Levitation at Room Temperature - Breakthrough in Physics
Room Temperature Levitation – Breakthrough in Physics
What is Levitation?
Levitation is the phenomenon of an object or body being suspended or floating in the air without any visible means of support. It is often considered an extraordinary and seemingly magical occurrence. If you have seen the famous Avatar and Avatar–Way of Water, then you might recall the floating rocks and mountains, they are…
Hey, so--we cooled your boyfriend down to a hundredth of a kelvin above absolute zero. Yeah, it was so cold that all of the chemical reactions in his body ceased. Sorry. We, uh, yeah, we used him as a dielectric material in a tiny qubit. And then we quantum-entangled him with another qubit, just to see if we could. Sorry. Yeah, anyway, we thawed him out after two weeks and apparently he's doing fine now. Didn't really teach us anything about how quantum processes work in biological systems, but it sure was, uh, cool. If you'll pardon the pun.
Electrons are marvelous little things. They often hang about orbiting atomic nuclei, but they don't have to – the Universe is full of loose electrons rattling about.
Ninety years ago, theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner proposed that they didn't have to rattle about, either: that free electrons may be forced together in a peculiar kind of matter that has no atoms at all, just electrons trapped by their own repulsion a neat, crystalline lattice.
This is known as a Wigner crystal, and physicists have finally obtained direct observational evidence that it can exist.
Please completely explain string theory to me in two sentences or less.
You know how Spaghetti and SpaghettiOs are basically the same thing but they're in different shapes so one is a soup and one is a pasta? String theory is like that but without making sense.
One of the most famous experiments in quantum physics is the double slit experiment. It demonstrates, with unparalleled strangeness, that little particles of matter at the subatomic level only exist as a wave until they are observed.
This suggests that the very act of observing a particle has a dramatic effect on its behavior and could imply that consciousness has a symbiotic relation to the formulation of our physical reality of atomic particles.
This scientific mystery causes some people to believe humans have a dualistic relationship with reality creation - as if we have a psychic entanglement with subatomic particles and we are all creating physical reality with our collective consciousness, or that it proves a God exists and is somehow playing a curious game of peek-a-boo with all of us.
By modifying a refrigerator commonly used in both research and industry, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have drastically reduced the time and energy required to cool materials to within a few degrees above absolute zero.
The scientists say that their prototype device, which they are now working to commercialize with an industrial partner, could annually save an estimated 27 million watts of power, $30 million in global electricity consumption, and enough cooling water to fill 5,000 Olympic swimming pools.
Massive black holes drag and warp the spacetime around them in extreme ways. Observing these effects firsthand is practically impossible, so physicists look for laboratory-sized analogs that behave similarly. (Image credit: L. Solidoro; research credit: P. Švančara et al.; via Physics World)
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