Condensed matter physics

Physicists at MIT have spotted the second sound of a superfluid. Besides being pleasantly alliterative, the phenomenon may explain how heat moves through certain rare materials on Earth and deep in space.Why Bitcoin won’t reach $1,000,000A superfluid is a state of matter that flows without friction. This happens at temperatures near absolute zero, where the motion of atoms is greatly reduced. In some materials—including superfluids like the quantum gas of lithium atoms, used by the recent team—heat propagates like a wave…

A team of researchers designed a two-dimensional photonic time crystal that they say could have applications in technologies like transmitters and lasers.What Is Carbon Capture? With Gizmodo’s Molly Taft | TechmodoDespite their name, photonic time crystals have little in common with time crystals, a phase of matter first proposed in 2012 and observed several years later. The fundamental commonality is that both crystals have structural patterns over time, but time crystals are quantum materials—the atoms are suspended in…