condensed matter physics – Quanta Magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org Illuminating science Mon, 16 Sep 2024 14:10:47 -0400 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2 Physicists Puzzle Over Emergence of Strange Electron Aggregates https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-puzzle-over-emergence-of-strange-electron-aggregates-20240529/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-puzzle-over-emergence-of-strange-electron-aggregates-20240529/#respond Wed, 29 May 2024 16:15:17 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=138229 The post Physicists Puzzle Over Emergence of Strange Electron Aggregates first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> In the 127 years since the electron was discovered, it has undergone more scrutiny than perhaps any other particle. As a result, its properties are not just well known, but rote, textbook material: Electrons have a smidgen of mass and negative electric charge. In a conductor, they swim relatively unimpeded as a current; in an insulator, they barely move. Over time, caveats have cropped up.

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-puzzle-over-emergence-of-strange-electron-aggregates-20240529/feed/ 0 Will Better Superconductors Transform the World? https://www.quantamagazine.org/will-better-superconductors-transform-the-world-20240509/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/will-better-superconductors-transform-the-world-20240509/#respond Thu, 09 May 2024 13:03:57 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=137831 The post Will Better Superconductors Transform the World? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> If superconductors — materials that conduct electricity without any resistance — worked at temperatures and pressures close to what we would consider normal, they would be world-changing. They could dramatically amplify power grids, levitate high-speed trains and enable more affordable medical technologies. For more than a century, physicists have tinkered with different compounds and...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/will-better-superconductors-transform-the-world-20240509/feed/ 0 A Quantum Trick Implied Eternal Stability. Now the Idea May Be Falling Apart. https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-quantum-trick-implied-eternal-stability-now-its-falling-apart-20240226/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-quantum-trick-implied-eternal-stability-now-its-falling-apart-20240226/#respond Mon, 26 Feb 2024 15:35:43 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=135717 The post A Quantum Trick Implied Eternal Stability. Now the Idea May Be Falling Apart. first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> It is a truth of both physics and everyday experience that things fall apart. Ice melts. Buildings crumble. Any object, if you wait long enough, gets mixed up with itself and its surroundings beyond recognition. But beginning in 2005, a series of breakthroughs made this death march seem optional. In just the right quantum setting, any arrangement of electrons or atoms would stay put for all...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-quantum-trick-implied-eternal-stability-now-its-falling-apart-20240226/feed/ 0 New Kind of Magnetism Spotted in an Engineered Material https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-kind-of-magnetism-spotted-in-an-engineered-material-20240110/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-kind-of-magnetism-spotted-in-an-engineered-material-20240110/#respond Wed, 10 Jan 2024 15:33:49 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=133972 The post New Kind of Magnetism Spotted in an Engineered Material first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> All the magnets you have ever interacted with, such as the tchotchkes stuck to your refrigerator door, are magnetic for the same reason. But what if there were another, stranger way to make a material magnetic? In 1966, the Japanese physicist Yosuke Nagaoka conceived of a type of magnetism produced by a seemingly unnatural dance of electrons within a hypothetical material. Now...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-kind-of-magnetism-spotted-in-an-engineered-material-20240110/feed/ 0 The Year in Physics https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-biggest-discoveries-in-physics-in-2023-20231221/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-biggest-discoveries-in-physics-in-2023-20231221/#respond Thu, 21 Dec 2023 21:06:38 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=132721 The post The Year in Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> By one metric, this year’s biggest physics news happened 80 years ago. Yet while the success of a movie about the making of the atomic bomb was a surprise, the discoveries coming out of actual physics laboratories — including the grandest laboratory of them all, the universe itself — were no less impressive than the surge in interest about J. Robert Oppenheimer. The James Webb Space Telescope...

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