{
"$type": "site.standard.document",
"bskyPostRef": {
"cid": "bafyreihwat6bhbdmicykckqjegw5yxg3ypyxkk77y2t6u7twuzyprsvi7i",
"uri": "at://did:plc:ppux22qhhdx7idaxeihqanji/app.bsky.feed.post/3merslitkyao2"
},
"coverImage": {
"$type": "blob",
"ref": {
"$link": "bafkreif6llrban3wramce2pbylxo3rs2fz3mkfuv466qcwkaebmjpui33q"
},
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"size": 161920
},
"path": "/post/47400225",
"publishedAt": "2026-02-13T20:15:41.000Z",
"site": "https://mander.xyz",
"tags": [
"Science",
"supersquirrel",
"0 comments",
"https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-make-electrons-flow-like-water-20260211/"
],
"textContent": "submitted by supersquirrel to science\n9 points | 0 comments\nhttps://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-make-electrons-flow-like-water-20260211/\n\n> In reality, water and electricity flow in completely different ways. Whereas water molecules move together to form a swirly, coherent substance, electrons tend to fly past one another. “Water is seeing nothing but other water,” said Cory Dean(opens a new tab), a physicist at Columbia University, “but in an electronic system, in a wire, that’s manifestly not the case.” Water molecules unite to flow, but each electron acts on its own.\n\n> This every-particle-for-itself movement serves as the foundation for all of electronic theory. It explains why a warm wire resists more than a cold wire, and why a round wire conducts as well as a square wire.\n\n> But since the 1960s, theorists have suspected that electrons can be coaxed to act more like their watery counterparts, and to form an electron fluid.\n\n…\n\n> In recent years, a string of experiments has confirmed that prediction. Last fall, in the most dramatic demonstration yet, Dean and his collaborators arranged for electrons to form a type of shock wave that occurs when a quickly flowing fluid crashes into a slowly flowing fluid. It was a surefire sign that electrons were flowing at extremely high speeds. “That’s really the frontier right now,” said Thomas Scaffidi(opens a new tab), a physicist at the University of California, Irvine who was not involved in the experiment.",
"title": "Physicists Make Electrons Flow Like Water | Quanta Magazine"
}