http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/Weyl-points-detected-0716 see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Weyl http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/...ic-particles-could-lead-to-faster-electronics http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/07/15/science.aaa9297
So. Is this another harbinger of doom, you friggin' crackpot? Why haven't you sounded the alarm yet, or sued somebody else?
I'm wondering if anyone has thought of applications. I have not. “This is an interesting development, not just because Weyl points have been experimentally observed, but also because they endow the photonics crystals which realize them with unique optical properties,” says Ashvin Vishwanath, a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley who was not involved in this research. “Professor Soljačić’s group has a track record of rapidly converting new science into creative devices with industry applications, and I am looking forward to seeing how Weyl photonics crystals evolve.”
Quote back to us what many courts have said to you in your maniacal quest to shut down the LHC, you quackpot. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2013/01/401-walter-wagner.html and http://shouldersofgiantmidgets.blogspot.com/2008/10/return-of-radiation-man.html Oprah Winfrey and Ray Kurzweil, and Chris Langan are there as well. All that, and he didn't even comment here once about the startup of the LHC at higher energy levels than ever before? That's a bit out of character, isn't it? I don't understand what exactly this optical structure akin to that of a butterfly's wing has to do with neutrinos or fermions.
Maybe if you run screaming in circles until you hallucinate? Then you'll get it! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Right?
After an 85-year hunt, scientists have detected an exotic particle, the “Weyl fermion,” which they suggest could lead to faster and more efficient electronics and to new types of quantum computing. Electrons, protons, and neutrons belong to a class of particles known asfermions. Unlike the other major class of particles, the bosons, which include photons, fermions can collide with each other—no two fermions can share the same state at the same position at the same time. Whereas electrons and all the other known fermions have mass, in 1929, mathematician and physicist Hermann Weyl theorized that massless fermions that carry electric charge could exist, so-called Weyl fermions. “Weyl fermions are basic building blocks; you can combine two Weyl fermions to make an electron,” says condensed matter physicist Zahid Hasan at Princeton University. The fact that Weyl fermions have no mass suggests they could shuffle electric charge along inside electronics far more quickly than electrons can. Another potentially useful quality of Weyl fermions is that they cannot move backward—instead of bouncing away from obstacles, they zip through or around roadblocks. In contrast, electrons can scatter backward when they collide with obstructions, hindering the efficiency of their flow and generating heat. “Weyl fermions could be used to solve the traffic jams that you get with electrons in electronics—they can move in a much more efficient, ordered way than electrons,” Hasan says. “They could lead to a new type of electronics we call ‘Weyltronics.’ For decades, physicists thought that subatomic particles called neutrinoswere Weyl fermions. However, in 1998, scientists discovered neutrinos do have mass. (Their antimatter equivalent, the antineutrino could be a key technology in ensuring Iran’s compliance in this week’s nuclear deal.) Now, after 85 years, scientists have finally detected Weyl fermions within in large crystals of tantalum arsenide. They detailed their findings this week online in the journal Science. Particles such as the famous Higgs boson are often detected in the aftermath of high-energy particle collisions, but in a study published in June the researchers theorized that Weyl fermions could exist in certain crystals known as “Weyl semimetals,” which can essentially split electrons inside into pairs of Weyl fermions that move in opposite directions, Hasan says. The researchers noted these Weyl fermions are not freestanding particles. Instead, they are quasiparticles that can only exist within those crystals. In other words, they are electronic activity that behaves as if they were particles in free space. By shining beams of ultraviolet light and X-rays at these crystals, the researchers detected the telltale effects of Weyl fermions on those beams. “These results are very exciting for me personally, since I've been involved significantly in the theoretical discovery of Weyl semimetals a few years ago,” says physicist Anton Burkov at the University of Waterloo, who did not take part in this research. “It’s very exciting to finally see them discovered experimentally in real materials.” The way that Weyl fermions are constrained from moving backwards is similar to how electrons behave in exotic materials called topological insulators. Such constraints can help current flow highly efficiently; Hasan says that electricity in these crystals can (theoretically) move at least twice as fast as it does in graphene and 1,000 times faster than in conventional semiconductors, “and the crystals can be improved to do even better.” The upshot could be faster electronics that consume less energy. “Power consumption and associated heating is what currently limits a further increase in processor speed in our computers,” Burkov says. In addition, Weyl fermions could also lead to new kinds of quantum computers that are more resistant to disruption. Quantum computers rely on states known as superpositions, in which a bit can essentially represent both one and zero at the same time. Superpositions offer the chance to solve previously intractable problems, but they are notoriously prone to collapsing if they interact with the environment. The fact that Weyl fermions are less prone to interacting with their surroundings could lead to new ways of encoding quantum information, Hasan says. The researchers are now investigating other materials in which Weyl fermions could exist. “We’ve found a niobium-based material, and a silicon-based crystal,” Hasan says. http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/...ic-particles-could-lead-to-faster-electronics With respect to the article(s) about uranium glazed tile, suffice it to say the authors are/were 'journalists' with an axe to grind in an effort to gain readership. My involvement with it was minimal, other than to 'rediscover' the usage of Uranium to glaze tiles used in people's homes. I had 'predicted', based on minimal readings about the use of Uranium to glaze pottery, that it would have been used to glaze tiles as well. I tested my prediction by searching for such tiles, and finding them in abundance in homes, schools, etc. That's because about 100,000 tons of Uranium was used in the US (and likely comparable amounts in Europe) for such purposes before WWII shut down that industry (with the diversion of Uranium to reactor production instead). The Uranium-glazing industry developed as the Uranium was the waste product of the Radium industry that had developed for the 'glow-in-the-dark' dials, and was produced in great abundance and therefore it was cheap. It is not a significant health issue, unless you had an expensive home with lots of floor tile glazed with Uranium, in which the beta radiation could become significant over the course of several years for toddlers crawling on the tile. Radon gas (not from the tiles, as they are glazed/sealed) from porous Uranium materials (some concrete, etc.) is likely far more significant of a health concern, but I don't see you jumping up and down about people advertising the fact that Radon gas exists in some homes. What it does show is that some people who are 'alarmists' about the nuclear reactor industry don't even know that more Uranium existed in people's homes than was present in nuclear reactors. Most (about 80%) of that Uranium has since been transported to the land fills, as people remodeled, tore-down, etc. With respect to the LHC, I save my comments about the LHC for threads pertaining thereto. Suffice it to say the Weyl fermions were not discovered by CERN physicists, and they did not need the LHC for their work.
Nice post, WW. I sometimes wonder about how the world would be different if the first nuclear test at Alamogordo had been stopped because of concerns about a nuclear chain reaction in the Earth's atmosphere. Even Oppenheimer had a concern about it, but Groves overruled him, as I seem to recall. It has been over 50 years since I read Lansing Lamont's 'Day of Trinity'. In my own state (Maryland) there wasn't enough environmental concern about uranium and thorium in the coal power plant fly ash trucked to Hawkin's point (as close as you can get it to the fragile ecosystem of the Chesapeake Bay), nor the leaking drums of trichloroethane buried along with classified bioweapons materials (still in their refrigerators) at Fort Detrick. I didn't know about this when I moved to Frederick, still recovering from my own brush with Hodgkin's Lymphoma as a result of working daily with the same industrial solvent. There had been rumors that companies had been pouring the stuff down storm drains in the community in Gaithersburg where I had lived previously. No one ever confirmed that rumor, but a lot of it evidently was getting into the environment from the work of small contractors who had never heard of Love Canal. I personally managed to stop a few of them from abusing (and dumping) trichloroethane. Maryland uses the fly ash they formerly trucked to Pennsylvania and West Virginia to treat roads in the winter during snow removal operations, and some of it also gets mixed along with asphalt for repaving operations. Delft technologies has been working with what they believe are Majorana Fermions in connection with quantum computing elements. I liked the part about the article you posted that indicated that the entangled electrons propagate in precise paths 180 degrees with respect to each other. I believe this is a precondition for entanglement supercomputing / superconducting devices to work (and that the work at Delft does not yet seem to understand). Thanks for the detailed response.
On the contrary. Mt. Airy, Maryland is known as radon central in my area. A local television personality / sportscaster Frank Herzog gained even more notoriety when it was found that the radon level in his Mt. Airy home was the equivalent of working in a uranium mine beyond Environmental Protection Agency safety risk levels (requiring breathing apparatus in order to mitigate): http://www.washingtonpost.com/archi...a-homes/ffc2518a-3999-4655-af5b-7d6c7b7bcd41/ A slew of non smoking related lung cancer deaths in that area were attributed to it in the years since its discovery. Smoking continues to be the most serious health risk in terms of smokers developing lung cancer, but it is not the only one. Yet no one does anything about shutting down the tobacco industry, and as far as I am concerned, that particular unnecessary and costly health risk is the result of a regulatory apparatus that is lethargic due to governmental addiction to revenues from taxes on tobacco products. The real lunatics are the ones smoking. How can health concerns about uranium or radon even begin to compete with that?
This doesn't sound like a neutrino, but it does sound like it might be something akin to a Cooper pair (or perhaps a combination of electrons with Weyl Fermions). Part of the reason these ideas never get off the ground is that if Weyl Fermions aren't bound to the atoms of a metal lattice (you said they go through or around obstacles), and they are of the same charge, what would prevent them from simply leaving the surface of a conductor by the same mechanism? Perhaps this is why such an exotic material is needed in order to contain them.
Here is a good source about radioactivity and cigarette smoke: http://www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Drugs/THC/Health/cancer.rad.html My two cents is towards the bottom.
Wow. Electronic (water vapor nicotine delivery systems) aren't going to be any better in terms of radioactive polonium and lead; both alpha emitters, no matter what other toxic stuff is delivered in cigarette smoke. Not to mention the widespread and expanding use of the latest nicotinoid pesticides for corn and other crops that we are eating with our radioactive cornbread, fritos, and corn syrup flavored soft drinks. There's always something new to fear. Just when I was starting to feel good about eating bananas again (potassium is radioactive). I'm not trying to be a smartass, WW; just comparing notes. Thanks. I've never smoked, and never will. My Dad died of respiratory failure at a young age and he would not stop smoking cigarettes until they finally killed him. Studies have shown, it is even more addictive than heroin to some individuals. It probably should be regulated in accordance with that fact. Heroin would actually be safer from a medical point of view.
There is a remarkable level of persistent hype and misinfo regarding graphene. One such is the oft repeated claim that notionally massless conduction electrons in graphene 'whizz through the lattice at near light speed'. Wrong. They are confined to near the Fermi velocity ~ 8.5*10^5 m/s which is ~ 0.3% c. Actually considerably less than in many metals and semiconductors. What gives graphene it's relatively large conductivity is the large de Broglie wavelength, which translates into a very low lattice scattering probability. Hence instead of frequent stop-start transport, so-called ballistic transport occurs yielding a high overall conductivity. Also, more sober assessments as to potential gains over say silicon-based transistors, typically predict around a single order-of-magnitude frequency gain. That's in part because the inevitable doping needed to create an actual band-gap thus semiconductor behavior, drastically degrades the pristine electronic transport values. Also, needed graphene-to-metal interconnects add further to reduced performance. Reliable and relatively cheap mass-production of graphene-based chips so far is a nightmare scenario for actual engineers. Specialised applications such as IR sensors already shows great promise though. As for these new Weyl Fermion quasi-particles, I can see some truly novel possibilities. Unidirectional transport has some unappreciated consequences, but I won't elaborate!
My older brother died from lung cancer after smoking for 30 years. He wouldn't listen. Nicotine is very addicting, and he couldn't quit. It's a shame that the legal stimulant (tobacco) is so dangerous, compared to the illegal ones. My 'estimate' is that the radioactivity is about half of the total toxicity, the other half is from the chemical toxicity of the cancer-causing chemicals. As polonium is an alpha emitter, in close proximity to the cells, it is far more dangerous than the radio-potassium of bananas.
Yeah, I previously thought benzopyrine was the culprit responsible for most lung cancer deaths from tobacco products. Not so; it's a double threat to health, and as addictive as it gets. A perfect storm when mixed with governmental addiction to tobacco tax revenues. And combined with firearm casualties, a half trillion dollars a year in medical care that would otherwise be unnecessary.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorz...making-exotic-physics-inside-ordinary-matter/ http://physics.aps.org/articles/v8/84 http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2015/jul/23/weyl-fermions-are-spotted-at-long-last http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6248/613.abstract (identical to link in OP) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6248/622.abstract Just materials (one ordinary substance and one engineered metamaterial) acting as if the charge carriers had zero mass.
