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posted by janrinok on Monday May 21 2018, @10:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the you-betcha! dept.

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

Researchers have studied how a 'drumstick' made of light could make a microscopic 'drum' vibrate and stand still at the same time.

A team of researchers from the UK and Australia have made a key step towards understanding the boundary between the quantum world and our everyday classical world.

Quantum mechanics is truly weird. Objects can behave like both particles and waves, and can be both here and there at the same time, defying our common sense. Such counterintuitive behaviour is typically confined to the microscopic realm and the question "why don't we see such behaviour in everyday objects?" challenges many scientists today.

Now, a team of researchers have developed a new technique to generate this type of quantum behaviour in the motion of a tiny drum just visible to the naked eye. The details of their research are published today in New Journal of Physics.

Project principal investigator, Dr Michael Vanner from the Quantum Measurement Lab at Imperial College London, said: "Such systems offer significant potential for the development of powerful new quantum-enhanced technologies, such as ultra-precise sensors, and new types of transducers.

[...] In the quantum world, a drum can vibrate and stand still at the same time. However, generating such quantum motion is very challenging. lead author of the project Dr Martin Ringbauer from the University of Queensland node of the Australian Research Council Centre for Engineered Quantum Systems, said: "You need a special kind of drumstick to make such a quantum vibration with our tiny drum."

In recent years, the emerging field of quantum optomechanics has made great progress towards the goal of a quantum drum using laser light as a type of drumstick. However, many challenges remain, so the authors' present study takes an unconventional approach.

Source: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/186346/can-quantum-drum-vibrate-stand-still/

Generation of Mechanical Interference Fringes by Multi-Photon Counting‘’ by M Ringbauer, T J Weinhold, L A Howard, A G White & M R Vanner is published in New Journal of Physics 20, 053042 (2018)


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday May 21 2018, @05:57PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 21 2018, @05:57PM (#682294) Journal

    You overstate the certainty of "mass" in dark matter. It *may* be mass, or it may be something we haven't figured out about the equations, or it may be something non-particulate that interacts with gravity, or it may be something I haven't guessed at.

    It's true that all the possible choices are pretty weird, but that doesn't make any particular one of them correct. E.g., if it's black holes, they need to be primordial black holes, as in "created before the creation of primordial Helium", or they'll change the primordial Lithium balance. And it that case, is there any matter inside them, or are they just photons forced so close together that they're gravitationally bound?

    So while the thing that we call "dark matter" is real, it's not at all clear that it's matter, and it's dark only in the sense that it's transparent, i.e. doesn't significantly interact with EM radiation.

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    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
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