this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2024
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Hmm... is this what could change space-flight? Imagine having a material that is nigh weighless when moving away from gravity but gains mass again when moving towards it. It would make it much more feasible to transport heavier stuff into space.
Misleading headline. Article goes badly wrong in its attempt to ELI5 …..
It’s not “direction”‘that’s affected, but electron transitions to either higher or lower states ….. I think. This article is horribly written if they wanted to communicate anything
Edit: the article does link to the original paper but someone else will need to translate that. It looks more like they were able to produce a formerly theoretical quantum particle (not electron) and show weird behavior. I still don’t know what “direction” means, because it’s relative to how its quantum state changes. I don’t think direction means direction in the macro sense but I don’t know what it does mean
I was misled in the posted article with hints about energy levels that reminded of electron shells. The original article makes it clear these are not electrons but talks about quantum states in a vaguely similar way (at least according to my limited understanding)
I don't think that's what they're saying. They're measuring a property that should scale linearly with Landau levels and the strength of the magnetic field by a known factor. There's one possible factor for massive particles, and another for massless ones. In this experiment they observed a third value for the factor that lies between those two, one which matches the predictions of these semi-Dirac fermions. The particles in question are electrons in a semi-metal, so I think that can mean actual movement in the sense that we usually think of the word
That said this is waaay beyond my level of physics, even with the professor attempting to dumb it down for us
For sure directions is related to different planes or lines along the crystal.
They quote in the article that when moving in certain directions, the fermion's energy is completely derived from motion. So it's essentially taking the m out of E = mc², which is still neat, but not really something you can scale up
It’s been a while since I took a physics class, but I’m pretty sure everything becomes more weightless as it gets farther from a gravitational pull. Things don’t normally become more mass-less though.
Or, is this a “whoosh” moment for me?
The person you replied to said "weight", but the article - including direct quotes from the professor heading the team that found it - uses "mass" consistently.
If a material made up of quasi-particles is massless when moving away from gravity at ground level, why is the distinction important?
My brain hung a bit in this statement. I suppose I incorrectly interpreted “nigh weightless” as “losing weight”, which is what everything does as it leaves a gravity well.
It’s 4am here and I’m just browsing on my way to the airport, half asleep. So, please feel free to ignore this whole thing.
Unfortunately we can't just build something out of particles like this. Consider electrons or neutrinos, something similar is what we're dealing with here.
Yet. We can't do it yet. Now that we know it's possible under the right conditions maybe we can figure it out with a century of effort.