Skip to main content

Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

3 comments

Scientists Finally Saw Electrons Melt Like Water For The First Time & It Changes Physics Forever

 In the world of physics, some of the most fascinating discoveries happen when matter behaves in unexpected ways. One such breakthrough has recently come from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who have directly observed a completely new state of electronic matter: a liquid charge density wave (CDW). This long-predicted but never-seen phenomenon challenges decades of debate and opens a new window into the mysterious behavior of electrons inside solids.

What Is a Charge Density Wave?

To understand this discovery, let’s start with the basics.

In most metals, electrons move freely, carrying electric current. However, in certain materials, electrons can organize themselves into a repeating pattern, almost like atoms in a crystal. This organized pattern is called a charge density wave. Instead of individual electrons acting independently, they form a collective wave-like structure that repeats across the material.

This “electron crystal” can strongly affect how electricity flows. In some cases, CDWs are linked to remarkable phenomena such as superconductivity, where electricity flows with zero resistance.

The Big Question: Can a CDW Melt?

In everyday life, we know that solids melt into liquids when heated. Ice becomes water, and metals become molten when temperatures are high enough. Physicists have long wondered: can the same thing happen to charge density waves?

Theoretical studies from the early 1990s suggested that at high temperatures, a solid CDW should “melt” into a liquid CDW, where electrons lose their fixed positions but still move together in a correlated way. However, this idea remained controversial.

Some scientists argued that a liquid CDW was impossible because electrons interact strongly with the underlying atomic lattice of the solid. According to this view, the atomic structure would prevent the CDW from ever behaving like a true liquid.

For more than 30 years, this debate remained unresolved — mainly because no experiment could directly observe a liquid CDW.

Why Was It So Hard to See?

The main challenge was temperature.

The liquid CDW was predicted to appear at temperatures so high that the crystal structure of candidate materials would break down before the CDW could be studied. In simple terms, the material would fall apart before scientists could see the electronic liquid state.

This is where the UCLA team found a clever solution.

A Smart Experimental Shortcut

The researchers focused on a layered material called 1T-TaS₂ (tantalum disulfide), which is well known for hosting different CDW phases. Instead of slowly heating the material, they used an advanced method called ultrafast electron diffraction.

Here’s how it works:

  • An extremely short laser pulse, lasting only a few femtoseconds (one quadrillionth of a second), rapidly excites the electrons.

  • Before the atomic structure has time to collapse, a beam of electrons probes the material.

  • This allows scientists to capture a “snapshot” of the electronic arrangement in real time.

As senior author Anshul Kogar explained, this method let them look behind the “curtain” of an intervening phase transition that previously blocked direct observation.

From Solid to Liquid: What the Researchers Saw

At low temperatures, the electrons in 1T-TaS₂ formed a solid CDW, arranged in a neat, grid-like pattern. This produced sharp and well-defined scattering spots in the diffraction data.

As the temperature increased, something interesting happened.

First, the electrons began to lose their exact positions but still kept some directional order. This intermediate phase is known as a hexatic CDW, which had been hinted at in earlier studies.

At even higher temperatures, the electrons lost both their positional and directional order. Instead of sharp spots, the researchers observed an isotropic ring of scattering — a clear signature that the CDW had entered a fully liquid state.

This pattern matched theoretical predictions perfectly.

Settling a Decades-Old Debate

For the first time, scientists had direct experimental evidence of a liquid CDW.

“Our work provides convincing evidence that liquid CDWs exist, finally putting an end to a decades-old debate,” said Joshua Lee, the first author of the study.

The findings show that electrons can behave like a liquid, flowing collectively without forming a rigid structure — a striking example of how complex and rich electronic behavior can be inside solids.

Why This Discovery Matters

This breakthrough goes far beyond a single material.

Liquid CDWs are believed to play a crucial role in the phase diagrams of high-temperature superconductors, materials that could revolutionize power transmission and electronics if fully understood.

By confirming the existence of a liquid CDW, this research provides a new framework for studying correlated electron systems, where interactions between electrons lead to exotic states of matter.

Opening the Door to New Experiments

The experimental techniques developed in this study can now be applied to many other materials. Scientists can explore electronic phases that were previously hidden or thought to be unreachable.

The UCLA team is already planning follow-up studies. One key question is how impurities affect the liquid CDW state.

According to Lee, adding impurities might stabilize the liquid phase — or push it into a completely new form, such as a glassy or amorphous CDW, where order is frozen in a disordered way.

These possibilities could lead to the discovery of entirely new electronic states.

A New Chapter in Quantum Materials

The direct observation of a liquid charge density wave marks a major milestone in condensed matter physics. It confirms long-standing theoretical predictions, resolves deep disagreements, and introduces a new state of matter that scientists can now explore in detail.

As research continues, this discovery may help unlock deeper understanding of superconductivity, quantum materials, and the collective behavior of electrons — bringing us one step closer to future technologies powered by exotic electronic states.

Reference:
Joshua S. H. Lee et al., Observation of a hidden charge density wave liquid, Nature Physics (2025), DOI: 10.1038/s41567-025-03108-z.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular

Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

For years, scientists believed that adding even one qubit (a unit of quantum information) to a black hole needed energy. This was based on the idea that a black hole’s entropy must increase with more information, which means it must gain energy. But a new study by Jonah Kudler-Flam and Geoff Penington changes that thinking. They found that quantum information can be teleported into a black hole without adding energy or increasing entropy . This works through a process called black hole decoherence , where “soft” radiation — very low-energy signals — carry information into the black hole. In their method, the qubit enters the black hole while a new pair of entangled particles (like Hawking radiation) is created. This keeps the total information balanced, so there's no violation of the laws of physics. The energy cost only shows up when information is erased from the outside — these are called zerobits . According to Landauer’s principle, erasing information always needs energy. But ...
3 comments
Read more

Black Holes That Never Dies

Black holes are powerful objects in space with gravity so strong that nothing can escape them. In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes can slowly lose energy by giving off tiny particles. This process is called Hawking radiation . Over time, the black hole gets smaller and hotter, and in the end, it disappears completely. But new research by Menezes and his team shows something different. Using a theory called Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) , they studied black holes with quantum corrections. In their model, the black hole does not vanish completely. Instead, it stops shrinking when it reaches a very small size. This leftover is called a black hole remnant . They also studied something called grey-body factors , which affect how much energy escapes from a black hole. Their findings show that the black hole cools down and stops losing mass once it reaches a minimum mass . This new model removes the idea of a “singularity” at the center of the black hole and gives us a better ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How Planetary Movements Might Explain Sunspot Cycles and Solar Phenomena

Sunspots, dark patches on the Sun's surface, follow a cycle of increasing and decreasing activity every 11 years. For years, scientists have relied on the dynamo model to explain this cycle. According to this model, the Sun's magnetic field is generated by the movement of plasma and the Sun's rotation. However, this model does not fully explain why the sunspot cycle is sometimes unpredictable. Lauri Jetsu, a researcher, has proposed a new approach. Jetsu’s analysis, using a method called the Discrete Chi-square Method (DCM), suggests that planetary movements, especially those of Earth, Jupiter, and Mercury, play a key role in driving the sunspot cycle. His theory focuses on Flux Transfer Events (FTEs), where the magnetic fields of these planets interact with the Sun’s magnetic field. These interactions could create the sunspots and explain other solar phenomena like the Sun’s magnetic polarity reversing every 11 years. The Sun, our closest star, has been a subject of scient...
Post a Comment
Read more