Scientists discover new, 3rd form of magnetism that may be the 'missing link' in the quest for superconductivity (www.livescience.com)
from cm0002@lemmy.world to science@mander.xyz on 22 Jan 21:55
https://lemmy.world/post/24602084

Researchers have obtained the first conclusive evidence of an elusive third class of magnetism, called altermagnetism. Their findings, published Dec. 11 in the journal Nature, could revolutionize the design of new high-speed magnetic memory devices and provide the missing puzzle piece in the development of better superconducting materials.

#science

threaded - newest

naeap@sopuli.xyz on 23 Jan 00:05 collapse

Sounds really cool, but I didn’t understand one bit of it

workerONE@lemmy.world on 23 Jan 02:58 next collapse
xylogx@lemmy.world on 23 Jan 04:08 next collapse

“Altermagnetic materials, first theorized in 2022, have a structure that sits somewhere in between. Each individual magnetic moment points in the opposite direction as its neighbor, as in an antiferromagnetic material. But each unit is slightly twisted relative to this adjacent magnetic atom, resulting in some ferromagnetic-like properties.

Altermagnets, therefore, combine the best properties of both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic materials. “The benefit of ferromagnets is that we have an easy way of reading and writing memory using these up or down domains,” study co-author Alfred Dal Din, a doctoral student also at the University of Nottingham, told Live Science. “But because these materials have a net magnetism, that information is also easy to lose by wiping a magnet over it.””

Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de on 23 Jan 13:46 collapse

the headlines about this are absolute dogshit and just fucking not true, they didn’t discover a “third form of magnetism”, they discovered a third kind of magnetic material.

I haven’t read about it in detail, but from what i can gather it’s like how things can be polarized in different ways, so imagine we only knew of linearly polarized light and just discovered circular polarization, basically.

it’s still just electromagnetism, but With Context

naeap@sopuli.xyz on 23 Jan 14:41 collapse

Ah, that was much easier to understand.
Thank you!