I Think I Lost An Electron I’d Better Keep An Ion That

Scientists don’t fully understand quantum entanglement—but they know that space, or physical distance, is not a factor in the “communication” between two entangled particles. If one is affected by a force or a measurement, the other also reacts in the same moment, even if they are separated by leagues. Unlocking the secrets of this phenomenon could lead to incredible advancements in technology, such as quantum machines that transmit information faster than light.

Click the image above to learn more!

The Atom and Its Quantum Mirror Image: Physicists Experimentally Produces Quantum-Superpositions, Simply Using a Mirror (click thru for ScienceDaily article)

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“This uncertainty about the state of the atom does not mean that the measurement lacks precision,” Jörg Schmiedmayer (TU Vienna) emphasizes. “It is a fundamental property of quantum physics: The particle is in both of the two possible states simultaneousely, it is in a superposition.” In the experiment the two motional states of the atom – one moving towards the mirror and the other moving away from the mirror – are then combined using Bragg diffraction from a grating made of laser light. Observing interference it can be directly shown that the atom has indeed been traveling both paths at once…“

NASA | Thermonuclear Art – The Sun In Ultra-HD

Watch the whole video here.

(CNN)

Possible expansion/revision on QED theory needed? …

“Observations made with NIST’s Electron Beam Ion Trap indicate that, in ions with a strongly positive charge, electrons can behave in ways inconsistent with quantum electrodynamics (QED) theory, which describes electromagnetism. While more experiments are needed,the data could imply that some aspects of QED theory require revision. ”

…read more

What is the mass of the Central Black Hole of the Phoenix Cluster?

Here’s a nice animation to blow your mind.

20 BILLION of our SUNS.

This seemed like a good day to post some rainbow laser modes!

Light in a circular cavity makes a variety of standing wave patterns, some of which look like flowers, wagon wheels, or even tie-fighter spaceships. These images are from my simulations of the light in the cavities of nanolasers - each pattern is called a mode, and the smaller the laser, the simpler the mode tends to be.

In our lasers, the modes that tend to do the best are the whispering gallery modes - for example, the mode at the upper center.  Whispering gallery modes get their name from the whispering gallery phenomenon first noticed with sound waves in cathedral domes. People noticed that if they stood along the perimeter of some cathedral domes, the sound waves from a whisper would bounce along the walls of the dome, and could be clearly heard at certain other places along the dome’s perimeter.  In the case of our lasers, it’s light that bounces around the laser cavity - wavelengths that make an integer number of oscillations in one round trip end up forming a sort of circular standing wave.  Whispering gallery modes appear not just for light and sound, but for other kinds of waves as well, like matter waves and gravitational waves.

Three quarks for Muster Mark*! And for every proton and neutron, too… right? 

Not so fast. You might have learned that every proton and neutron is made of elementary particles called quarks, and that each of the familiar subatomic bits that make up the nucleus of atoms is built out of precisely three of the quirky, quarky sub-subatomic bunch. 

This great video from The Physics Girl explains why that idea doesn’t quite add up to what’s really going on at matter’s smallest scales. Plus, CANDY! I love candy! Just wait ‘til you get to the part about how much mass is inside of a proton compared to the number of particles. Mind = blown, Einstein. 

*Funny historical note: At the beginning of the video, Dianna asks why “quark” is spelled the way it is. It looks like it should be pronounced “kwahrk,” but we clearly pronounce it “kwork”. Well, Murray Gell-Mann, the physicist who first theorized the existence of these elementary particles, had already picked out the name he wanted, a made-up word that he pronounced “kwork”, but with no idea how he should spell it. Then, while reading Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce, he stumbled on the following passage:

Three quarks for Muster Mark! Sure he has not got much of a bark And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.

Gell-Mann stuck to his guns on the “kwork” pronunciation, despite the fact that it’s obviously supposed to rhyme with “Mark”, but seeing that Joyce had stumbled upon the same rule of three quarks that the universe had, he couldn’t pass it up. Quantum literature!

Imprisoned Molecules ‘Quantum Rattle’ in Their Cages

ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2012) — Scientists have discovered that a space inside a special type of carbon molecule can be used to imprison other smaller molecules such as hydrogen or water…. (read more)

Quantum Vibrations Controlled For The First Time Ever, Could Help Find Gravitational Waves

A remarkable experiment has successfully seen the effects of “quantum motion” at a relatively large scale. These are essentially tiny vibrations caused on an atomic level when an object otherwise appears to be stationary. Among its many implications, the research – which was also able to temporarily stop the effect – could aid the hunt for elusive ripples in space-time called gravitational waves.

The study, published in the journal Science, was carried out by a team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and collaborators. In classical physics, an object – such as a ball in a bowl – will eventually come to rest as the forces of gravity and friction act upon it. But in quantum mechanics, which governs the behavior of matter and light at an atomic scale, nothing is ever truly at rest.

This means that everything has an extremely small quantum noise, or motion; tiny vibrations at an atomic scale. In this experiment, the researchers were able to observe the effect not just at an atomic level, but at a larger micrometer-scale and, for the first time, control the effect.

To detect it, they placed a flexible aluminum plate on top of a silicon substrate. A superconducting electrical circuit was then used to vibrate the plate at 3.5 million times per second. Subsequently cooling the plate to 0.01 Kelvin (-273.14°C, -459.65°F) reduced the vibrations in a classical sense to zero, but probing it with microwave fields showed a small quantum motion – roughly the diameter of a proton, or 10,000 times smaller than a hydrogen atom.

“What we have found is that the motion of a micron scale object requires a quantum description,” co-author Keith Schwab from Caltech told IFLScience. “Classical physics just can’t capture the quantum noise we see.”

According to Schwab, the noise is an “unavoidable consequence of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle,” which essentially states that everything behaves like a particle and a wave at the same time. However, the team found that by carefully applying a controlled microwave field, they could reduce the motion in certain places, at the cost of making it much larger elsewhere. This technique is known as quantum squeezing.

Read more ~ IFL Science

Photo credit: agsandrew/Shutterstock.