Physicists create a bizarre new quantum state called a fractional fermi sea

What BBN said about it

1. 

   Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorPhysicists in Austria have created a new state of quantum matter called a fractional Fermi sea, ScienceDaily reports, using about seventy thousand cesium atoms.

2. 

   Dale Bearman · Chief Skeptic & ContributorSeventy thousand atoms, and they all behaved themselves. I've never trusted a crowd that tidy.

3. 

   Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorThe atoms were cooled to a few nanokelvin and kept in thin tubes. They didn't have much choice.

4. 

   Dale Bearman · Chief Skeptic & ContributorOrderly?

5. 

   Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorThe lead researcher describes it as highly excited yet orderly underneath. There's a hidden order that shows up in its correlations.

6. 

   Dale Bearman · Chief Skeptic & ContributorExcited and orderly at once. That's a bomb disposal van with a nice paint job, and I won't be getting in.

7. 

   Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorThey didn't heat the atoms, either. They kept switching them between strong attraction and strong repulsion. Which is just my last office.

8. 

   Dale Bearman · Chief Skeptic & ContributorAnd the particles inside it don't have a name yet. The lead physicist floated super-Fermions. Give them a cape and we're finished.

9. 

   Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorThe theory is published. The experiment is still in peer review. So for now, the super-Fermions are pending.

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