CAPSLOCKSTUCK
Spaced Out Lunar Tick
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| System Name | Party On |
|---|---|
| Processor | Xeon w 3520 |
| Motherboard | DFI Lanparty |
| Cooling | Big tower thing |
| Memory | 6 gb Ballistix Tracer |
| Video Card(s) | HD 7970 |
| Case | a plank of wood |
| Audio Device(s) | seperate amp and 6 big speakers |
| Power Supply | Corsair |
| Mouse | cheap |
| Keyboard | under going restoration |
Ripples in the fabric of space-time could reveal how the universe was created nearly 14 billion years ago.
But finding these ripples, known as 'gravitational waves', has so far proved elusive.
Now, US scientists claim they have found a way to improve the detectors used to spot the gravitational waves of the Big Bang.
Researchers at Caltech claim they have found a way to observe, and control, something known as 'quantum motion' in a relatively large object.
If you forget to wind up a grandfather, you will eventually find the swinging pendulum come to rest. But this is only valid at the level of classical physics – or the laws and principles that appear to explain the physics of relatively large objects at human scale.
At the level of quantum mechanics, the rules that govern the behaviour of matter and light at the atomic scale, nothing can quite be completely at rest.
'In the past couple of years, my group and a couple of other groups around the world have learned how to cool the motion of a small micrometre-scale object to produce this state at the bottom, or the quantum ground state,' says Keith Schwab, a Caltech professor of applied physics.
'But we know that even at the quantum ground state, at zero-temperature, very small amplitude fluctuations—or noise—remain.'
Quantum motion, or noise, is theoretically an intrinsic part of the motion of all objects, and can throw off sensitive detectors used to measure gravitation waves.
Schwab and his colleagues designed a device that would allow them to see this noise and then manipulate it.
The micrometre-scale device is made up of a flexible aluminium plate that sits atop a silicon surface.
The plate is coupled to a superconducting electrical circuit, which vibrates at a rate of 3.5 million times per second.
According to the laws of classical mechanics, the vibrating structures eventually will come to a complete rest if cooled to the ground state. But that is not what Schwab and his colleagues saw when they actually cooled the spring to the ground state in their experiments.
Instead, the residual energy-quantum noise - remained.
'This energy is part of the quantum description of nature - you just can't get it out,' says Schwab.
'We all know quantum mechanics explains precisely why electrons behave weirdly.
'Here, we're applying quantum physics to something that is relatively big, a device that you can see under an optical microscope, and we're seeing the quantum effects in a trillion atoms instead of just one.'
The researchers then developed a technique to manipulate the inherent quantum noise and found that it is possible to reduce it periodically.
'There are two main variables that describe the noise or movement,' Schwab explains.'We showed that we can actually make the fluctuations of one of the variables smaller—at the expense of making the quantum fluctuations of the other variable larger.
'That is what's called a quantum squeezed state; we squeezed the noise down in one place, but because of the squeezing, the noise has to squirt out in other places.
'But as long as those more noisy places aren't where you're obtaining a measurement, it doesn't matter.'
The ability to control quantum noise could one day be used to improve the precision of very sensitive measurements, such as those obtained by LIGO, the Laser Interferometry Gravitational-wave Observatory. This is being used by a Caltech-and-MIT-led project searching to search for signs of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space-time.
'We've been thinking a lot about using these methods to detect gravitational waves from pulsars—incredibly dense stars that are the mass of our sun compressed into a 10 km radius and spin at 10 to 100 times a second,' Schwab says.
'In the 1970s, Kip Thorne and others wrote papers saying that these pulsars should be emitting gravity waves that are nearly perfectly periodic,' Schwab says. 'So we're thinking hard about how to use these techniques on a gram-scale object to reduce quantum noise in detectors, thus increasing the sensitivity to pick up on those gravity waves.'
In order to do that, the current device would have to be scaled up.
'Our work aims to detect quantum mechanics at bigger and bigger scales, and one day, our hope is that this will eventually start touching on something as big as gravitational waves,' he says.
These results were published in an article titled, 'Quantum squeezing of motion in a mechanical resonator' in the journal Science.
But finding these ripples, known as 'gravitational waves', has so far proved elusive.
Now, US scientists claim they have found a way to improve the detectors used to spot the gravitational waves of the Big Bang.
Researchers at Caltech claim they have found a way to observe, and control, something known as 'quantum motion' in a relatively large object.
If you forget to wind up a grandfather, you will eventually find the swinging pendulum come to rest. But this is only valid at the level of classical physics – or the laws and principles that appear to explain the physics of relatively large objects at human scale.
At the level of quantum mechanics, the rules that govern the behaviour of matter and light at the atomic scale, nothing can quite be completely at rest.
'In the past couple of years, my group and a couple of other groups around the world have learned how to cool the motion of a small micrometre-scale object to produce this state at the bottom, or the quantum ground state,' says Keith Schwab, a Caltech professor of applied physics.
'But we know that even at the quantum ground state, at zero-temperature, very small amplitude fluctuations—or noise—remain.'
Quantum motion, or noise, is theoretically an intrinsic part of the motion of all objects, and can throw off sensitive detectors used to measure gravitation waves.
Schwab and his colleagues designed a device that would allow them to see this noise and then manipulate it.
The micrometre-scale device is made up of a flexible aluminium plate that sits atop a silicon surface.
The plate is coupled to a superconducting electrical circuit, which vibrates at a rate of 3.5 million times per second.
According to the laws of classical mechanics, the vibrating structures eventually will come to a complete rest if cooled to the ground state. But that is not what Schwab and his colleagues saw when they actually cooled the spring to the ground state in their experiments.
Instead, the residual energy-quantum noise - remained.
'This energy is part of the quantum description of nature - you just can't get it out,' says Schwab.
'We all know quantum mechanics explains precisely why electrons behave weirdly.
'Here, we're applying quantum physics to something that is relatively big, a device that you can see under an optical microscope, and we're seeing the quantum effects in a trillion atoms instead of just one.'
The researchers then developed a technique to manipulate the inherent quantum noise and found that it is possible to reduce it periodically.
'There are two main variables that describe the noise or movement,' Schwab explains.'We showed that we can actually make the fluctuations of one of the variables smaller—at the expense of making the quantum fluctuations of the other variable larger.
'That is what's called a quantum squeezed state; we squeezed the noise down in one place, but because of the squeezing, the noise has to squirt out in other places.
'But as long as those more noisy places aren't where you're obtaining a measurement, it doesn't matter.'
The ability to control quantum noise could one day be used to improve the precision of very sensitive measurements, such as those obtained by LIGO, the Laser Interferometry Gravitational-wave Observatory. This is being used by a Caltech-and-MIT-led project searching to search for signs of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space-time.
'We've been thinking a lot about using these methods to detect gravitational waves from pulsars—incredibly dense stars that are the mass of our sun compressed into a 10 km radius and spin at 10 to 100 times a second,' Schwab says.
'In the 1970s, Kip Thorne and others wrote papers saying that these pulsars should be emitting gravity waves that are nearly perfectly periodic,' Schwab says. 'So we're thinking hard about how to use these techniques on a gram-scale object to reduce quantum noise in detectors, thus increasing the sensitivity to pick up on those gravity waves.'
In order to do that, the current device would have to be scaled up.
'Our work aims to detect quantum mechanics at bigger and bigger scales, and one day, our hope is that this will eventually start touching on something as big as gravitational waves,' he says.
These results were published in an article titled, 'Quantum squeezing of motion in a mechanical resonator' in the journal Science.
