Superfluids | Archive | Justin Ruckman

Yeah so superfluids:

zero viscosity (no “thickness” or resistance to pouring; a superfluid in a closed loop can flow endlessly)
zero entropy (trying to wrap my head around how this makes sense)
infinite thermal conductivity (temperature gradients are impossible, any closed system of superfluid exists simultaneously at the same temperature)

The phase of matter was discovered by some pretty smart dudes, some number of years ago, which is all hardly the point. What caught my eye and catalyzed this post was this excerpt from Wikipedia:

A more fundamental property than the disappearance of viscosity becomes visible if superfluid is placed in a rotating container. Instead of rotating uniformly with the container, the rotating state consists of quantized vortices. That is, when the container is rotated at speed below the first critical velocity (related to the quantum numbers for the element in question) the liquid remains perfectly stationary. Once the first critical velocity is reached, the superfluid instantaneously starts spinning at the critical speed. The speed is quantized - i.e. it can only spin at certain speeds.

LINK/IMAGE [“Superfluidity and Quantized Vortices”] LINK/IMAGES [visualizations: quantized vortex dynamics] ARTICLE [superfluid] (Wikipedia)

The only thing with the information I’ve found online that lights up my skeptical lobe is all the talk of absolutes like “zero” and “infinite” and “instantaneously”. I don’t have a problem with the concept of absolutes, just their physical manifestation. You can always nudge a little closer to a perfect, infinite, instantaneous ideal. I can imagine a substance having functionally zero viscosity, or seemingly infinite thermal conductivity, at least as far as we can measure and conceive; but claiming anything further just doesn’t resonate. Maybe I don’t understand the intricacies of supercooled and superheated states of matter. Maybe I can’t read the Bible in the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. But it seems that clinging to intangible absolutes has never gotten us very far with anything. Whatever, I’m probably and usually wrong.

Either way the mechanics of this are beautiful to imagine: tiny vortices (1,000 in a 1 cm test tube spinning once a minute) like gears in a watch rotating independently of their surroundings until at one moment, they can finally come to terms, “we’re all in this together” they probably say, and sync up in one collective, harmonized motion.

Previously: [Whitney Music Box Variations]([link])