The mysterious saga of “supersolid” helium continues this week. If you recall, there were some new results a little while back showing that the effect depends on disorder in the samples, followed by neutron scattering studies that didn’t show the expected distribution of states in the sample. These results suggest that something else is going on in these samples, and the explanation of the observed effects isn’t all that simple.
Now, Moses Chan and co-workers at Penn State, who made the initial discovery, have returned with a new paper in which they see “supersolid” behavior in single crystals. This would appear to directly contradict the finding that annealing the sample destroyed the effect.
In a certain sense, this is a wonderfully exciting picture of science in action. There are strange experimental results in need of explanation, and we get to watch different groups trying to replicate the findings, and come up with an explanation that fits all the data. This is how it’s done, people.
In another sense, though, it’s intensely frustrating. Is it a supersolid or not, dammit? Pick one, and stick with it…