Journey to the Center of Geek

At extremely low energies - which means at extremely low temperatures - certain materials start to act in strange ways. An Einstein-Bose condensate, for example, involves a group of atoms that begin to act as if they were one giant atom.

Now there's research into another odd form of matter: supersolids.

Imagine placing a coin at the center of a turntable and then setting the turntable in motion. The coin rotates with the turntable, right?

Wrong, presuming the coin is made of solid helium-4. That's the implication of a new experiment reported last week in the online journal Science Express by Penn State physicist Moses H.W. Chan and his postdoctoral associate, Eun-Seong Kim.

Chan and Kim have demonstrated additional evidence of a seemingly bizarre new state of matter called a supersolid; that is, a solid that flows without friction, a property that in fluids is known as superfluidity.

Since this only occurs at temperatures near absolute zero, it's not a matter of any immediate practical application. But it can help toward a deeper understanding of matter on its most basic level and that in turn can build toward such very practical applications as high-temperature superconductivity, the flow of electricity without resistance. That would, for one thing, enable computers to work far faster and far more efficiently than is now possible. ("High-temperature" in this case means achievable by, say, a commercial freezer. Not so useful for your desktop but potentially really important for mainframes.)