Some particles are actual particles - like photons, electrons, protons, etc. Think of them as a droplet of water.
Some particles are not really particles, but kind of behave like a particle in some ways. Think of them as bubbles inside a liquid.
If you ignore the air inside, the bubbles don't really exist - they are just the absence of some liquid, that happens to look sort of like a particle with funky properties. Similarly, the particles described in this article don't really exist - they are "holes" in a lattice of other particles, that can mathematically be treated as if they were particles, but aren't actually real in a non-mathematical way.
That said, if Quantum Mechanics has taught us anything, it's that those "purely mathematical" concepts can have very real impacts on the world, so in a sense, it is exciting that these "pseudo-particles" have been found to exist, because the maths might reveal all sorts of funky shit we can do with them that would be impossible with regular particles, and the maths doesn't care that they're not regular particles - it works with either kind of particle.
Good try, and less confusing (or confusing on a much higher level) than some alternatives, but the use of the word "really" and the implication that bubbles (and therefore quasi-particles) "don't exist" in this description is problematic because it is false: bubbles and quasi-particles exist and are as "really real" as electrons and water-droplets.
Nothing but metaphysical confusion is added by asserting that some things "really exist" while other perfectly ordinary things--things that can be created, manipulated, and destroyed--somehow "don't really exist".
A less metaphysically loaded description would be:
The mathematics that Majorana worked out was intended to describe elementary particles, which as the name suggests can't be divided into their component parts. It turns out that inside a superconductor, the motion of groups of electrons, all moving together thanks to the special properties of superconductors, can be described by the same math. These groups of electrons can be considered entities in their own right, and are called "quasi-particles". They are perfectly real: they just aren't elementary.
Furthermore, for quasi-particles the atomic lattice of the superconductor acts in the same way as empty space does for elementary particles: it gives them a place to exist and has properties that allow them to move around and interact with each other. Majorana's equations describes how they do this, so they are mathematically equivalent to elementary Majorana particles moving around in empty space.
>Some particles are actual particles - like photons, electrons, protons, etc. Think of them as a droplet of water.
>Some particles are not really particles, but kind of behave like a particle in some ways. Think of them as bubbles inside a liquid.
only at the currently explored quantum scales. Digging deeper the "actual particles" might as well happen to be just such bubbles.
>the bubbles don't really exist
probing an electron to some fermis has found so far no "liquid" only "air".
One can start suspecting that "real particles" are something like "air bubbles" too when one looks at the fact that the farther you try to separate the quarks of a particle the stronger the opposing force - pretty much like trying to expand the size of an "air bubble" inside the "liquid"
Does this also allow us to assume that any unique properties that we observe from this quasi-particle will have a good chance of being applicable to an actual particle, and thus help us discover the first actual Majorana particle?
I disagree. The title implies a state of affairs which is not true; a reader is likely to take a solid understanding away from it, but that understanding is wrong.
chton's description will leave such a reader with a greater degree of confusion, but a higher overall level of correct understanding.
I agree. I think, however, we can forgive chton for not parsing out the best word for "kind of badness" prior to our semantic discussion. (If we are to be charitable in understanding his/her comment, then we should assume "kind of badness" was the intent.)
For the record, I greatly prefer confusing to misleading. I would rather people have an incomplete understanding than an incorrect one.
> For the record, I greatly prefer confusing to misleading.
On this much, we agree -- in general at least.
OTOH, often, there are good reasons for prefering particular misleading descriptions over more confusing but less misleading ones (pedagogically, for instance, sequences of progressively-less-misleading explanations are often used, each of which is designed to limit how confusing it is to the target audience, to develop progressively better understanding.)
Agreed again. I often quote my intro to computer engineering professor who said, "Education is a series of small lies" when told us some circuits have ternary logic, not just binary. But I feel that this headline is not in that group.
I think that's true most of the time, but in this particular case, it probably isn't doing anyone much good (aside from the beneficiaries of that clickbait admoney)
What these people have done is a way of arranging some electrons such that they behave like Majorana fermions (a fermion [particle] whose anti-particle is itself).
