Something I Just Learnt.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Apparently - according to lenard Susskind - the famous "double slit" experiment, which showed that photons and electrons interfere with themselves and possess both particle and wave nature, has been replicated with buckyballs!

For those of you that don't know, a buckyball is a molecule made up of 60 carbon atoms, arranged like a football (that's a proper football, not a handegg!)

The results showed the same interference patterns seen with photons, demonstrating that quantum mechanical principles affect far larger objects than individual, fundamental particles. Of course, it is well known that, in theory at least, quantum mechanical effects DO extend to the macroscopic world, where they approximate "classical" mechanical theory more and more as the scales get larger. Still, it is cool that the boundaries are being tested like this.

And what is more, the same team intends repeating the experiment with viruses!


I saw it in this lecture - one of the many excellent, free courses available from Stamford University - at around the 50 minute mark.

[Rum]

I will watch this later, but as I am in the middle of battling through Brian Cox's book on understanding the quantum 'universe' I am a bit puzzled as the stance of the book at the beginning is that particles at the atomic level behave differently and not necessarily understandably (with the normal intuitive tools of logic) to objects in what one might term the Newtonian universe.

Will watch and attempt understanding later!

[MiM]

Never 2 L8 2 learn. The buckyball experiment was made in the last millenia. They have gone up to (at least) 430 atoms by now. (Nature article from 2011)