TJSomething 11 days ago

Another part from the paper that a lot of people here seem to be ignoring: "Specifically, macroscopic water droplets isothermally form when the NP size is ≤22 nm, RH is >~90%, and ϕPE ranges from 0.05 to 0.35." and "Initial water droplets that are observable under optical microscopy (~1 μm in size) appear within a few seconds after being exposed to 97% RH."

This is really moist air that's only barely short of forming dew. A lot of people are focusing on sensational "violation of physics", when it's an incremental improvement on process that happens naturally.

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TimByte 11 days ago

I think the interesting bit is less about "breaking physics" and more about how finely tuned the material is to encourage this behavior without external cooling.

vel0city 11 days ago

But there was external cooling, or am I reading "The temperature of the films was controlled" incorrectly?

bm62 10 days ago

He likely means cooling it below the dew point rather than controlling the temperature in general.