NIST Physicists Coax Six Atoms Into Quantum 'Cat' State

Science Daily | National Institute of Standards and Technology ^ | 2005-12-03

[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.

[Monitor]

This article is full of mistakes.

They completely misrepresent Schrödinger. Having two atoms spinning in opposite directions is not the same as a single cat being both dead and alive.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

He may have meant 10 to the 26th atoms or 10^26. Which is a wee bit larger than 1026 atoms.

Then again, after a second reading of the article he may have meant exactly what was written.

Public education at it's finest.

[snarks_when_bored]

This article is full of mistakes.

They completely misrepresent Schrödinger. Having two atoms spinning in opposite directions is not the same as a single cat being both dead and alive.

You've not grasped the paradoxicality of the situation being described: each of the six ions is spinning both clockwise and counterclockwise simultaneously. So each ion is manifesting a superposition of classically incompatible states, which justifies the analogy to a cat being both alive and dead simultaneously.

[cgbg]

each of the six ions is spinning both clockwise and counterclockwise simultaneously

I wouldn't believe that even if I saw it--but if I saw it it couldn't be happening anyway. :-)

This stuff reminds me of the square root of -1--it shouldn't exist but it is a useful tool in the real world.

[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.

[snarks_when_bored]

each of the six ions is spinning both clockwise and counterclockwise simultaneously

I wouldn't believe that even if I saw it--but if I saw it it couldn't be happening anyway. :-)

You're in good company: as (I think) Feynman said, nobody understands quantum mechanics...you just get used to it.

This stuff reminds me of the square root of -1--it shouldn't exist but it is a useful tool in the real world.

Imaginary numbers—which aren't imaginary at all, of course—play a crucial role in quantum mechanics. Here's a GIF image of the time-dependent one-dimensional Schrödinger equation, which describes how the wave function of a non-relativistic (i.e., slow-moving), undisturbed elementary particle such as an electron evolves over time:

Note the multiplication by i, the square root of -1.

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

I know - did the author leave off the exponent or is he totally clueless?

[SunkenCiv]

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

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

- Carl Sandburg

[Mind-numbed Robot]

...it can never be known what the outcome would have been if it were not observed.

The old tree in the forest thingy. Science ain't so hard. :-)

[Paul C. Jesup]

'Clockwise' and 'counterclockwise' is all dependent on point of view in that it depends on whether you are viewing the spinning ball from the top or the bottom of it's spinning axis.

[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.

[PatrickHenry]

SciencePing

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