Gravity is not likely to be the cause of the quantum collapse, suggests an underground experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy.
Tomaso Gichiardini / Science Source
By George Musser
It’s one of the quirks of quantum theory: a particle can be in two places in the same place – yet we can never see it here. Or There. Textbooks state that the act of observing a particle makes it “collapse”, as if it only appeared randomly in its two places. But physicists argue about why this happens, if indeed it does. Now, one of the most plausible mechanisms for quantum collapse – gravity for – has suffered a setback.
The gravitational hypothesis originated with the Hungarian physicists Korolihzi Frigais in the 1960s and Lajos Desi in the 1980s. The basic idea is that the gravitational field of any object is outside the quantum theory. It resists being placed in awkward alliances or “superpositions” of different states. So if a particle has happened both here And There, its gravitational field tries to do the same – but the field can no longer withstand the stress; It collapses and takes particles with it.
Roger Penrose, a mathematician at the well-known University of Oxford, championed this hypothesis in the late 1980s because, he says, it dispels the anthropological notion that measurement itself causes a collapse. “It takes place in physics, and it’s not because someone comes and sees it.”
However, the hypothesis seemed impossible to investigate any actual technology, now notes DC at the Science Research Center, and co-authored the new paper. “For 30 years, I have always been criticized in my country for guessing something that is totally vague.”
New methods now make this appropriate. In a new study, DAC and other scientists discovered one of the many ways that a quantum collapse would manifest itself by gravity or some other method: Particles that break down rotate randomly, part of which heats the system. . . “It’s as if you’ve kicked a particle,” says Sandro Donadi, co-author of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.
If the particle is charged, it will emit photons of radiation as it evaporates. And many particles related to the same gravitational subject will come out uniformly. “You are affected,” says Catalina Kursenu, co-author of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Rome.
To test this idea, researchers created a detector out of German cup crystals the size of a coffee cup. They discovered X-ray and gamma ray emissions from protons in the German nucleus, which make electrical pulses in the material. Scientists chose this part of the spectrum to expand. They then wrapped the crystal in lead and placed it 1.4 kilometers underground at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in central Italy to protect it from other radiation sources. Over a period of more than 2 months in 2014 and 2015, they observed 576 photons, which is close to the expected 506 from naturally occurring radiation, they report today. Nature Physics.
By comparison, 70,000 such photons were predicted by Penrose’s model. “You should see some fall effect in the Germanium experiment, but we don’t,” says Kurshenu. Suggests that gravity, in fact, does not shake particles from their quantum superposition. (This experiment was also prohibited, however, it could not be ruled out, even fall methods that do not involve gravity.)
To confirm the result, physicists need to engineer those superpositions directly, as they are based on random natural phenomena, says Ivet Fuents of the University of Southampton: “You should, in theory, create superposition of large particles. So let’s do it. “She says her team is working to create a cloud of 100 million sodium atoms at temperatures above absolute zero.
Although Penrose appreciates the new work, he thinks it’s not really possible to test a version of his model. He says he was never comfortable with the switches of particles, as they could cause the universe to gain or lose energy, violating the basic principles of physics. He has created a new and improved model by bringing down the epidemic lock. “It doesn’t produce heating or radiation,” he says. In that case, gravity can cause a fall, though hiding its band.
Manelli Deraxani, a theoretical physicist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, says that germanium can also block signals, such as the interaction between protons and electrons. Overall, he says, if gravity causes a collapse, the process should be more complicated than Penrose originally suggested. “One could reasonably argue that … interest is not worth the squeeze.”
