|
result came from forming two BEC's separated by barrier, then removing the barrier so that on approaching one another, their matter waves overlapped to form areas in which the waves reinforced one another or else cancelled one another out in just the same way as light behaves when light beams are made to combine to form interference patterns. Thus we now have to cope with the concept of matter waves that can combine and interfere with one another!
In this kind of experiment many millions of atoms come together in a single quantum state, so bringing us ever nearer an understanding of the overlapping region between the micro and the macro components of reality.
An experiment now on the drawing board is to split a BEC into a superposition of states in which one state rotates clockwise and the other counterclockwise. An analogy would be two correlated electrons one of which must have "up" spin if the other has "down" spin--but remaining superposed in both possible states until one is forced to take a definite configuration whereupon its twin must take the opposite state.
For the BEC in a superposition of states, each of the ghostly states is composed of millions of atoms. Physicists wonder whether there are unknown laws that would prevent such a state, or whether ordinary quantum theory will hold good. If there are such laws and the standard theory is undone, whatever takes its place will be just as weird and wonderful.
At the macro level, our world seems solid, predictable, reliable. But just below an invisible surface, its parts exist in a state of unbelievably bizarre complexity, punctuated by impermanence and spontaneity--for example, virtual particles flitting in and out of existence yet accounting for half of the momentum of the atomic nucleus; electrons that jump between energy levels of the atom without ever being anywhere in between; correlated particles that "communicate" instantaneously even if separated at infinity; or particles in a superposed state that need the mind of an observer to flush them into reality. And all in obedience to a time-tested uncertainty principle that divorces the present from the future. But now we have these strange new Bose-Einstein condensates that bring us the prospect of filling the comprehension gap that separates the small from the large!!
Indeed we are fortunate to live in these exciting times in which our world can have meaning, God has become both a possibility and a probability, and we can know for certain that we have the free will to make a mark on the future of our future.
|
|
