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In the world of average, everyday materials, heat tends to spread out from a localized source. Drop a burning coal into a pot of water, and that liquid will slowly rise in temperature before its heat eventually dissipates. But the world is full of rare, exotic materials that don’t exactly play by these thermal rules.
Instead of spreading out as one would expect, these superfluid quantum gasses “slosh” heat side to side—it essentially propagates as a wave. Scientists call this behavior a material’s “second sound” (the first being ordinary sound via a density wave). Although this phenomenon has been observed before, it’s never been imaged. But recently, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were finally able to capture this movement of pure heat by developing a new method of thermography (a.k.a. heat-mapping).
The results of this study were published last week in the journal Science, and in an university press release highlighting the achievement, MIT assistant professor and co-author Richard Fletcher continued the boiling pot analogy to describe the inherent strangeness of “second sound” in these exotic super-fluids.
“It’s as if you had a tank of water and made one half nearly boiling,” Fletcher said. “If you then watched, the water itself might look totally calm, but suddenly the other side is hot, and then the other side is hot, and the heat goes back and forth, while the water looks totally still.”
www.popularmechanics.com
Instead of spreading out as one would expect, these superfluid quantum gasses “slosh” heat side to side—it essentially propagates as a wave. Scientists call this behavior a material’s “second sound” (the first being ordinary sound via a density wave). Although this phenomenon has been observed before, it’s never been imaged. But recently, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were finally able to capture this movement of pure heat by developing a new method of thermography (a.k.a. heat-mapping).
The results of this study were published last week in the journal Science, and in an university press release highlighting the achievement, MIT assistant professor and co-author Richard Fletcher continued the boiling pot analogy to describe the inherent strangeness of “second sound” in these exotic super-fluids.
“It’s as if you had a tank of water and made one half nearly boiling,” Fletcher said. “If you then watched, the water itself might look totally calm, but suddenly the other side is hot, and then the other side is hot, and the heat goes back and forth, while the water looks totally still.”
Scientists Confirm the Incredible Existence of ‘Second Sound’
Here’s visible proof for the first time ever.
