Physicists bring human-scale object to near standstill, reaching a quantum state
June 2021, phys.org
I am officially reading science fiction in real time. I have to copy directly from the article to translate the full impact.
But first, a small bit of background -- to stabilize a single pair of entangled photons, even at absolute zero temperatures, has been one of the most important and mind-boggling achievements in science ever. This article is NOT talking about single photons, but macroscopic collections of atoms, an octillion of atoms.
It's the approach that's even more staggering:
Now for the first time, scientists at MIT and elsewhere have cooled a large, human-scale object to close to its motional ground state. The object isn't tangible in the sense of being situated at one location, but is the combined motion of four separate objects, each weighing about 40 kilograms. The "object" that the researchers cooled has an estimated mass of about 10 kilograms, and comprises about 1x1026, or nearly 1 octillion, atoms.The researchers took advantage of the ability of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) to measure the motion of the masses with extreme precision and super-cool the collective motion of the masses to 77 nanokelvins, just shy of the object's predicted ground state of 10 nanokelvins.The scientists say they now have a chance to observe the effect of gravity on a massive quantum object."Nobody has ever observed how gravity acts on massive quantum states," says Vivishek Sudhir, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, who directed the project.
via Massachusetts Institute of Technology: C. Whittle el al., "Approaching the motional ground state of a 10-kg object," Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abh2634
Unrelated image: Caleidoscope on Fractal Forums circa 2017
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