This will, I’m sure, have some interesting implications:
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100317/full/news.2010.130.html
A team of scientists has succeeded in putting an object large enough to be visible to the naked eye into a mixed quantum state of moving and not moving.
Andrew Cleland at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his team cooled a tiny metal paddle until it reached its quantum mechanical ‘ground state’ — the lowest-energy state permitted by quantum mechanics. They then used the weird rules of quantum mechanics to simultaneously set the paddle moving while leaving it standing still. The experiment shows that the principles of quantum mechanics can apply to everyday objects as well as as atomic-scale particles.
Fire up the Heisenberg compensators!
On one highly nerdy level, this is amazingly awesome. This takes quantum mechanics out of the realm of the entirely-divorced-from-every-day-reality and puts it squarely in the mostly-divorced-from-every-day-reality realm. That the actions of quantum mechanics – specifically the property of both moving and not moving simultaneously – can be observed by the naked eye kinda has me astounded.
On the other hand, the requirements to make this experiment work are still so astonishingly unlike the normal world that it’s hard to see any practical application. But as with many forms of science – early radiation studies, evolution, etc. – the early, “pure” research with no practical application sooner or later turns into the powerplant that lights your house or the medicine that saves your life.
Of course, it’s reasonaly certain that good science fiction will take this experiment and run with it… and bad science fiction will be made by “The Asylum” and will show up on the “SyFy Channel.”
