Slashdot | Scientists Create Supersolid From Helium
“A superfluid is a fluid that flows without viscosity, meaning that if you were to stir a spoon in a superfluid soup, you could take out the spoon and the soup would keep swirling forever on, since there is no mechanism there (i. e. no friction) to make the vortex you just made disappear.”
Seriously, how cool is this stuff. This kind of thing facinates me.
In lay terms from Slashdot;
“Imagine a big block of swiss cheese (the kind of cheese that’s got all the holes in it). Now those holes are basically “vacancies” of cheese. Now, imagine if the holes moved around.”
” … So, basically, they’ve found a state of matter where the vacancies move around in a solid. In a sense, they’re claiming that they found a block of cheese in the refridgerator where the holes keep moving. And this is why there’s going to be controversy over this claim: they’re alot of people who are going to say “no way - cheese doesn’t work that way…”
It would make for a crazy club sandwich… Yum.”
