5/6/2025–|Last update: 11:46 (Mecca time)
If you have a cabinet of a substance known as the “super liquid”, and you heated one of the two ends to approach the boiling, you may notice a strange matter, as the other side begins to heat, although the liquid appears completely static, then the heat returns to the first party in mutual movement, as if the heat bounces back and forth, while the questioner does not move at all.
This unusual type of heat transmission, which has baffled scientists for decades since the physicist Laszlu Tiza predicted in 1938, does not happen in regular fluids, but in very rare physical cases, known as “super liquids”, where the atoms mate and move almost without friction, which completely changes the way the heat is transferred.
Examples of these substances are the Helium-4 liquid, which turns into an super liquid when cooled into less than 2.17 km, lehium-6 and sodium, which are atomic gases that can be converted into a high condition using ultra-accurately reluctant cooling techniques, and is usually conducted in specialized laboratories.
When these materials are cooled to temperatures very close to the absolute scratch (about 273.15 ° C), their behavior changes completely, so super liquids can flow without any resistance or friction, and if you put it in a circular tube, it will continue to revolve forever without stopping, as it can climb the walls of the container and leave it without any external force, which is impossible in normal liquids.
As for the most prominent property, it is that the heat in this case is not transmitted randomly, but rather is in the form of a wave, such as the sound completely, and this is scientifically known as “the second voice”, which is a phenomenon that scientists have always tried to monitor it visually, but without success.
What did the researchers do?
The problem that prevented this is that ultra -cold gases do not issue a thermal radiation that can be tracked with infrared, as do normal materials, and for this, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a new method announced in the journal “Science”, which depends on monitoring the vibrations of atoms, instead of infrared temperature.
In the heart of a very cold laboratory, the team used the lithium-6 atoms, and they found that when these atoms heat up, they start vibrating with higher frequencies, and using accurate radio waves, scientists enabled “making the atoms shaking” in a clear way that can be tracked, as if they were flashing under the microscope, revealing their unique thermal journey.
To bring the image closer, it can be imagined that every atom resembles a small tendon in a musical instrument, and when it is cold, slowly shaking, and when they heated, vibrate quickly, and by setting radio waves on the frequencies of these vibrations themselves, the researchers enable the atoms to “play” warmly, appearance of heat movement visually.
This resonance enabled the scientists to photograph the movement of heat inside the super liquid at one frame after another, as if they were filming a slow film, but they did not see the heat moved in the traditional way, but rather in the form of a sound wave that bounces between the walls, as if the heat itself was “speaking”.
Practical applications for discovery
“For the first time, we can see this strange thermal transition and document it in a picture. We have seen how the material turns from an ordinary liquid into a super liquid in which heat is treated as if it was a sound between the walls,” said Professor Martin Zeerlain, the study supervisor, in a statement issued by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He adds that the importance of this discovery is not limited to the theoretical side, but may open new horizons to understand the behavior of the most strange entities in the universe, such as ultra -density neutron stars, or supernatural materials that transmit electricity without energy loss, which is the dream that scientists have been seeking to achieve for decades for a revolution in the world of clean energy.
He concludes by saying: “What we monitor here in atoms is one million times lighter than air, very similar to the behavior of electrons in ultra -connecting conductors, or even neutrons in the heart of the neutron star, we now have a rare window that allows us to measure heat behavior with precision that was not possible before.”
Thus, what these researchers accomplished not only re -defining the transmission of heat, but also opens the door to understand it as a dynamic, vibrant phenomenon, and perhaps as some say, as a “hidden language” that hesitates within the depths of the material.