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How long does a quantum jump take?
It was one of the crucial experiments in quantum physics: when light falls on certain materials, electrons are released from the surface. Albert Einstein was the first to explain this phenomenon in 1905, when he spoke of "light quanta" -- the smallest units of light that we call photons today.
In tiny fractions of a second, an electron of the material absorbs a photon, "jumps" into another state and leaves the surface. This "photoelectric effect" is so fast that until now it has mostly been regarded as instantaneous -- as a sudden change of state, from one moment to the next. However, new measurement methods are so precise that it has now become possible to observe such a process and to measure its duration precisely. A team from the Vienna University of Technology, together with research groups from Garching, Munich and Berlin, determined the duration of the photoelectric effect at a tungsten surface. The results were published in the journal Nature.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday September 22 2018, @08:33PM (1 child)
quite. time is reversible. What prevents practical reversion is entropy. Biology is the triumph of conserving entropy at the expense of energy.
There are probably a large number of undiscovered biology processes that rely upon quantum effects.
The most prominent example I will mention for information, is the charge separation that occurs in your eyes, you are reading this with ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @08:53PM
Some people are using screen readers... Does charge separation still occur in their eyes?