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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)
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(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday July 02 2020, @08:29AM (3 children)
>human scale
>10e-20m
The human scale is for the object, not for the fluctuation, mystery of missing paired sock still unsolved.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Thursday July 02 2020, @12:55PM (1 child)
Actually, now that you mention it, 10^-20 meters doesn’t seem like human scale at all...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2020, @12:50PM
that's what she said.
(Score: 2, Funny) by YttriumOxide on Friday July 03 2020, @05:05AM
I tend to come here from the daily newsletter which strips formatting... I was a little confused and incredulous when I read that the fluctuations can kick the mirrors "10-20 meters"... that would be concerning!