-
2135 - Matter
- Atoms at Absolute Zero. There
are at least six forms of matter.
Everyone is familiar with three of them: gas, liquid, solid. If we keep cooling and adjusting temperatures
and pressures on matter we can come across three more forms of matter: plasma, boson condensation, fermionic condensation. Learn about the strange properties matter
acquires as temperatures approach -273 C, or 0 degrees Kelvin.
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-
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---------------------------------- 2135 -
Atoms at Absolute Zero
-
- There are at
least six forms of matter. Everyone is
familiar with three of them:
-
- (1) gas
-
- (2) liquid
-
- (3) solid
-
- A typical
example would be cooling water vapor to a liquid and then to crystalline ice.
If we keep cooling and adjusting temperatures and
pressures on matter we can come across three more forms of matter:
-
- (4) plasma
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- (5) boson condensation
-
- (6) fermionic condensation.
-
- Request several
other Reviews available that address
much of the background for Absolute Zero.
For this Review I hope you learn
about the strange properties matter acquires as temperatures approach -273 C,
or 0 degrees Kelvin.
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- Plasma is a
form of matter that has lost its electrons and has become positively
charged. The positively charged nuclei
are called ions and the matter is said to be ionized. Typically, plasma is an ionized gas.
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- Strange as
this sounds plasma is the most common form of matter in the Universe. 99% of the visible Universe is plasma,
particularly in the stars and in the interstellar gas. Because plasma carries a positive charge it
is strongly affected by electric and magnetic fields.
-
- Plasma is the
material that makes up the Sun. When you
see solar flares you see the ionized plasma arching in loops following the
Sun’s magnetic lines of force.
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- Other common
appearances of plasma are in fluorescent bulbs, neon signs, the Aurora Borealis
(Northern Lights) and TV displays. The
Plasma televisions use xenon and neon gas in hundreds of thousands of tiny
cells.
-
- When a
voltage is applied the ionized gas rushes to the electrodes and collides
emitting ultraviolet photons. The back
of each cell is coated with a phosphor.
The ultraviolet light emitted by the plasma excites the phosphors to
give off colored light. Each cell is, in
effect a fluorescent lamp.
-
- We will
continue to lower the temperature and expand our vocabulary to learn about the
next two forms of matter. Bose
Condensation and Fermionic Condensation are the freezing transition phase of
Bosons and Fermions.
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- All known matter is made up of fundamental
particles that are either Bosons or
Fermions. Bosons are the “force
carrying” particles such as photons for the electromagnetic force, W-Z-bosons
for the Weak Force and Gluons for the Strong Force. Fermions are all the particles of ordinary
matter such as electrons, protons, and neutrons (i.e.: Quarks).
-
- The Bose
Condensation, sometimes referred to as the Bose-Einstein Condensation, was
named after Satyendranath Bose and Albert Einstein. These two physicists predicted the existence
of Bose Condensation in 1924. Bose was
born in Calcutta , India in 1894. He
published his paper in 1924 claiming that atoms cooled to near Absolute Zero
would lose all their kinetic energy and in effect become one super atom, a new
form of matter.
-
- In 1925 Einstein developed the quantum
statistics that applied to this theory and to all bosons. By the way bosons were also named after
Bose. This 5th state of matter was not
actually produced in the laboratory until 1995, 70 years later, at the
University of Colorado.
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- In 1926
Enrico Fermi and Paul Dirac developed the quantum statistics for all
fermions. Fermi was born in 1901 in
Rome, Italy. He came to the United
States in 1938 after receiving the Nobel Prize.
Enrico was studying the neutron.
Little did he know that it would also be called a fermion years later.
-
- He is credited with inventing the first
nuclear reactor, uranium fission, in 1942.
He became part of the Manhattan
Project and his invention became the atom bomb that was dropped on Japan.
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- Paul Dirac
was born in 1902 in Bristo., Glouchestershire, England. In 1930 Dirac first suggested that there must
be a positive twin to the electron because it showed up in his math. The positron was discovered 2 years
later. Dirac received the Nobel Prize in
1933 for his prediction of antimatter.
These two physicists worked out the quantum statistics for all fermions
in 1926.
-
- So, if you
have a fundamental particle and it obeys the
Bose-Einstein statistics than it is a boson. It you have a fundamental particle and it
obeys the Fermi-Dirac statistics than it is a fermion.
-
- The math that
these physicists developed predicted the existence of these new forms of matter
long before they were discovered. Years
later they were discovered in the laboratories around the world. Super cooled Bose and Fermionic Condensations
are a state of matter that displays some very strange behaviors. Here are some of them:
-
- (1) Superfluids
- have zero viscosity. The liquids can flow without friction. These condensations have zero entropy, and
infinite thermal conductivity. It is
impossible to set up a temperature gradient in these superfluids.
-
- (2) Superconductors - have
electrons that can flow with zero resistance.
Electricity flows without producing heat, therefore there is no power
loss. It is impossible to set up a
voltage gradient across a superconductor.
Physicists have observed electrical current flowing is a super
conducting ring for over a year with no sign of resistance.
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- (3) Superfluids
- super cooled Helium 4 in an
open container at 2.186 Kelvin will flow up the sides of the container,
overcome the force of gravity with capillary action and spread out across the
table until it is only one atom thick.
-
- (4) Diamagnetic
- if you drop a bar magnet on top
of the super conducting ring that is maintaining a persistent current the
magnetic forces between the super conductor and the magnet are repulsive and
sufficiently strong enough to support the magnet’s weight. If we could engineer super conducting rails
we could magnetically levitate trains that could travel across the country at
high speeds using almost no energy.
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- When Bose and
Fermionic Condensations occur the atoms become one lattice of positive nuclei
.01 to .04 nanometers apart. The
electrons pair up each having opposite spins and are 100 nanometers apart. (The
electron pairs are called Cooper Pairs.)
The electrons produce a current on the surface of the material with zero
resistance shielding the rest of the material from any magnetic field. (This diamagnetic behavior is called the
Meissner Effect.)
-
- (5) Slow the speed of light to a stop - A Harvard University team has slowed a light
pulse down to 38 miles per hour in a cloud of sodium atoms cooled to near
absolute zero. Two separate atomic
clouds of sodium atoms are in states of Bose Condensation. A pulse of laser light is shown into one
cloud. The slowly moving cloud travels
toward the second cloud. The photons of
light turn into matter according to E=mc^2.
The clouds merge.
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- A second
laser energizes the combined cloud and the original light pulse reappears. From a standing start the light returns to
186,282 miles per second and the lightwave reproduces the exact waveform of the
original light beam. Sending light
through a Bose Condensation might result in a whole new way of transmitting
information, eliminating fiber optics, up/down converter IC’s, and electrical
wires.
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- (6) Superfluids
- have zero viscosity. If you put a Superfluid in a closed container
and spin the container. The fluid will
remain stationary until a certain spin velocity is reached, then it will very
quickly begin spinning at that critical speed.
The speed is quantisized - the fluid will only spin at certain speeds,
otherwise, it remains stationary.
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- Much of the
discoveries in super cooled matter come from the statistical nature of
thermodynamics. The laws of
thermodynamics state that heat always travels from the warmer body to the
colder body, that all systems evolve to become more random, more disorderly,
their entropy always increases.
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- Entropy can
only flow in one direction. Time can
only flow in one direction. These laws
are due to statistics. If you break an
egg it is not that it cannot be reassembled, it is just that it is highly
unlikely. Time and entropy go in the
direction they do because of the overwhelming likelihood that out of a random
sequence of microscopic interactions less ordered situations will always
result.
-
- Entropy
decreases as temperature decreases, but in a closed system entropy always
increases. The state of maximum entropy
is the state of thermal equilibrium. The
Universe is always heading toward this state of maximum entropy.
-
- So far the Universe has expanded and cooled to
2.73K. Is it possible that these other
forms of matter already exist in outer space?
Is it possible that the Universe will all of a sudden go through a
condensation phase transition, changing the form of all matter?
Will our world survive such a phase transition should it happen? Stay tunes there is still more to learn.
-
- October 19, 2018. 729
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------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
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--------------------- Friday, October 19, 2018 -------------------------
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