[sourcery]

Ping

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[orionblamblam]

[martin_fierro]

NIST Physicists Coax Six Atoms Into Quantum 'Cat' State

Really, really small kitty ping.

[wotan]

This article is full of mistakes.

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

a real cat’s roughly 1026 atoms

That's either a really small cat or some mighty big atoms.

[RobFromGa]

It's not that the cat IS both alive and dead, it's that we can't know which is true. We can only know the probability of the event being true. Only by actual observtaion is the actual state know and then it becomes one or the other.

from whatis.com:

Here's Schrödinger's (theoretical) experiment: We place a living cat into a steel chamber, along with a device containing a vial of hydrocyanic acid. There is, in the chamber, a very small amount of a radioactive substance. If even a single atom of the substance decays during the test period, a relay mechanism will trip a hammer, which will, in turn, break the vial and kill the cat. The observer cannot know whether or not an atom of the substance has decayed, and consequently, cannot know whether the vial has been broken, the hydrocyanic acid released, and the cat killed. Since we cannot know, the cat is both dead and alive according to quantum law, in a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and learn the condition of the cat that the superposition is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive). This situation is sometimes called quantum indeterminacy or the observer's paradox: the observation or measurement itself affects an outcome, so that it can never be known what the outcome would have been if it were not observed.

[SunkenCiv]

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

- Carl Sandburg

[VadeRetro]

Quantum cat-states ping.

[DoctorMichael]

"..........The ability to exist in two states at once is another peculiar property of quantum physics known as “superposition.”..........."

It always amazes me how beautiful and predictive the fruits of Western 'Scientific' inquiry are and in addition, how it all weaves together into a single unbroken tapestry as part of our civilization.

However, there are those that believe.............

1) There is no such thing as an atom.
2) The Earth is flat.
3) Evolution is false.

[VadeRetro]

In addition, cat states are more sensitive to disturbance than other types of superpositions, a potentially useful feature in certain forms of quantum encryption, a new method for protecting information by making virtually all eavesdropping detectable.

This works in a cool way. You basically send your message via pulses of cat-state particles of which each is entangled with a particle you are NOT sending. If the cat-state of your stay-at-home particles collapses too soon, some eavesdropper has sensed your message along the way.

[King Prout]

I'm thinking that should be "10^26 atoms"
otherwise, interesting indeed.
I agree with Einstein: entanglement IS spooky.
I cannot help but wonder whether entanglement might lead to instantaneous communication over practically infinite distances.
corollary: if it can, then I cannot help but think that perhaps the SETI folks have been barking up a very wrong tree in listening for alien radio comsig.

[Physicist]

Regarding the 1026 issue:

Here is the original press release. You can see that the "26" is superscripted. The "1026" was a copy-and-paste job from the original, nothing more.

[Servant of the 9]

The name was coined in a famous 1935 essay in which German physicist Erwin Schrödinger described an extreme theoretical case of being in two states simultaneously, namely a cat that is both dead and alive at the same time.

Schrödinger obviously never drank tequila or he would know an entire human body can enter a cat state on any given morning.

So9

[IonInsights]

does it have anything to do with this?

[bvw]

That's some convenient pet cat which only has 1026 atoms.

[MontanaBeth]

Thank you for posting this interesting article. I am fascinated by quantum physics. I always think the key to understanding it is just out of my range of vision, like an out of focus picture becoming clearer and clearer, can almost see it and then wham it's gone. I think it would be the greatest job in the world to study it! Probably would never go home.

[isom35]

all that matters is, can this be turned into a cool weapon?

[Southack]

"Scientists at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have coaxed six atoms into spinning together in two opposite directions at the same time, a so-called Schrödinger “cat” state that obeys the unusual laws of quantum physics."

Outstanding! Poorly described, but outstanding.

[onedoug]

And this conflicts with the Bible how?