

MIT discovers a new state of matter, a new kind of magnetism - memoryfailure
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/143782-mit-discovers-a-new-state-of-matter-a-new-kind-of-magnetism

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yread
Here is the MIT press release [http://www.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/mit-
researchers-discover-...](http://www.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/mit-researchers-
discover-a-new-kind-of-magnetism-1219.html)

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ChuckMcM
Much better. I am not sure what to make of fractional quantum states however,
back when I took quantum mechanics fractional states were as impossible as
having electrons at mid-energy levels.

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rubidium
You may want to read about the discovery that earned three researchers the
1998 Nobel prize then.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_quantum_Hall_effect>

Though, you usually need to take graduate level solid state course to get to
understanding it.

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Retric
My vary limited understanding of that was it was closer to an emergent state
on a surface vs. something that ever applied to an individual atom. Can you
clarify what's going on?

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benologist
Submitter looks a lot like a spammer for Ziff Davis (geek.com, pcmag.com,
extremetech.com).

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coin
And their mobile version of the page is utterly crap on a mobile device. I
wished they just served up the normal version and ignor the user agent.

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quux
They don't go into details, but I assume the implications for communications
are new ways to make entangled particles for quantum cryptography, not FTL
communication or something else that's considered impossible. Right?

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themgt
Well, from my read, it'd be theoretically possible to transmit at near-
infinite bandwidth using quantum entanglement (since you just keep adding more
entangled particles). There'd still be the latency of at least the speed of
light though

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yeison
Entangled particles communicate instantaneously through space. That is to say,
communication faster than the speed of light. This was actually one of the
reasons that Einstein did not want to accept quantum theory. In fact, he
proposed quantum entanglement as an argument against the validity of quantum
theory. According to quantum theory, transfer of information faster than the
speed of light should be possible (via quantum entanglement). Therefore,
quantum theory was incorrect/incomplete- that was Einstein's reasoning.

There would still have to be an entanglement step. The photons need to be
coupled. This is currently accomplished by a laser across long distances. I
suppose that in this sense there is a latency at the speed of light to add new
particles. But once the photons have been entangled they can communicate
instantaneously.

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iliis
No. Sorry to shatter the dream of FTL communication. You cannot achieve it
with entangled particles. While it seems like there is some transfer of
information going on its much better to think of two entangled photons as a
pair of dice which will roll the same number wherever they are. Spooky, yes.
Useful for cryptography, certainly. But sadly no FTL communication. At best
its FTL transmission of complete noise.

Edit: See <http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation> for more.

Edit 2: If you say that the particles themselve are 'communicating' ftl, then
you are perfeclty correct, yes. Unfortunatly one cannot use this behaviour to
transmit arbitrary data.

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politician
I don't understand. If they can measure and compare the states of two
entangled photons to determine that the states are identical, then couldn't
they encode information in the intervals between state changes by measuring
the photons at a previously agreed upon rate? Or is it simply impossible to
impute a state transition on one of the entangled photons?

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danielsju6
Comparison of the states of each entangled particle, to find the signal,
requires communication (light-speed); so while there was information sent, you
can't figure out what it is until you receive a signal from the source of the
transmission, thus no causal violations.

This is also why it's interesting cryptographically, unless you have
information on the movements of both particles you can't pull a signal from
the movements.

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kalms
So you couldn't get a predictive behaviour from each particle, without
external communication? Am I understanding you correctly?

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themgt
Correct. But in theory a small classical signal could be sent to essentially
say "measure/extract data from the entangled particles in this way", and then
the bandwidth from this communication would be based on the amount of data
extractable from the entangled particles, while the latency will still be
capped at however long it takes to send the classical signal

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tocomment
Does anyone know how it might lead to new types of superconductors?

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sp332
From wikipedia: "In a conventional superconductor, the electronic fluid cannot
be resolved into individual electrons. Instead, it consists of bound pairs of
electrons known as Cooper pairs.... The Cooper pair fluid is thus a
superfluid, meaning it can flow without energy dissipation."
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity#Zero_electric...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity#Zero_electrical_DC_resistance)
So a new kind of magnetism that lets electrons flow like a liquid might be
very useful to develop new superconductors.

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subb
They missed the chance of calling that SQL.

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maeon3
New state of matter? Looks like it's so new that it isn't yet added here.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_matter>

There are so many properties of matter that the notion of "solid liquid gas"
is about as ridiculous as the ancient notion of alchemy where matter/energy is
a function of earth, wind and fire.

Cool something down and turns into to a solid, that is, until you cool it so
much it becomes a liquid again, that climbs walls to fall out of cups. Matter
is bizarre.

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sp332
From the press release: "The QSL is a solid crystal, but its magnetic state is
described as liquid: Unlike the other two kinds of magnetism, the magnetic
orientations of the individual particles within it fluctuate constantly,
resembling the constant motion of molecules within a true liquid." I'm not
sure why the extremetech article calls it a new state of matter.

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maeon3
Catagorizing new matter/energy phemenon as a state of matter just confuses the
understanding. If the particle is simultaneously exhibiting qualities of
liquid and a solid, it means a shift in thinking is required.

Iron is solid, but that doesn't mean we should group it with other things that
are hard. The other hard object might be hard for a completely different
quantum mechanical reason.

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jerf
The problem is there's a conflation here. "States of matter" which are
solid/liquid/gas and "states of matter" which are quantum spin liquids are not
the same thing. One is an English term, and one is a more precise
physic/chemistry term.

In English, there is just "ice", the "solid" form of water. In
physics/chemistry, there are 15 known phases of ice:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice#Phases>

Don't try to understand one in terms of the other. And your "shift in
thinking" has _loooong_ since occurred. It just isn't useful to conventional
English, so it has not picked it up.

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Daniel_Newby
Flagged. ExtremeTech is a garbage site that forcibly redirects me to an
utterly broken mobile garbage page.

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jmedwards
Typical day at the office.

