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Quantum State Created In Largest Object Yet
SpuriousLogic writes "A team of researchers have created a 'quantum state' in an object billions of times larger than ever before. From the article: 'Such states, in which an object is effectively in two places at once, have until now only been accomplished with single particles, atoms and molecules. In this experiment, published in the journal Nature, scientists produced a quantum state in an object billions of times larger than previous tests. The team says the result could have significant implications in quantum computing.'"
I don't need to be told that it's "billions of times than ever before", or to compare it to the library of congress, I can understand measurements. so how big is the object? 1 nanometer? 1 kilometer? what? the article doesn't seem to say either.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
I think the subject line says it all, but I want a transporter that puts me in two places at once, then destroys the first me leaving the copied me. That would be awesome.
Once we get into quantum computing, we're going to have to drop the whole binary "yes"-"no" thing for "yes", "no", "maybe", "uninitialized", "42"
You left out "cowbell". That's when ten or more quibits align together in perfect harmony.
Living With a Nerd
In an alternate universe this is the first post of the thread. By refreshing the page in *this* universe it's more like the 3rd.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Once we get into quantum computing, we're going to have to drop the whole binary "yes"-"no" thing for "yes", "no", "maybe", "uninitialized", "42"
Possibly.
We are all educated stupid! O_O *dissolves in a mass of n-dimensional tentacles, and gets eaten by a passing Mi-go*
Emotions! In your brain!
You fool! You've altered the outcome by observing it!!!
The team says the result could have significant implications in quantum computing.
could, might, may, theoretically, possibly et al.
this is all i ever hear from the quantum field. people speculating about quantum ducks and eggs and how if you tweak multiple variables at the same time there might actually be parallel dimensions. it makes me want to cry when i pick up "scientific" journals that print such conjecture and speculation and dare to call it 'science' just because they have applied various tests that use the scientific method to it.
it sort of reminds me of this quote by E.A. Blair (Otherwise known far more popularly by something else), replacing 'fascism' with 'science'. Of course, most of it doesn't apply, but the idea of the word being used in so many ways outside of its immediately practical context does.
It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.
Yeah?
good luck making the 'non-virgin' part
They think it 'could have' significant implications?
Surely they mean it definitely has significant implications and also hasn't?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
That's almost large enough to be a CAT!
I am convinced that science is getting us closer and closer to God. Pretty soon we're going to understand how the universe works and He's going to say "you figured it out! Come up to My kingdom!" and we'll get to go to Heaven. Blessed be!
Oh noes! I iz in suprpuzishun!
"In this experiment, published in the journal Nature, scientists produced a quantum state in an object billions of times larger than previous tests."
Hmmm, if I count correctly, a cat is still many orders of magnitude heavier. I can only hope that they will make further progress in the decades to come.
Ezekiel 23:20
... to the size of a cat.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
From what the article looks like, all they've done is created a BEC (They don't mention that in the article, am I off?) of the largest object yet, which just means they cooled the material to milli-kelvin using some kind of trap, and the material becomes a new state of matter, a Bose Einstein Condensate.
For some reason, I expected some kind of two-slit or uncertainty principle thing with a very large object. This doesn't really seem that impressive to me, but then my quantum is a bit dated.
I have a question that I assume has a reasonable answer, just one I've never actually gotten confirmation on.
Once they've placed this object in a quantum state, how do they verify that it's "occupying two states at once?" Do they just measure it and repeat the process several times, and note that it's occasionally at 1 quanta, occasionally at 0, and from that infer that it was in a quantum state up until they measured it?
Second question, while I'm here - am I right in saying that according to the many-worlds interpretation, the universe branches when this object enters a quantum state, and we end up in one of two universes, one where the object has 1 quanta of energy and one where it has 0?
Trying to grok all this "quantum mechanics" stuff :)
..like a chessboard. When to people play, the pieces is possible to move in many positions, and before the move the player has considered a lot of different possible moves and outcomes.
Check mate. :)
This doesn't seem to be that big of a deal.
So now we can make bigger quantum computers first and then "innovate" them ever smaller and charge people for new equipment every couple of years? :)
Thank goodness! This was one of my favourite revenue models.
It's barely visible to the naked eye, but if you look under light magnification you can read a caption:
"I can has quantum state?"
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Prepare for unforeseen consequences
How about...
'2 chicks at the same time'
Now it can AND cannot has cheezburger at the same time!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You misspelled CowboyNeal.
Why the beating around the bush?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I thought they were supposed to do this to a cat?
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
Until then, keep working, dammit!
"Similar approaches could lead to the quantum ground state of a virus"
Quantum viruses? Sounds good to me, what could possibly go wrong?
Just one step closer to the macro-quantum existence in Noien.
While it requires some tricks, we can ultimately get yes / no, like so: 99.99999999% yes, 0.00000001% no. If that does not suffice, you'll be able to amplify the result to the point where it could be more likely the universe suddenly collapse than that you read a no instead of a yes.
"Uninitialized" may happen, but it could probably not be detectable as a condition, you'll simply be running calculations with the wrong input / transformations... And 42 is definitely not an option in systems modeled to recognize only two states. It will be either yes or no, with a probability.
Just like energy, time is also discrete and no two things can exist in the same quantum of time.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I hear you need a million bucks for that.
In a conference call, you're not effectively in two places at once at all. You're effectively communicating with people at multiple disparate locations while remaining in one location.
They just say "effectively" because a superposed state is not really the same as being in two places at once, but that's a reasonable analogy to use.
Here is the link to the naturenews article if anyone would like it: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100317/full/news.2010.130.html
What lack of vision. Just put the girlfriend in the teleporter. Then put her and the copy in the teleporter again. Everybody wins. ?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Surely we will soon have space-ship sized objects in two positions at once ?? *drool*
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
adding quantum computing wont mean that there is no more use for traditional computing. binary math will still be binary math.
Yo Dawg, I heard you like quantum replication, so I put a you besides you, so you can duplicate while you duplicate!
Similarly macroscopic quantum states have been achieved in superconductors. So the significance of this work is that macroscopic superposition is accomplished with a mechanical system, not an electronic one. The Nature article that the BBC is referring to: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08967.html The BBC removed the scale bar, which shows that the resonator is about 70 microns long, with an "active region" 40 microns long. But the resonant frequency is still up in the GHz, so they only have to cool to 0.1K, which is not so hard these days.
he's in yr box both releesed and not releesed.
Actually, you are. From Effectively:
So, I'm "actually" communicating with people at multiple disparate location, while remaining in one location, making me "effectively" in two places at once. My virtual presence can have an actual effect on those actually present, making me effectively present too.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Nah, all you need is one little plastic cup.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Quote: "This can be seen in a piece of coloured glass, which absorbs a certain colour of light.
That light is made up of photons - packets of light energy - and the glass atoms absorb only photons with the quanta (or amount) of energy that corresponds to that colour.
What we see through the glass is the light that has not been absorbed. "
Perhaps a better way of saying it is that the glass only transmits a certain color of light and absorbs or converts the rest? Can someone rephrase this to our current understanding of physics?
Super pozishinin!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
They'd better be careful or we'll have to call in Doctor Freeman http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Resonance_Cascade
Well, not all chicks would be interested.
The object is not in two places at once. The quantum wavefunction of the object has non-negligible probability in two places at once. This means that the object is equally likely to be found in two different locations.
The wording of the article is extremely sloppy. Remember that a wavefunction is not the object. The wavefunction is nothing more than a way to calculate the probability of finding the object in a particular place. A better description of where the object is when it is in superposition is "nowhere in particular, until measured, at which point it is highly likely to be found at point A or at point B." But that also goes for more run-of-the-mill quantum states.
The interesting thing here is not the wavefunction, but the fact that they have achieved a coherent quantum state between about a trillion atoms.
Only need 2 of them, and a million bucks should about do it.
And live in harmony, harmony, oh love?
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
So no sense of humor whatsoever then?
Have you ever pondered about the origin of the word Chick, which derives from Chicken, and the analogy to depict a woman using the same concept?
I guess to some a chick is the same than a woman. Thus, all sexual desires can be aquired by the pound, at wallmart, although that sounds slightly necrofiliac.
Better go to a live chicken farm: for a hundred bucks youd get a very large harem.
NO SIG
You might want to take a look at hardware-level signaling technology.
Hint: There is no binary "yes" or "no" in electronics either, just thresholds. Quantum computing will do the same thing, when you program for it you will still be manipulating discrete logic levels for the most part, it's the people who make the quantum computers that have to do the work of translating "fuzzy entangled quantum soup" into those discrete logic levels.
Random tangent: back in the day there were "analog" computers with multiple logic levels per "bit", but that sort of dead-ended when binary hardware was able to scale frequency more rapidly. I wonder if multi-level electronic logic will make a comeback when we finally do hit a miniaturization wall when producing/designing chips...
I have enough trouble keeping track of my data now. So my quantum computer will have my data in multiple states? I have to look in how many places?
Sheesh.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
What really confuses me about this (Do not know much of anything about quantum states) is how do they KNOW that it is in 2 states at once? Measuring it and getting different states could just as easily mean that it is at the tipping point between the state changes and isn't actually both states but alternating between the two states as it keeps raising and lowering below that threshold of energy required to be in a given state, maybe in units of energy so small we have not yet learned to detect yet. What am I missing here?
Heisenberg killed Schrodinger's cat just by looking at it...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
...when you've worked out how to make a middle-aged fat bloke simultaneously appear to be mowing his front lawn & be drinking down the pub on a Sunday afternoon.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
This reply followed a very weird train of thought.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Collap5e w4veforms with your huge dong!
c1ick here
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Sounds like the Republican Party. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Or the classic True, False, and FileNotFound.
Seriously, has the collective community of Slashdot considered a career in comedy writing?
You guys are fucking funny.
No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
When I read this, it seems to say that "one atom in a particular known state can give off two different readings when measured". But they keep saying it means that the object is in two places at once.
What am I missing?
http://www.unfocus.com/
If they go on like this we won't need poison anymore, or a box. The cat will suffice.
When they can make my double oatmeal stout appear at two different places at once (my right hand and my left hand), then i'll say they have made some significant progress: 'cause then i'd just finish the one on the right, and before i start on the one on the left, they could just make it's quantum double back at my right hand....
mmmmmm.... double oatmeal stout forever....
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
I could pull it off with just a red stapler.
If it is true that '"I don't think there is a limit, that there will be a certain size where quantum mechanics starts to break down," Dr Aspelmeyer said,' then that means that even larger objects also go into superpositions of quantum states. That would go all the way up to human sized and larger. This is the fundamental principle of the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI), that when quantum measurements occur, even though we only see one outcome, actually we go into a superposition of multiple states, each of which sees a different outcome. Each state evolves independently. It is as though the world splits into parallel universes, where every possible outcome occurs in a different universe.
This follows strictly from the principle that QM applies at all sizes. And this new experiment certainly pushes us in that direction.
Some scientists, notably Roger Penrose, had speculated that QM would break down at macroscopic sizes. He specifically proposed that once sizes were large enough for gravitational forces to exceed some threshold, QM would break down. Wikipedia has this: "Tiny superpositions, e.g. an electron separated from itself, if isolated from environment, would require 10 million years to reach OR threshold. An isolated one kilogram object (e.g. Schrödinger's cat) would reach OR threshold in only 10^-37 seconds." Now here we have a trilliion atom object. That is about 10^13 amu, which is 10^-14 kg. Dividing 10^-37 seconds by 10^-14 we get 10^-23 seconds, which is far shorter than this experiment lasted. This means basically that this experiment disproves Penrose's theory! This is the first time this has happened, and I am (AFAIK) the first person to notice this.
In short it is becoming harder and harder to avoid accepting the reality of parallel worlds. What this should mean for our actions is up to the philosophers, but we should not bury our heads and pretend it isn't true.
The last sentance says all "So the only reason that things could break down is that we run out of money." You dont need to read the rest.
That is all I want to know. When can we reduce our latency between WAN links half way around the world down to 0ms?
It probably came from chica Spanish fro girl.
Is Rhode Island a Quantum State?
42 is already valid in systems modeled to recognize only two states - it's in int with a value of TRUE.
Try it in c.
It has to. Multi-level logic would prevent a lot of the security problems we see now, like only having 1 bit to represent a logic state meaning there's no way to indicate uninitialized data in the data itself. Even a tribit is better.
I've done that way back in the '90s (okay, it was true, false, and uninitialized). It avoids a lot of error-checking.
-Oz
I think you misunderstand the meaning of "double-slit experiment."
Your brain is not a computer.
Here, baby, let's try this super position!!
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Have you ever pondered about the origin of the word Chick, which derives from Chicken, and the analogy to depict a woman using the same concept?
I guess to some a chick is the same than a woman. Thus, all sexual desires can be aquired by the pound, at wallmart, although that sounds slightly necrofiliac.
Better go to a live chicken farm: for a hundred bucks youd get a very large harem.
The Pigeon sisters were once a pair of randy birds.