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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!!
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To: Grainne who wrote (12068)8/2/1997 4:02:00 AM
From: ZinMaster   of 108807
 
...Absolute zero is where all heat motion stops....

As Lyle pointed out, this must be the newspaper distillation of some interesting results into lay gobbledygook. I'd like to read the original papers.

In learning Japanese, and teaching English to Nihonjin, I learned a little about translating from English to Japanese to English. I think I can apply some of the same skills to this phrase:

"The tiny holes in the thin membrane separating the superfluids allow the two neighboring wave functions to overlap slightly, but remain distinct."

I'm guessing that the "overlap" is translated from the strict quantum mechanical term meaning the integral of the dot product of the two wave functions. When the overlap is neither zero (pure) nor one (degenerate), there is some probability of a transition from one state to the other. Often this overlap is considered in terms of lifetime (how long a state is likely to stay stable), or frequency (how often the state is likely to exchange). In this case, the frequency was in the audio range and was detectible by the ultrasensitive microphone.

The frequency is also related to the energy difference between the states. Here, the energy difference would be equal to the volume of the atom times the pressure difference between the two helium reservoirs.

Now how do we go about measuring the volume of a superfluid helium atom? ....I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader for right now...

-zm
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