The vacuum as the ultimate nothingness is an idea that quantum physicists have long proved wrong. Instead, they've shown that the vacuum is filled with virtual quantum particles leaping in and out of existence in a maelstrom of quantum activity.
Sometimes, these virtual particles can become real. For example, a powerful electric field can generate electron-positron pairs in a vacuum. And there are other ways of making something out of this nothingness.
A couple of months ago, the Russian physicist Maxim Chernodub showed how a powerful magnetic field can generate electrically charged ρ mesons that behave like a superconductor along the axis of the magnetic filed. And today, Igor Smolyaninov, at the University of Maryland, takes this idea a step further.
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