Quantum Particle Work Wins Nobel For French, US Scientists

thomst writes "Reuters is reporting that French scientist Serge Haroche and American David Wineland will share the 2012 Nobel Prize for Physics for their work on measuring quantum particles. (The article is very skimpy on details.)" The Associated Press article carried by the Washington Post is also quite thin, but along with the Reuters story says the Haroche and Wineland were selected for demonstrating "how to observe individual quantum particles without destroying them."

Comments

Schrodinger's cat

[Metabolife]

Ok, so now we can see the cat.. now how do we pet it?

Re:Schrodinger's cat

[r1348]

I really don't get all this fuss about Schrödinger's cat. Now they can finally observe it, and they found out it was dead. As anything else that has been in a box since 1935. Where do I get my Nobel?

Re:Schrodinger's cat

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so now we can see the cat.. now how do we pet it?

I think, PETA condemns everything related to Schrodinger's cat. Including petting it.

Go to the Source

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2012/advanced-physicsprize2012.pdf

Physics World article

[fishicist]

Physics World has a slightly more in-depth article.

Re:Physics World article

[vlm]

Some details on Serge Haroche's experiment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence#Quantitative_measurement

Really short summary is squirting individual atoms in a superposition state thru a microwave waveguide puts the field in the waveguide into a superposition. Not surprisingly figuring out the field inside a waveguide is something we're pretty good at after a couple decades of radar work etc. Now if you take two entangled atoms and squirt them thru the detector at different times, you can do/measure all sorts of interesting quantum effects by screwing around with the field in the waveguide.

I guess a /.ification of it, is if you're familiar with the concept of knowing if an ancient computer has a 1 or 0 because a lightbulb is on or off, this is the technological element a quantum computer would use to sorta display the 1 or 0 of a result, sorta.

There's a funny ancient computing analogy where you can't read a core memory, you can only write it and see if the energy required to write is consistent with it having been a 1 or 0 before it was overwritten. The analogy is you squirt an atom thru this guys lab experiment, what comes out isn't what came in, but you can work backwards to figure out what it must have been at the start, sorta.

Its a handy basic tool/technique for quantum "stuff". Kind of like being the inventor of the "test tube" or NMR or FT-IR or whatever.

Poor Sheldon...

[Bazman]

... they gave the prize to _experimental_ physicists!

Source

[korpenkraxar]

How about going straight to the source instead? http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2012/press.html

Re:Strange...

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a really good theoretical model for quantum mechanics... called quantum mechanics. It has predictive results that agree with measurements really well. The only downside is the difficulty of some of the calculations mean more complex situations can take considerable time to apply the theory to. Also, some people might be upset that there is more than one interpretation, although to some degree that is more of a pedagogical issue. If you stick to the math, you get solid, quantitative results.

Re:Why US flag?

[Kidbro]

No, but it does have a science icon, which would have been more fitting. This is primarily a story about physics, not one about what happens in the US.