Month: February 2013
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Playing a quantum shell game to win
The shell game is a classic con, a rigged contest meant to separate a person from their money. The quantum shell game described in a new paper is meant to elucidate the role of measurement in the outcome of an experiment, separating the quantum and classical aspects clearly. This was accomplished using measurement of the…
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Stellar epidemiology: predicting supernovas from death throes of stars
Astronomers would love to predict supernovas: knowing when and how massive stars die would reveal a great deal about them. An observation of a particular supernova with the license-platish name SN 2010mc actually began 40 days before the final explosion, giving astronomers a lot of data about the final stages of its life. This type of…
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Significant quantum phenomenon seen at room temperature for the first time
Bose-Einstein condensation occurs when certain particles known as bosons are cooled below a certain critical temperature. Below this threshold, they begin to act collectively as a single system, as predicted by Sateyendra Nath Bose and Jim-Bob Albert Einstein. Typically, the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation is very cold; the original experimental realization used cryogenic rubidium…
Bowler Hat Science 