Just doing my job.
Posted on 02/09/2007 10:40:40 AM PST by Ben Mugged
Harvard University researchers have halted a pulse of laser light in its tracks and revived it a fraction of a millimeter away. Here's the twist: they stopped it in a cloud of supercold sodium atoms, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), and then restarted it in a second, distinct BEC as though the pulse had spookily jumped between the two locations.
"It's odd," says atomic physicist Lene Hau, the team's leader. "We can actually revive the light pulse and send it back on its way as if nothing had happened." ~snip~
BEC clouds are prized because their atoms' delicate quantum states all vibrate in unison, effectively creating one big atom that does things individual atoms cannot. In 1999, for example, Hau's group slowed light inside a condensate to "bicycle speed" (38 mph). For the new experiment, she and her colleagues shined a control laser beam through two independent BECs placed side by side. They struck the first BEC with a laser pulse, which slowed and transferred its energy into a collective shudder of the condensate atoms—a sort of slow-moving ripple of matter that mirrored the laser pulse.
The researchers shut off the control beam long enough to give the wave time to travel the 160 microns between the BECs and then reactivated it. The laser caused the matter wave to coalesce (dump atoms) inside the second BEC, forcing the surrounding atoms to radiate like antennas and reproduce the original pulse.
"It's really playing with quantum mechanics at a lot of different levels," Hau says. The laser pulse and BEC are able to trade energy only because the quantum states of the condensate atoms match up with the frequency of the laser. As a result, the BEC enters a so-called superposition, meaning the matter wave is simultaneously there and not there.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciam.com ...
Per quantum mechanics, there is a nonzero chance that Hillary Clinton could suddenly materialize next to you, but the odds are you'd have to wait a gagillion years for that to happen.
Thanks. I don't think even those long-shot odds are enough for me. Now if you could calculate the odds of Paulina Porizkova materializing...
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Looks like they have discovered a way to 'store' light. A light battery?
Some have characterized her union with Bill 'cold fusion'.
Now that is funny.
I don think so. Any significant collection of energy in the Bose Einsteinian Condensate would cause the condensate to heat up and change states into a non-condensate. At that point the physics no longer supports adding any additional energy.
This is weird. The "matter wave" is not light. It is not a motion of atoms either. If I understand correctly, the atoms are confined to the BECs. Thus the matter wave is a purely quantum-mechanical construct, a wave of probability.
"Hmmm. I think my dryer is a BEC."
That explains why one sock is there and the other is not.
They are a quantum strange pair, you know.
"But does it work?"
"Well, yes and no."
An experiment a year ago showed a light beam could be stopped and restarted. What is interesting is that things are being seen that were unexpected, and this is a good thing.
"Was it carrying one of my missing socks?"
You knocked my socks off (with laughter) with that one.
There is nothing like a great humorist to make us all jump from a state of extreme seriousness to a state of extreme laughter; you have my thanks and get my "Wuli chuckle of the day prize" for today.
"As a result, the BEC enters a so-called superposition, meaning the matter wave is simultaneously there and not there."
And people still believe there can be something that is "supernatural", when science continues to show us the reality that the only thing between "natural" and "supernatural" is the length of the state of our ignorance.
Just doing my job.
OK - there's gotta be a way of turning this into a weapon. Let's get busy!
"Beam me up Scotty!"
Here's how it may work.
Line up five billiard balls in a row touching each other on a pool table. Drive the cue ball into the first and see the last billiard ball move across the table through the transfer of energy while the first four balls remain in place.
Something like that happens with light.
The universe is much simpler than most people realize and all it's forces and mechanics incredibly simple 'though sublime.
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