Quantum Funhouse
For the first time, scientists noted that small fluctuations in quantum energy actually “kicked” a large mirror out of alignment, the first tangible impact of quantum noise on a human scale.
The push occurred inside the LIGO gravitational wave detector. And while it’s a fascinating discovery, it actually poses a practical problem for the observatory’s ongoing research, according to a press release. Because of that, the LIGO team is now using something called a “quantum juicer” to protect their research.
To get better…
The mirror only moved ten zeptometers, or ten six-thousandths of a meter, according to research published in the magazine on Wednesday. Nature. That’s unimaginably beyond the point of being imperceptibly small at a glance, but not for the sensitive LIGO team.
“A hydrogen atom measures 10 ^ -10 meters, so this mirror shift is to a hydrogen atom what a hydrogen atom is to us, and we measure that,” says Lee McCuller, a researcher at the Kavli Institute of Astrophysics and Space Research from MIT. he said in the statement.
Constant prey
LIGO researchers are using the quantum juicer, which tunes quantum noise to a specific, nondisruptive frequency, to avoid future interference and factor background quantum noise from their data analysis, but the monumental discovery doesn’t elude them.
“What is special about this experiment is that we have seen quantum effects on something as large as a human being,” Nergis Mavalvala, associate chief of MIT’s department of physics, said in the statement. “We too, every nanosecond of our existence, are being hit, hit by these quantum fluctuations.”
“It is just that the restlessness of our existence, our thermal energy, is too great for these quantum vacuum fluctuations to affect our movement in any measurable way,” he added.
READ MORE: Quantum fluctuations can shake objects on the human scale. [MIT]
More about quantum noise: Strange theory: entire universe structured by “quantum statics”
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