ZPEnergy.com - EXPERIMENT CONFIRMS EXISTENCE OF NEW ELECTRONIC STATE IN SUPERCONDUCTORS

LATEST NEWS ON APPLIED PHYSICS, November 11 (from PhysOrg Newsletter):

The existence of a new electronic state in superconductors, materials that can carry an electric current without resistance, has been confirmed experimentally according to research to be published in the 12 November 2004 issue of the journal Science by a team led by Ying Liu, associate professor of physics at Penn State. "We have established direct evidence for the existence of an odd-parity superconductor, which previously had been theorized but never demonstrated in an unambiguous experiment," says Liu.

The results culminate six years of experimentation by Liu in collaboration with a former graduate student, Karl Nelson, and a former postdoctoral associate, Zhiqiang Mao at Penn State; and Yoshiteru Maeno, a professor of physics at Kyoto University.

Full story at: http://www.physorg.com/news1948.html

In other Science News:

SCIENCE: 33-YEAR HUNT FOR PROOF OF SPIN CURRENT NOW OVER, November 11
Spin Hall effect observed

In a paper published online today in Science, a group of researchers led by David Awschalom, a professor of physics and electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, reports the observation of the spin Hall effect. This publication ends a 33-year long effort aimed at this discovery.

Full story at: http://www.physorg.com/news1947.html

NATURE-OF-WATER QUESTION MAKES ANOTHER SPLASH, November 11
Recent experimental results threatened to overturn 100 years of scientific research into the mysterious nature of liquid water, but new experimental results say ... not so fast! A team of scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, has shown that the energy required to "measurably distort" the molecular structure of liquid water is the same as the energy required to melt ice. This could explain why a study last spring out of Stanford University seemed to contradict what was has long been believed about the molecular structure of liquid water.

Full story at: http://www.physorg.com/news1946.html