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from the (sigh)-still-no-Puerto-Ricoton dept.
amblivious writes:
"Researchers investigating the creation of biexcitons noticed an unexpected drop in energy when creating multiple biexcitons in gallium arsenide, leading to the discovery of a new state of matter; the dropleton. Excitons are quasi-particles created when a photon knocks an electron loose from a material, causing an electron hole. If the forces of other charges nearby keep the electron close enough to the hole a state known as an exciton forms where the combined electron and hole act together as though they are a single particle. Biexcitons consist of two of these quasi-particles and collectively behave like a molecule. In this discovery several excitons are behaving together in a 'quantum fog' and behave like a droplet, hence the name.
See the article in Nature for more information."
(Score: 5, Funny) by Ryuugami on Monday March 03 2014, @07:00AM
At first glance I read "creation of biexcitons" as "creation of biextcoins", and thought that this is yet another slightly satirical article about the newest hip Bitcoin-clone.
Luckily, I was wrong.
OTOH, their naming sense needs some work. It may behave like a droplet, but "dropleton" sounds like something a marketroid would come up with. "Buy Dropleton, It Drops Better!"
The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing more important to do.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheSage on Monday March 03 2014, @07:22AM
I'm currently reading the (highly recommended) book "Moonshine beyond the Monster" by Terry Gannon. There, I found this gem, which seems apropriate
One of the more carefree creative outlets for mathematicians is through their happy role as nomenclators.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ryuugami on Monday March 03 2014, @07:32AM
Good quote, off it goes to my quote file :)
I sometimes envy people who have a sense for naming things. Mostly when naming characters in RPGs, or ship designs in space 4X games, though. If I ever discover something important, I'll likely spend more time thinking of a name then doing the actual discovery.
As the saying goes, there are two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.
The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing more important to do.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by ls671 on Monday March 03 2014, @08:27AM
Same here. That tends to prove how easy we can get brainwashed with all that bitcoins hype lately. Well, more precisely, it is a feature of the humain brain; it will try to make something that it doesn't know look like something that it knows.
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: 5, Funny) by linsane on Monday March 03 2014, @08:56AM
Likewise! I can see the (as yet undiscovered) Bitcion having some very interesting properties, for example ..
- Obeys a modified version of heisenburg's uncertainty principle where the more it observed the less likely its values are to be stable
- There is a slowly increasing number of them in existence with a theoretical maximum number
- The more energy that is expended in the production of Bitcions the lower the production rate
- The Bitcion is a classical particle until it has been divided several million times to its fundamental quantum unit (satoshion?)
etc
profit?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @11:28AM
"The more energy that is expended in the production of Bitcions the lower the production rate"
Actually, if you consider the acceleration of matter, the more energy that you expend to accelerate an object the less it causes it to move faster. Hence it would take an infinite amount of energy to approach the speed of light.