It makes you question what they mean by discovery. Is it not a discovery until it is published in Nature? On Arxiv this was a discovery in 2021. We can probably find a free energy channel in the YouTube haystack from a decade ago where the guy happened to arrange magnets in this order while going through permutations. Is that discovery or are only incumbent academics allowed to canonize science?
This is not really as simple as just going through the permutations. What this is in practice is a triumph of instrumentation. Before this, no one has imaged altermagnetic domain structure. The behaviour of these materials is intrinsically linked to what happens in the micro- (or nano-) structure.
There are two challenging things here that makes this a discovery. One, making the material, which is extremely difficult to verify as altermagnetic due to the nature of measuring these materials. Two, the measurement, which combines two techniques to distinguish this as separate from antiferromagnetism.
It is a huge push forwards for the budding field since it provides a really nice way to go to a large-scale synchrotron with your altermagnet and study it in detail.
This would have to scale down to the quantum domain to be an actual thing and scaling back up means we bring non-commutative physics into the classical world.
They didn't use macroscopic magnets to form the alternate pattern or the swirls, and they are stable. If you have a link to a YouTube Channel with a similar result, it would be nice to see it.
Also, do you have a link to the arxiv post of 2021? It's a lot of time. This article looks like studing how to "see" the pattern. Perhaps the old one was about the material and general properties.
I was actually thinking of the engineering-minded people who experiment with permanent magnet electric motors out of intuition. The bit about free energy was hyperbole of mine.
I'm trying to decide if we are intentionally 'translating' these ideas from pure imagination down into technological applications through intermediate 'realms' of quasi-reality, or if building stuff with just intuition can still be accepted in the 21st century. The BS is just piled too high for me and my trust in technology is not great. Sometimes I wonder if we are just having a mass psychosis in a field of mud.
IIUC the new article is about taking a "photograph" of the magnetiation in a real sample, and the old article is a theoretical prediction. Perhaps the new article should be presented as a confirmation instead of a discovery, but press releas are full of omisions and overhype.
It's probably not groungbreaking. The title is misleading.
It's just a new arrangement of the spins in material. It may be useful to get better transformer or something, like improve them 1%, or in 30 years it may cause a huge unexpected thechnology revolution and my comment would look silly. There are similar discoveries of new materials with weird properties every month. Unless you work in that area, it is probably safe to ignore it for the next 10 years until it has some aplications. (Or you may enjoy reading the technical details.)
There's definitely fatigue around science news where media orgs massively over inflate or prematurely celebrate. Without actually being in the field yourself it's impossible to tell if any discovery is a nothingburger, 20 years away from meaning anything, or about to change the world. And most of the time it's the first two.
That's true, but I was more commenting on the loss of science from the public subconscious and our media outside of 7 second tiktok videos that link to current trends.
Is there another post I missed that is more viral?