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Scientists have revealed that in some exotic states of matter, heat can behave like sound, bouncing back and forth. This phenomenon is not new and is known as “second sound.” But scientists at MIT have captured images of a “second sound” for the first time.
These images show how heat travels like sound waves when created in a superfluid, a state of matter in which atoms flow without friction. Physicists have discovered that heat and matter can “bump into” each other, causing vibrations similar to sound waves.
“It’s like you have a tank of water and half of it is about to boil,” study co-author Richard Fletcher, an assistant professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said in a media report. It has been reported.
“Then you look and the water itself may seem perfectly calm, but then all of a sudden it gets hot on the other side, and then it gets hot on the other side, and the heat goes back and forth, while the water seems to be still. ” he added.
significance
The study, published in the journal Science, could help physicists understand how heat behaves in superfluids and related materials such as superconductors and neutron stars.
“There is a strong connection between the eruption of a gas that is a million times thinner than air, the behavior of electrons in high-temperature superconductors, and even the behavior of neutrons in ultradense neutron stars,” Professor Thomas A. Frank said. says Martin Zwierlein. in physics from MIT and leader of the research team.
“We can now precisely investigate the temperature response of a system, and it tells us things that are very difficult to understand or even reach,” he added.
How was the experiment conducted?
The scientists used clusters of lithium-6 atoms, which are fermions that normally repel each other. By cooling atoms to near absolute zero and introducing a magnetic field, they were able to pair up and form a superfluid.
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They used a laser beam to generate a hotspot within the superfluid and used another laser beam to capture the resulting heat pattern.
Their observations revealed that the heat patterns exhibit periodic motion similar to sound waves, but are not synchronized with the matter waves, with heat and matter vibrating in opposite directions. This phenomenon is called second sound and is different from normal sound, where heat and matter move together.
(Information provided by agency)
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