Cool T-Shirt – just $9.95 over at Neatorama’s Online Store
There’s not many absolutes in science, so absolute zero – the coldest temperature theoretically possible where entropy is reduced to zero – truly stands out. Indeed, things get really, really weird quantum mechanically as we approach absolute zero. Let’s take a look at what fun we can have going down the thermometer all the way to 0 Kelvin.
Let’s begin with the coldest place on Earth, Antarctica. The temperatures there reach a minimum of about -80 °C (-112 °F) in the winter, with the coldest ever recorded temperature of -89.2 °C (-128.6 °F).
In 2006, Anthony and Christine Powell of Frostbytes blog (fantastic photos there, by the way) recorded this video clip of what people in Antarctica consider a terrible weather (euphemistically called "Condition 1") at the McMurdo Station. So, next time you’re having some terrible winter weather where ever you are, just remember this video clip.
Purdue’s Senior System Engineer George Goble hated waiting for his BBQ to light. So, in 1995, he decided to find the fastest way to achieve barbecue ignition. He tried propane, acetylene torches, and even oxygen-fuel gas or racing fuel (the last one took 30 seconds). But that wasn’t fast enough – he wanted to set the world record of fastest ignition. (Source)
So Goble decided to get serious and reached for liquid oxygen (LOX, boiling point: 90.2 K or -183 °C). He doused 3 gallons of liquid oxygen (LOX) onto 60 pounds of charcoal and a smoldering cigarette*. Within 3 seconds about 40 pounds of the charcoal burned and the grill was vaporized.
For his creativity, George won the 1996 Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He also attracted the attention of the West Lafayette, Indiana fire department who warned him never to repeat the stunt ever again.
*Actually it’s good that he had a lit cigarette in the pile. Pouring LOX onto unlit charcoal will cause it to explode at about the force of one stick of dynamite per charcoal. If you spill LOX on asphalt, it can detonate. Oh, did we mention that LOX is a rocket fuel? (The orange external tank of the Space Shuttle is filled with it.) Needless to say, don’t try this at home.
Nitrogen becomes liquid at 77 K (-196 °C), which is pretty darn cold. Liquid Nitrogen or LN2 is actually a very useful substance: it’s used in the laboratory to freeze things, in hospitals as a medical treatment to freeze and remove warts and skin lesions, and even in restaurants to make alcoholic ice cream.
Wait – make alcoholic ice cream? Yes, it turns out though you can’t freeze alcohol in the freezer (not cold enough), you can do so with liquid nitrogen. Here’s Ferran Adria, Head Chef of elBulli Restaurant using liquid nitrogen to make alcohol sorbets and frozen pistachio puree truffles. Yum!
Going down the temperature scale, we have liquid hydrogen at 20.28 K (-252.87°C). Liquid Hydrogen is good for one thing: fuel. It is a component of rocket fuel, and a perennial contender of zero-emission fuel (I’m looking at you, BMW H2R!)
Liquid hydrogen is used in one of the coolest (literally!) rocket engines ever created by NASA. Here’s the Common Extensible Cryogenic Engine ("CECE" for short), which generates a scalding 5,000 degree steam and a whopping 13,000 lb of thrust yet form icicles at the rim of its nozzle at the same time. It’s quite the fire and ice engine:
CECE is fueled by a mixture of -297 F liquid oxygen and -423 F liquid hydrogen. The engine components are super-cooled to similar low temperatures–and that’s where the icicles come from. As CECE burns its frigid fuels, hot steam and other gases are propelled out the nozzle. The steam is cooled by the cold nozzle, condensing and eventually freezing to form icicles around the rim. (Source)
Things get really, really strange with liquid helium. First of all, it’s the only element that remains liquid down to absolute zero (though you can solidify it with great pressure). It has two form of liquid phases – at 4.2K (-268.95 °C), helium-4 (an isotope of helium) becomes liquid. At 2.17 K, it turns into a superfluid.
And the fun begins: superfluid is weird – it has zero viscosity (a measure of friction for fluids), zero entropy, and infinite thermal conductivity. If a superfluid is placed in an open container, it will creep up the sides and flow over the top. If you rotate the container from stationary, the superfluid inside will never move.
And weirder still: if you place a capillary tube in a pool of superfluid, then shine light on it, you’ll get a frictionless fountain that will flow forever (no friction*, remember?)
*Actually, in bulk fluid, superfluid does have some viscosity whereas in capillary it has no viscosity. Scientists think the explanation of this paradox is that superfluid is composed of two components – the normal component, and the superfluid component. I told you it’s strange.
Quick: what’s the coldest object in space? A frozen comet or a chilly gas cloud? Nope, the coldest object in space is actually a manmade object – the Planck Telescope – launched by the European Space Agency.
As part of experiments to measure the cosmic microwave background (the afterglow of the Big Bang to you and me), the Planck Telescope is cooling its instruments to -273.05 °C or 0.1 °C above absolute zero.
But what about the coldest natural object in space? That title belongs to the Boomerang Nebula (aka the Bow Tie Nebula). The protoplanetary nebula located 5,000 light-years away from Earth has been spewing ultracold gas for 1,500 years. This cooled down the nebula to a mere 1 K above absolute zero (Source).
Boomerang Nebula, credit: European Space Agency/NASA
In 2003, Nobel Laureate Wolfang Ketterle and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology created the coolest man-made substance on Earth: they cooled a Bose-Einstein condensate of sodium atoms down to 450 picoKelvin (0.00000000045 K).
In 2009, Tauno Knuuttila and colleagues at the Helsinki University of Technology’s Low Temperature Lab used magnetic refrigeration (yes, using magnets to cool things down – ain’t physics interesting?) to cool rhodium to 100 pK (technically, it’s the temperature for nuclear spin, not its overall thermal energy).
Now that’s cold!
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