[Red Badger]

Quantum Ping!.............

[Magnum44]

Is this a quantum leap?

[Demiurge2]

Just for the sake of a sh!tposting theological debate... does God know exactly were every quantum particle is?

[tet68]

The team controlled the system so nothing else was exerting a force on the atomic subjects.

Cancel gravity did they?

Now that would be progress!

[Steely Tom]

When a superfluid (like liquid helium in the superfluid state) is rotated, it doesn't rotate as a mass, but instead breaks up into tiny vortices that are arranged in a periodic pattern:

This happens because of the wave nature of matter at the quantum scale. In "rigid rotation," the various atoms that make up the object move with different velocities; those near the axis of rotation move more slowly than do those far from the rotational axis. As particles move more quickly, their de Broglie wavelength decreases; the particles near the axis of rotation have a longer de Broglie wavelength than the particles further away.

Because a superfluid behaves like a single large quantum-mechanical system, the de Broglie waves that make up the various particles must all stay in phase; the only way for this to happen if the container is rotating is for the superfluid to break up into these tiny quantum vortices.