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Quantum Levitation

To bump this old thread .. looks like a little flying saucer !


 
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Physicists Levitate a Glass Nanosphere, Pushing It Into The Realm of Quantum Mechanics

sciencealert.com
16 July, 2021

Quantum mechanics deals with the behavior of the Universe at the super-small scale: atoms and subatomic particles that operate in ways that classical physics can't explain. In order to explore this tension between the quantum and the classical, scientists are attempting to get larger and larger objects to behave in a quantum-like way.

In the case of this particular study, the object in question is a tiny glass nanosphere, 100 nanometers in diameter – about a thousand times smaller than the thickness of a human hair. To our minds that's very, very small, but in terms of quantum physics, it's actually rather huge, made up to 10 million atoms.

Pushing such a nanosphere into the realm of quantum mechanics is actually a huge achievement, and yet that's exactly what physicists have now accomplished.

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One of the ways the researchers hope their findings can be useful is in studying how quantum mechanics causes elementary particles to behave like waves. It's possible that super-sensitive setups like this nanosphere one could also help in the development of next-generation sensors beyond anything we have today.

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https://www.sciencealert.com/physic...anosphere-to-the-edge-of-quantum-behavior/amp
 
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