Alexa Erickson – Objects that take up space and have mass are considered matter, which means that everything around you is made up of matter, including yourself and the sandwich in your hand.
Sound like the beginning of a lecture from your childhood science textbook? That’s because we’ve been taught that matter as we know it is as fundamental and broad as this.
But new research reveals that maybe “matter” isn’t so set in stone.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have produced a brand new form of matter called a supersolid. Until this creation, physicists had an idea supersolids might be possible, but hadn’t analyzed them in the laboratory.
A supersolid combines the properties of solids with those of superfluids.
To create it, the team of researchers used lasers to manipulate a superfluid gas called a Bose-Einstein condensate into a quantum phase of matter that has a rigid structure like a solid, but is able to flow with viscosity, like a superfluid.
This phase of matter, entirely contradictory, could provide valuable information currently unknown regarding superfluids and superconductors. Such insights could help improve technologies like superconducting magnets and sensors, as well as efficient energy transport.
“It is counterintuitive to have a material which combines superfluidity and solidity,” explained team leader Wolfgang Ketterle, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics at MIT. “If your coffee was superfluid and you stirred it, it would continue to spin around forever.”