Physicists Store, Retrieve a "Squeezed Vacuum"

An anonymous reader sends us to the site of Science Magazine for news that will interest those who have followed experiments to slow and stop light. Research groups in Canada and Japan have succeeded separately in storing a special kind of vacuum — a "squeezed vacuum" — in a puff of gas and then retrieving it a split second later. Such experiments might lead to advances in quantum encryption. At the very least they will help to illuminate the boundary between quantum and classical realms.

Comments

There is no boundry

[iminplaya]

It's a matter of perception, which is very limited when you see the universe through a pinhole.

meeting of the minds

[slide-rule]

I can't help but be amused at the thought of God, Newton, and Einstein sitting together "up there, somewhere" looking down on this little science experiment, chuckling at how we having it all wrong, and then thinking, just to fsck with us, they'll go along with our theory for a little while. *POIT!* (vacuum disappears and reappears), to which they have a long, hearty, teary-eyed laugh at our expense and dare us to make *that* make sense. ;-)

Re:Gas of Atoms

[pldd]

You can have gas made of molecules, a gas of photons, a gas of electrons, etc. As long as you have a large ensemble of free particles in a given volume you can call it a gas.