Saturday, July 24, 2004

Phase Transitions

"Had the Soviet security apparatus decided [to retain Lev Landau in Moscow's Lubyanka prison in 1989], physics today would be very different. Landau explained [Pyotr] Kapitsa's discovery within a few months, and over the next three decades left his mark on virtually every area of physics, from astrophysics and cosmology to the study of magnetic materials.  Landau also invented a revolutionary new theory of phase transitions, a theory of how substances of all kinds change their forms" (158).Phase Transitions

Stole away several pages of Mark Buchanan's Nexus on the flights today from KC to Detroit to Syracuse.  Once in town, D. and I checked out an apartment, four houses, and, after a delectable dinner on Marshall Street, drove around a bit more until it was too dark to see.

I'm tired and scattered-feeling, but I wanted to post a few notes about Landau while I was thinking of it.  According to one of Buchanan's end notes, "Landau's explanation [of Kapitsa's discovery?] later won him a Nobel Prize.  He showed how the laws of quantum theory turn liquid helium at low temperatures into 'superfluid,' a bizarre new liquid form of matter that lacks any trace of internal friction.  A superfluid set swirling in a cup will swirl forever, never coming to a rest." 

Buchanan builds up to this through a snaking series of segments on ecosystems, networks and organic structures.  Buchanan's explanation of the molecular phases of water and Landau's superfluid state strike me as incredibly useful for retooling metaphors of ideational flow--thought, distributed.  Next to his section on Tipping Points called "How Ideas Acquire People," Buchanan has me thinking that systems lacking "any trace of internal friction" are so delicate that a superfluid state (superfluousness?) cannot prosper except under artificially controlled conditions. Only with total control and subjectivity is sustained superfluidity possible.  (Get your glue stick; this is going to need some holding together.)

Bookmark and Share Posted by at July 24, 2004 11:00 PM to Travelog
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