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Phonons aren't particles, they are quasi-particles i.e. excitations of the crystal lattice that behave a lot like particles. Weird for an MIT article to get tha
by ThePhysicist 2y ago
Phonons aren't particles, they are quasi-particles i.e. excitations of the crystal lattice that behave a lot like particles. Weird for an MIT article to get that so wrong, they aren't subatomic either as they are "made" of atoms (which is an over-simplification as well) and can span many unit cells in a crystal.
- physicsguy 2y agoPopular science articles always get this wrong. I did PhD on magnetic skyrmions and they're widely called 'particles' in articles. You also always see a lot about 'magnetic monopoles' where it's an emergent phenomena in crystal structures.
- mnky9800n 2y agoI don't think MIT and MIT's marketing department is really the same thing. It's not that the authors are writing this stuff.
- shermantanktop 2y agoYeah, but it’s MIT’s marketing department. Science communication is kind of their thing. What I’ve observed is that when one person tries to summarize detailed information from another person, there are thresholds where the information passes from overly simplified to wrong. The original author is outraged by even basic simplification, well short of the wrongness threshold; but the summarizer blows past the threshold breezily as they delete words to get the text to fit.
- mnky9800n 2y agoAnd yet literature reviews are a corner stone of modern science. Fascinating.
- mandibeet 2y agoIt's crucial to distinguish
- mensetmanusman 2y agoIt’s fields all the way down; even thinking of atoms as particles isn’t accurate as far as we can understand matter.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoThey're a thing that if present will maybe make a detector go click (or beep, or light up, or whatever that detector does to say "yes something is here"). Doesn't that make them a particle? Or is there a better idea of what particles are that I should be using?