Posted on 01/30/2019 7:51:45 AM PST by BenLurkin
A laser pulse bounced off a rubidium atom and entered the quantum world — taking on the weird physics of "Schrödinger's cat." Then another one did the same thing. Then another.
The laser pulses didn't grow whiskers or paws. But they became like the famous quantum-physics thought experiment Schrödinger's cat in an important way: They were large objects that acted like the simultaneously dead-and-alive creatures of subatomic physics — existing in a limbo between two simultaneous, contradictory states. And the lab in Finland where they were born had no limit on how many they could make. Pulse after pulse turned into a creature of the quantum world. And those "quantum cats," though they existed for only a fraction of a second inside the experimental machine, had the potential to be immortal.
"In our experiment, the [laser cat] was sent to the detector immediately, so it was destroyed right after its creation," said Bastian Hacker, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany, who worked on the experiment.
But it didn't have to be that way, Hacker told Live Science.
"An optical state can live forever. So if we had sent the pulse out into the night sky, it could live for billions of years in its [cat-like] state."
That longevity is part of what makes these pulses so useful, he added. A long-lived laser cat can survive long-term travel through an optical fiber, making it a good unit of information for a network of quantum computers.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Ohhhhhh.....
This explains why my dogs have been setting up Surface to Air Missiles.
If I said I understood this,
it would be such a lie.
I would like to know how they knew the quantum pulse existed in two forms simultaneously until it hit the detector. What would differentiate that from random generation of one form or the other at the outset, which would appear to the detector exactly the same way?
Lazer kitties, pew pew
do want.
Do they chase their own lazer pointers?
From Big Bang Theory LOL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgRViUJ3J4E
Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Ohm are in a car
They get pulled over. Heisenberg is driving and the cop asks him “Do you know how fast you were going?”
“No, but I know exactly where I am” Heisenberg replies.
The cop says “You were doing 55 in a 35.” Heisenberg throws up his hands and shouts “Great! Now I’m lost!”
The cop thinks this is suspicious and orders him to pop open the trunk. He checks it out and says “Do you know you have a dead cat back here?”
“We do now, asshole!” shouts Schrodinger.
The cop moves to arrest them. Ohm resists.
“Physicists Made a Flying Army of Laser Schrödinger’s Cats”
Noted Scientist:”They were large objects that acted like the simultaneously dead-and-alive creatures of subatomic physics — existing in a limbo between two simultaneous, contradictory states.”
Fed up Patriot: “What?! Quantum particles created by a laser being bounced off rhubidium to create Shrodinger’s Cat paradoxical stringlets?”
Noted Scientist: “That is what we hoped for but all we got when we fired the laser were progressive politicians!”
Hi.
What is the half life of a rubidium atom?
5.56mm
On Earth, natural rubidium comprises two isotopes: 72% is the stable isotope, 85Rb; 28% is the slightly radioactive 87Rb, with a half-life of 49 billion years—more than three times longer than the estimated age of the universe.
From Wikipedia
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