Tag Archives: gabriel wlazłowski

Solving a physics mystery: Those ‘solitons’ are really vortex rings

The same physics that gives tornadoes their ferocious stability lies at the heart of new University of Washington research, and could lead to a better understanding of nuclear dynamics in studying fission, superconductors and the workings of neutron stars.

The work seeks to clarify what Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers witnessed when in 2013 they named a mysterious phenomenon — an unusual long-lived wave traveling much more slowly than expected through a gas of cold atoms. They called this wave a “heavy soliton” and claimed it defied theoretical description. (more…)

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