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Quantum Fluctuations Can Jiggle Objects on the Human Scale

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday July 02 2020, @01:13AM   Printer-friendly
from the picking-up-good-vibrations dept.

"exec" writes:

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-quantum-fluctuations-jiggle-human-scale.html

The universe, as seen through the lens of quantum mechanics, is a noisy, crackling space where particles blink constantly in and out of existence, creating a background of quantum noise whose effects are normally far too subtle to detect in everyday objects.

Now for the first time, a team led by researchers at MIT LIGO Laboratory has measured the effects of quantum fluctuations on objects at the human scale. In a paper published in Nature, the researchers report observing that quantum fluctuations, tiny as they may be, can nonetheless "kick" an object as large as the 40-kilogram mirrors of the National Science Foundation's Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), causing them to move by a tiny degree, which the team was able to measure.

It turns out the quantum noise in LIGO's detectors is enough to move the large mirrors by 10-20 meters—a displacement that was predicted by quantum mechanics for an object of this size, but that had never before been measured.

Journal Reference:
Haocun Yu, L. McCuller, M. Tse, et al. Quantum correlations between light and the kilogram-mass mirrors of LIGO, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2420-8)

-- submitted from IRC

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 02 2020, @03:59AM (3 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 02 2020, @03:59AM (#1015275) Journal

    I mean, it only moves when you're not looking.

    False. If you are not looking, the cat is in a moving and not moving superposijjzcxz

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday July 02 2020, @04:04AM (2 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 02 2020, @04:04AM (#1015276) Journal

    (... sorry about that, my cat decoherented herself out of the "not moving" state and stepped on the keyboard. Meh, large quantum fluctuations are typical for cats)

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2020, @12:20PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2020, @12:20PM (#1015353)

      Pix or it didn't happen....(grin)

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 02 2020, @12:50PM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 02 2020, @12:50PM (#1015366) Journal

        There [youtube.com]

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