Fastest-Spinning Man-Made Object

Scientists have created a microscopic sphere and set it awhirl at a blistering 600 million rotations per minute.

The sphere, which rotates 500,000 times faster than the average washing machine, is the fastest-spinning object ever made.

The findings, which were detailed today (Aug. 28) in the journal Nature Communications, could shed light on the physics of matter.

Riff-in-Thyme said:

Scientists have created a microscopic sphere and set it awhirl at a blistering 600 million rotations per minute.

The sphere, which rotates 500,000 times faster than the average washing machine, is the fastest-spinning object ever made.

I am a mathematical numpty but that doesn’t strike me as sounding accurate, 600 million rotations a minute is only 500 000 times faster than a washing machine?

Prepared to be corrected and kudos, that 600 million rpm is pretty impressive.

Skunkworks said:

Riff-in-Thyme said:

Scientists have created a microscopic sphere and set it awhirl at a blistering 600 million rotations per minute.

The sphere, which rotates 500,000 times faster than the average washing machine, is the fastest-spinning object ever made.

I am a mathematical numpty but that doesn’t strike me as sounding accurate, 600 million rotations a minute is only 500 000 times faster than a washing machine?

Prepared to be corrected and kudos, that 600 million rpm is pretty impressive.

A washing machine can spin at 1200 rpm, times that by 500 000 and you get 600 000 000 rpm.

Stealth said:

A washing machine can spin at 1200 rpm, times that by 500 000 and you get 600 000 000 rpm.

okely dokely.

Skunkworks said:

that 600 million rpm is pretty impressive.

Yep. It’s about 10 times faster than the previous record.

But we are talking about a very tiny sphere:

The team manufactured a miniature sphere of calcium with a diameter of 4 micrometers
[…]
The rotation rate is so fast that the angular acceleration at the sphere surface is 1 billion times that of gravity on the Earth surface

> In addition, the object acted like a tiny gyroscope, stabilizing its motion as it wobbled, which had the effect of cooling the sphere to 40 Kelvin.

That’s weird. I would have thought that hitting a sphere of calcium with laser light would heat it up significantly. There’s no heat loss by thermal conduction or convection in a vacuum so why does it cool down?

“The rotation rate is so fast that the angular acceleration at the sphere surface is 1 billion times that of gravity on the Earth surface “

That would be “spin” gravity then?