6 ms·

The phrase "a solid made of electrons" is rather misleading. It's just an ordinary solid (a semiconductor) in which the electrons are made to adopt a particular

by pdonis 5y ago

The phrase "a solid made of electrons" is rather misleading. It's just an ordinary solid (a semiconductor) in which the electrons are made to adopt a particular configuration that does not occur naturally. It is not a "solid" that is only composed of electrons, with no atomic nuclei present.

jerf 5y ago
Even science reporters are having a hard time keeping up with what materials science has been up to lately. With no disrespect to them really intended, they can just about keep up with the semiconductor world's concept of tracking "holes" rather than electrons, but it seems like going any farther into the quasiparticle world is just too much for them. It's rare to see an article that doesn't have some sort of verbiage that indicates the reporter doesn't really understanding what's going on, if indeed I've ever seen one at all.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  Are there any recent summaries by materials scientists written for laypeople?
- xondono 5y ago
  I really wonder how much is willful ignorance for the benefit of clickbait
  - mabub24 5y ago
    A lot of reporters don't get final say on the headlines for their articles. That could be the case here.
- karaterobot 5y ago
  I get that it's hard. Often, I'll read a science article in a blog, or local newspaper, or general-interest magazine. I'll see something obviously incorrect, and say "well, it's not a science outlet, they can't be expected to know the science that well, and they're just explaining it to lay people anyway, so it's good enough. I'll double check this with a reliable science news source." But you'd think if anyone could get it right, and trust their readers to care about them getting it right, it would be Nature! If Nature is going to start going to lower their standards to go after clicks, I dunno what reliable source I'm supposed to double check things with.
  - all2 5y ago
    There's a quote about this that I rather like > “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” – Michael Crichton (1942-2008) Pulled from https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > If Nature is going to start going to lower their standards to go after clicks, I dunno what reliable source I'm supposed to double check things with. Reddit. I'm serious. If you search for the discussion about the news article on a right subreddit, or HN, or spelunk Twitter enough, there's a good chance you'll find a domain expert - sometimes even the paper's author themselves, or someone who works with them - explaining the science correctly and/or pointing out the bullshit in the press report. (I wonder if it wouldn't be more efficient if scientists were writing press releases themselves, and the journalists/PR people would be chasing grants for them instead. It seems like a better match for their individual skills anyway.)
    - xnyan 5y ago
      >Reddit >I wonder if it wouldn't be more efficient if scientists were writing press releases themselves Agree, and I think everyone here has experienced the phenomenon where someone on reddit/HN/twitter has explained something far better than a media outlet. The thing to keep in mind when trying to understand this is that absolutely __everyone__ responds to incentives. With a news organization, no matter what that organization is or their goals, the chief incentive is readership, not accuracy or anything else. Not saying that the writers are anything other than well intentioned and honest or that they don't care deeply about the truth, but the reality of mortal existence is to maximize behaviors that you believe benefit you. A news org is benefited by people reading what they say, not by being right. Reddit/twitter/HN often is a better source of truth because people often post because they have a desire to be heard, be understood, share information, tell the truth or some other reason that does not involve selling ads against you reading what they say.
- OJFord 5y ago
  In undeserved fairness, I think it's 'just' a clickbait headline, and the author does have a better understanding than you suggest. The article quickly explains (even the caption on the lead image) that it's an arrangement within a normal solid sheet. I don't really understand in what sense the internal electron arrangement is 'a solid', but hey, as clickbait, it worked.
  - pininja 5y ago
    I think this is the same argument made by Veritasium - poorly summarized: do whatever it takes to hook people in that have never heard the topic before, then teach them something new. https://youtu.be/S2xHZPH5Sng https://youtu.be/S2xHZPH5Sng
    - OJFord 5y ago
      But you make it sound like a good thing! I don't like it at all.
xxpor 5y ago
My first reaction to the headline was "I wonder how many teslas the magnets they're using to keep it together are?"
- colechristensen 5y ago
  It’s essentially impossible to make an electron-only substance. The highest density normal-matter stars (white dwarfs) are kept from collapsing with the force of electric repulsion in atoms and they do collapse by proton-electron collision and conversion into neutrons. From Feynman: If you were standing at arm’s length from someone and each of you had one percent more electrons than protons, the repelling force would be incredible. How great? Enough to lift the Empire State Building? No! To lift Mount Everest? No! The repulsion would be enough to lift a “weight” equal to that of the entire earth!
  - eloff 5y ago
    Wow! That is a great visualization of how strong the forces are. It's incredibly strong, I had no idea
  - MaxikCZ 5y ago
    So we only need to push a lot of electrons into some matter and get maglev trains without superconductors?
    - colechristensen 5y ago
      Not really. “only”, no. Trying to levitate trains with static charge would introduce all kinds of hard problems, some easy to imagine, some probably would take a lot of engineering to discover. The electric field would be hard to contain just under the train, the charge would really really try hard to find somewhere else to be, there would be some crazy ionization of the air going on… flying a kite in a thunderstorm would probably be quite safe by comparison to being close to such an apparatus.
  - a1369209993 5y ago
    > If you were standing at arm's length from someone and each of you had one percent more electrons than protons[[0]] The latent energy of electromagnetic repulsion between the two of you (never mind between the parts of each of your bodies) would be a bit more than ((1%*80kg/2amu*electroncharge)^2 coulombconst / meter), or on the order of a megaton. Not megaton tnt, a megaton of just energy (comparable to a million tons of antimatter). 0: https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/what-if-i-were-1-charged/ https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/what-if-i-...
gfody 5y ago
so _not_ the strong-interaction material from 3bp? damn
lisper 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28469275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28469275
Koshkin 5y ago
I think the confusion may be the result of a chain of vague associations (or, perhaps, of the "broken telephone effect"): "adopt a particular configuration" -> regular spatial arrangement -> crystal lattice -> crystal-like -> crystal -> solid.
Pulcinella 5y ago
Solvated electrons are kind of liquid electrons in that they are a liquid and the anion is just a free electron instead of bound to something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvated_electron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvated_electron They can be used to, among other things, reduce pseudoephedrine to methamphetamine.
ddingus 5y ago
Thanks for that! I read the piece, saw the headline and was immediately confused: Like we can have matter that is ELECTRONS only?
crispyambulance 5y ago
The first paragraph of the article clearly describes what the title is actually getting at. It's a perfectly fine title that catches interest. If the conditions are just right, some of the electrons inside a material will arrange themselves into a tidy honeycomb pattern — like a solid within a solid. Physicists have now directly imaged these ‘Wigner crystals’, named after the Hungarian-born theorist Eugene Wigner, who first imagined them almost 90 years ago.
vbezhenar 5y ago
A solid made of electrons would wreak lots of havoc. Probably worse than solid made of antimatter.
hilbert42 5y ago
Right, that headline had me a bit fazed too. I envisioned a sort of 'crystal' of electrons packed together like people in a tightly packed elevator or oranges in a box. My mind boggles, if electrons were packed like this then we'd need conditions somewhere between those of a neutron star and a black hole singularity I'd imagine. Does anyone have any concept of what such matter would look like - its properties, etc.?
- grok22 5y ago
  phased => fazed? https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/phase-vs-faze; https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/phase-vs-faze; sorry off-topic
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    Duh, ucks, how did miss that? Thanks for that, I've now corrected it. It's what happens when posting from a phone whilst on the move. Most timely correction too, if I'd reread it tomorrow when too late to correct it then I would really have been fazed! Here's an upvote. :-)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- zardo 5y ago
  > Does anyone have any concept of what such matter would look like - its properties, etc.? It would have a lot of charge.
oceanplexian 5y ago
> The phrase "a solid made of electrons" is rather misleading You've just crushed my dreams of experiencing a Star Trek holodeck or replicator based on this technology.
pixl97 5y ago
Electron moon looks like the end of the universe https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/
crazydoggers 5y ago
It is a solid, and your description isn’t really accurate. It’s not the semiconductor that is being imaged. The semiconductors are being used to generate a contained cloud of electrons, basically a gas of electrons between the semiconductors. That gas is then cooled until it crystallizes. So what you are seeing is a layer of crystallized electrons. > It is not a "solid" that is only composed of electrons, with no atomic nuclei present. That is indeed what it is. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner_crystal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner_crystal From Wikipedia: “ A Wigner crystal is the solid (crystalline) phase of electrons first predicted by Eugene Wigner in 1934. A gas of electrons moving in 2D or 3D in a uniform, inert, neutralizing background will crystallize and form a lattice if the electron density is less than a critical value.”

by pdonis 5y ago

jerf 5y ago

Even science reporters are having a hard time keeping up with what materials science has been up to lately. With no disrespect to them really intended, they can just about keep up with the semiconductor world's concept of tracking "holes" rather than electrons, but it seems like going any farther into the quasiparticle world is just too much for them. It's rare to see an article that doesn't have some sort of verbiage that indicates the reporter doesn't really understanding what's going on, if indeed I've ever seen one at all.

jacobolus 5y ago
Are there any recent summaries by materials scientists written for laypeople?
xondono 5y ago
I really wonder how much is willful ignorance for the benefit of clickbait
- mabub24 5y ago
  A lot of reporters don't get final say on the headlines for their articles. That could be the case here.
karaterobot 5y ago
I get that it's hard. Often, I'll read a science article in a blog, or local newspaper, or general-interest magazine. I'll see something obviously incorrect, and say "well, it's not a science outlet, they can't be expected to know the science that well, and they're just explaining it to lay people anyway, so it's good enough. I'll double check this with a reliable science news source." But you'd think if anyone could get it right, and trust their readers to care about them getting it right, it would be Nature! If Nature is going to start going to lower their standards to go after clicks, I dunno what reliable source I'm supposed to double check things with.
- all2 5y ago
  There's a quote about this that I rather like > “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” – Michael Crichton (1942-2008) Pulled from https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > If Nature is going to start going to lower their standards to go after clicks, I dunno what reliable source I'm supposed to double check things with. Reddit. I'm serious. If you search for the discussion about the news article on a right subreddit, or HN, or spelunk Twitter enough, there's a good chance you'll find a domain expert - sometimes even the paper's author themselves, or someone who works with them - explaining the science correctly and/or pointing out the bullshit in the press report. (I wonder if it wouldn't be more efficient if scientists were writing press releases themselves, and the journalists/PR people would be chasing grants for them instead. It seems like a better match for their individual skills anyway.)
  - xnyan 5y ago
    >Reddit >I wonder if it wouldn't be more efficient if scientists were writing press releases themselves Agree, and I think everyone here has experienced the phenomenon where someone on reddit/HN/twitter has explained something far better than a media outlet. The thing to keep in mind when trying to understand this is that absolutely __everyone__ responds to incentives. With a news organization, no matter what that organization is or their goals, the chief incentive is readership, not accuracy or anything else. Not saying that the writers are anything other than well intentioned and honest or that they don't care deeply about the truth, but the reality of mortal existence is to maximize behaviors that you believe benefit you. A news org is benefited by people reading what they say, not by being right. Reddit/twitter/HN often is a better source of truth because people often post because they have a desire to be heard, be understood, share information, tell the truth or some other reason that does not involve selling ads against you reading what they say.
OJFord 5y ago
In undeserved fairness, I think it's 'just' a clickbait headline, and the author does have a better understanding than you suggest. The article quickly explains (even the caption on the lead image) that it's an arrangement within a normal solid sheet. I don't really understand in what sense the internal electron arrangement is 'a solid', but hey, as clickbait, it worked.
- pininja 5y ago
  I think this is the same argument made by Veritasium - poorly summarized: do whatever it takes to hook people in that have never heard the topic before, then teach them something new. https://youtu.be/S2xHZPH5Sng https://youtu.be/S2xHZPH5Sng
  - OJFord 5y ago
    But you make it sound like a good thing! I don't like it at all.

xxpor 5y ago

My first reaction to the headline was "I wonder how many teslas the magnets they're using to keep it together are?"

colechristensen 5y ago
It’s essentially impossible to make an electron-only substance. The highest density normal-matter stars (white dwarfs) are kept from collapsing with the force of electric repulsion in atoms and they do collapse by proton-electron collision and conversion into neutrons. From Feynman: If you were standing at arm’s length from someone and each of you had one percent more electrons than protons, the repelling force would be incredible. How great? Enough to lift the Empire State Building? No! To lift Mount Everest? No! The repulsion would be enough to lift a “weight” equal to that of the entire earth!
- eloff 5y ago
  Wow! That is a great visualization of how strong the forces are. It's incredibly strong, I had no idea
- MaxikCZ 5y ago
  So we only need to push a lot of electrons into some matter and get maglev trains without superconductors?
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    Not really. “only”, no. Trying to levitate trains with static charge would introduce all kinds of hard problems, some easy to imagine, some probably would take a lot of engineering to discover. The electric field would be hard to contain just under the train, the charge would really really try hard to find somewhere else to be, there would be some crazy ionization of the air going on… flying a kite in a thunderstorm would probably be quite safe by comparison to being close to such an apparatus.
- a1369209993 5y ago
  > If you were standing at arm's length from someone and each of you had one percent more electrons than protons[[0]] The latent energy of electromagnetic repulsion between the two of you (never mind between the parts of each of your bodies) would be a bit more than ((1%*80kg/2amu*electroncharge)^2 coulombconst / meter), or on the order of a megaton. Not megaton tnt, a megaton of just energy (comparable to a million tons of antimatter). 0: https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/what-if-i-were-1-charged/ https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/what-if-i-...

gfody 5y ago

so _not_ the strong-interaction material from 3bp? damn

lisper 5y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28469275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28469275

Koshkin 5y ago

I think the confusion may be the result of a chain of vague associations (or, perhaps, of the "broken telephone effect"): "adopt a particular configuration" -> regular spatial arrangement -> crystal lattice -> crystal-like -> crystal -> solid.

Pulcinella 5y ago

Solvated electrons are kind of liquid electrons in that they are a liquid and the anion is just a free electron instead of bound to something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvated_electron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvated_electron They can be used to, among other things, reduce pseudoephedrine to methamphetamine.

ddingus 5y ago

Thanks for that! I read the piece, saw the headline and was immediately confused: Like we can have matter that is ELECTRONS only?

crispyambulance 5y ago

The first paragraph of the article clearly describes what the title is actually getting at. It's a perfectly fine title that catches interest. If the conditions are just right, some of the electrons inside a material will arrange themselves into a tidy honeycomb pattern — like a solid within a solid. Physicists have now directly imaged these ‘Wigner crystals’, named after the Hungarian-born theorist Eugene Wigner, who first imagined them almost 90 years ago.

vbezhenar 5y ago

A solid made of electrons would wreak lots of havoc. Probably worse than solid made of antimatter.

hilbert42 5y ago

Right, that headline had me a bit fazed too. I envisioned a sort of 'crystal' of electrons packed together like people in a tightly packed elevator or oranges in a box. My mind boggles, if electrons were packed like this then we'd need conditions somewhere between those of a neutron star and a black hole singularity I'd imagine. Does anyone have any concept of what such matter would look like - its properties, etc.?

grok22 5y ago
phased => fazed? https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/phase-vs-faze; https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/phase-vs-faze; sorry off-topic
- hilbert42 5y ago
  Duh, ucks, how did miss that? Thanks for that, I've now corrected it. It's what happens when posting from a phone whilst on the move. Most timely correction too, if I'd reread it tomorrow when too late to correct it then I would really have been fazed! Here's an upvote. :-)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
zardo 5y ago
> Does anyone have any concept of what such matter would look like - its properties, etc.? It would have a lot of charge.

oceanplexian 5y ago

> The phrase "a solid made of electrons" is rather misleading You've just crushed my dreams of experiencing a Star Trek holodeck or replicator based on this technology.

pixl97 5y ago

Electron moon looks like the end of the universe https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/

crazydoggers 5y ago

It is a solid, and your description isn’t really accurate. It’s not the semiconductor that is being imaged. The semiconductors are being used to generate a contained cloud of electrons, basically a gas of electrons between the semiconductors. That gas is then cooled until it crystallizes. So what you are seeing is a layer of crystallized electrons. > It is not a "solid" that is only composed of electrons, with no atomic nuclei present. That is indeed what it is. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner_crystal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner_crystal From Wikipedia: “ A Wigner crystal is the solid (crystalline) phase of electrons first predicted by Eugene Wigner in 1934. A gas of electrons moving in 2D or 3D in a uniform, inert, neutralizing background will crystallize and form a lattice if the electron density is less than a critical value.”