Solid liquid gas and plasma a simple and orderly hierarchy of matter that school children the world
over can recite but what if we could combine the properties of two of these and create a
whole new hybrid form of matter that seemingly violates known laws of physics for example
think of a solid liquid combination along the lines of the sci-fi classic Terminator 2 Judgment
Day you would theoretically get the crystalline structure of a solid that flows like a liquid
and its possible applications are mind-blowing and now it's no longer theoretical welcome to
Factnomenal in today's video we reveal a stunning leap forward by physicists who've combined what
appears to be mutually exclusive properties into an entirely new state of matter the super solid
much like time travel and wormholes scientists have long theorized the existence or at least
possibilities of super solids in 1957 physicist Eugene Gross predicted this utterly
counterintuitive state of matter which behaves both as a solid and a frictionless liquid
simultaneously in terms of technological capabilities this was akin to Leonardo
Da Vinci's 1493 design for the helicopter researchers have known for years of super
fluid the result of cooling liquid helium below its boiling point to minus 452 degrees Fahrenheit
this is bizarre in its own right able to do things other fluids thankfully cannot such as climb up
and over the sides of a container and stay motionless while the container is spun if you
cool any material low enough it becomes a solid except for helium quantum physicist Warwick Bowen
from the University of Queensland explains that it's due to the quirk in quantum mechanics that
materials always have a minuscule amount of quantum zero point energy even when they're at
absolute zero he says for helium that energy is enough to melt the solid in some sense quantum
mechanics is melting the helium and causing it to be a very different type of fluid
basically a superfluid that flows without friction or turbulence but more on that later so what
exactly is it as Bowen further notes we don't 100 understand ourselves john beamish an experimental
physicist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton explains that a normal liquid being spun around in
a cup will circulate slower and soon stop when the cup is put down not so with a superfluid
as he says if you set down a cup with liquids circulating around and you come back 10 minutes
later of course it's stopped moving but if you did that with helium at low temperature and came back
a million years later it would still be moving the super solid is a combination of the mundane and
the esoteric after all what's more mundane than a simple solid object the esoteric is this wonderful
quirk of quantum mechanics we call the superfluid and the strangeness is just getting started
in 2017 MIT researchers hit pay dirt physicists initially tried to find super solids in super
cool helium which seems logical in that this is where glimpses of superfluids have been seen
but so far no luck then experiments turned to the elements of rubidium and lanthanum
trapping a small number of gaseous atoms and cooling them to only a fraction of a degree
above absolute zero the lowest temperature possible minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit
if your local weather forecast ever calls for this temperature you should probably leave your
faucets running researchers took what's called a Bose-Einstein condensate a special state of matter
created in 2001 by Nobel prize in physics winning researchers Eric A Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterly,
and Carl E Wyman and used lasers to cool it to near absolute zero there the physicists
played with the interactions of these super cold atoms in this state of quantum weirdness using
the intensely magnetic Diprosium 164 to cause clumping together in droplets similar to small
bar magnets the team proceeded to carefully align the balance between long-range magnetic
interactions and short-range contact interactions between atoms says Matthew Norcia physicist
at the Institute for Quantum Research at the University of Innsbruck Optik in Austria in
doing so the team created a long one-dimensional tube of droplets that held free-flowing atoms a 1D
super solid Norcia explains further normally you would think that each atom would be found in a
specific droplet with no way to get between them however in the super solid state each particle is
delocalized across all the droplets existing simultaneously in each droplet the result
a mind-altering series of high-density regions the droplets that shear the same delocalized atoms and
enable frictionless flow to picture a super solid consider an ice cube immersed in liquid water
with frictionless flow of the water through the cube explains Dr. Bruno Laburthe-Tolra of Paris
North University breakthrough number two came in 2021 with the formation of systems with multiple
rows of droplets and thus a two-dimensional super solid besides the obvious accomplishment of a feat
never before done the new state of matter opens unimaginable possibilities for research into
the unknown now the super solid form is in a new dimension from a tiny tube into a small 2d sheet
the fundamental laws of physics are about to get even more fascinating
on his deathbed German physicist Werner Heisenberg is alleged to have said when i meet god i'm going
to ask him two questions why relativity and why turbulence i really believe he'll have an
answer for the first whether Heisenberg said that or not turbulence is everywhere any air
traveler knows its effects on aircraft you can see it as water flows over and around rocks and
your body circulates blood and nutrients through a convoluted and turbulent system but equations used
to describe realistic conditions of turbulence rapidly disintegrate into an unstable and tangled
mess think weather forecasting to accurately analyze and measure turbulence that is to form
a general theoretical description of it has been an elusive white whale of science for centuries
with the advent of two-dimensional super solids scientists can now study how vortices form in
the hole between several adjacent droplets and thus advance our understanding of intricate
interactions on a quantum scale and maybe just maybe inch closer to unraveling what some call
the last great outstanding problem of classical physics and quantum technologies of which we can
barely imagine just took a major step forward so what do you think about this new state of matter
and its limitless possibilities are we about to witness advances that were inconceivable a few
short years ago tell us in the comments and as always thank you for watching Factnomenal