May 23, 2025 05:29 PM
https://www.science.org/content/article/...lectricity
EXCERPT: The sample belongs to a class of materials that physicists call “strange metals.” For 4 decades, they’ve puzzled over the fact that in these compounds, the standard theory of electricity just doesn’t work.
Recent experiments in Paschen’s lab and others suggest that in strange metals, electrons lose their individuality. “They magically disappear,” she says. Instead, electric charge appears somehow to pass through the metal as a diffuse amorphous blob—like water without individual H2O molecules.
Researchers are still debating the microscopic details of this bizarre picture. But it’s already clear that the stakes are higher than just understanding a dozen or so oddball materials. “It’s really a mysterious state with big consequences,” Paschen says.
The hallmark of strange metals is electrical resistivity that climbs higher than that of ordinary metals when they are warmed from low temperatures. They also lose their resistivity altogether, becoming superconductors, at lower temperatures—though above those of conventional superconductors.
Some researchers believe this high-temperature superconductivity is simply the flip side of strange metallicity—that they’re two manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon. If so, then the path to room-temperature superconductors, a long-sought goal that could revolutionize technologies from power grids to transportation, may lead through an understanding of strange metals.
“You have to get strange metals right before you can get superconductivity right,” says Philip Phillips, a physicist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). “That’s the heart of it all.”
But the implications go beyond just building better superconductors... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPT: The sample belongs to a class of materials that physicists call “strange metals.” For 4 decades, they’ve puzzled over the fact that in these compounds, the standard theory of electricity just doesn’t work.
Recent experiments in Paschen’s lab and others suggest that in strange metals, electrons lose their individuality. “They magically disappear,” she says. Instead, electric charge appears somehow to pass through the metal as a diffuse amorphous blob—like water without individual H2O molecules.
Researchers are still debating the microscopic details of this bizarre picture. But it’s already clear that the stakes are higher than just understanding a dozen or so oddball materials. “It’s really a mysterious state with big consequences,” Paschen says.
The hallmark of strange metals is electrical resistivity that climbs higher than that of ordinary metals when they are warmed from low temperatures. They also lose their resistivity altogether, becoming superconductors, at lower temperatures—though above those of conventional superconductors.
Some researchers believe this high-temperature superconductivity is simply the flip side of strange metallicity—that they’re two manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon. If so, then the path to room-temperature superconductors, a long-sought goal that could revolutionize technologies from power grids to transportation, may lead through an understanding of strange metals.
“You have to get strange metals right before you can get superconductivity right,” says Philip Phillips, a physicist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). “That’s the heart of it all.”
But the implications go beyond just building better superconductors... (MORE - missing details)