UChicago scientists see first evidence of 'quantum superchemistry' in the lab | Hacker News Reader

UChicago scientists see first evidence of 'quantum superchemistry' in the lab

news.uchicago.edu

93 pointsclouddrover36 comments

All of these long-term research projects in science seem to be popping at once. What a time to be alive.

I wonder if there's anything ending August 2023 that causes many groups to publish right around this time, maybe a lot of PhDs are trying to graduate and are pumping out papers, or maybe a bunch of grants are ending?

Probably a lot of the latter and also a lot of conferences seem to be making their big 'proper' in-person return since after covid. It's turning out to be a pretty heavy paper-writing time. Many people I know have 2-3 papers to write and submit over this and next month.

Edit: That said, this work seems to have likely been done sometime last year and was only just published in Nature in July. The PhD student coauthors appear to have gotten their doctorates last year.

So maybe all these seemingly big developments are just seeming to be clustered because it's just that Nature, being such a high impact journal, has published recently.

Nature publishes weekly.

FYI, the paper is published in Nature Physics, Impact Factor: 19. Nature proper had an Impact Factor of 64.

I'm holding on to my papers

> Another consequence is that the final molecules share the same molecular state. Chin explained that the same molecules in different states can have different physical and chemical properties—but there are times when you want to create a batch of molecules in a specific state. In traditional chemistry, you’re rolling the dice. “But with this technique, you can steer the molecules into an identical state,” he said.

Is this “state” referring to left/right handedness of chiral molecules, or is this some other property? Or both?

The 'state' they're talking about here isn't about the left/right-handedness (chirality) of the molecules. It's more about the quantum properties of the system. Think energy levels, spins instead.

As a complete layperson to these sciences it sounded like a GPU for chemistry... massively parallel operations

Or maybe more like a laser: putting a lot of molecules into the same quantum state, and then making them act all at once.

That's one crazy picture. Perfectly sums up the mad scientist portray.

Can we have a normal discovery that's not super-something? superconductor, superchemisty... Because if everything is super in 2023, what will we have left in 2040?

Maybe Hyper. Hyperloop, hyperplane... Maybe Mega? That way it's more clear what's next.

The real question is ultra before or after hyper?

Ultra and hyper mean basically the same (over, beyond), but since Greek culture flourished before Roman culture, I'd say that hyper should come before ultra.

(And do you think that coming up with all this kilo / mega / giga / tera / peta / exa set of prefixes, and deciding their order, was easy?)

Ultra and hyper mean basically the same

So does super, which is the direct Latin cognate of hyper. So ultra > super > hyper?

I would suggest the opposite, as in modern usage, the Greek words "feel" larger than the Latin ones, perhaps because they look less familiar.

Between superman and supersonic planes, super feels common and slightly old fashioned. To me "super" feels the least superior of the three.

We've already established that hypersonic > supersonic. I think a hypermarket is bigger than a supermarket. In protein structure, a hyperfamily is bigger than a superfamily.

I've never heard of an ultrasonic aeroplane, an ultramarket, or an ultrafamily. So those must be bigger yet?

They seem to refer to different domains. Supersonic is about the speed of sound, and ultrasonic is about the frequency. Superior is about being higher / better, and ulterior is about being a next step :)

> Maybe Mega? That way it's more clear what's next.

But we would have to start with kilo first.

Meta- would be my guess. Metacapacitor, metachemistry, metaconductor... It works.

Only if you subscribe to Super-Science Plus.

in 2040 we will finally have Superconducting Super Collider

Which will finally discover supersymmetric particles!

Through the power of ultrachemistry

What did you expect of homo sapiens sapiens?

I like to think we've already discovered all the "average" things like... average conductors.

Well after supersonic you get hypersonic, so hyperconductors and hyperchemistry

Or we take a step back to turboconductors.

Doesn't look like mad scientist to me. More like stereotypical advanced hard science

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmSO2cz2ozQ

I expect this can make better explosives.

I can imagine a novel where a guy gets blown up with quantum explosives and becomes a god. Hilarity ensues.

My first impulse on seeing the word “quantum” was to assume this was some weirdo wellness guru. But no, a legitimate use of quantum! Outstanding!

Why would weirdo wellness guru stuff appear on HN?

...well, except for posts about mindfulness or Soylent or whatever.

Or psychedelics. Or intermittent fasting. Or ...

“Quantum” always lean on the side of bullshity (yes especially quantum computing)

As a physicist, I know that "quantum", "magnets", and "crystals" are all common heuristics for identifying pseudo-science. On the other hand, my thesis involved all three and I've had frustrating experiences with "skeptics" trying to debunk my work. It doesn't help that there's an alternate explanation for our apparatus that is simple, obvious, and wrong (it subtly violates conservation of angular momentum).

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