Science may be on the way to helping those of us who need to be in two places at the same time

[FLPanhandle]

How to be in two places at the same time

An ambitious experiment to make a glass sphere exist in two places at once could provide the most sensitive test of quantum theory yet. The experiment will place a sphere containing millions of atoms – making it larger than many viruses – into a superposition of states in different places, say researchers in Europe.

Physicists have questioned whether large objects can follow quantum laws ever since Erwin Schrödinger's thought-experiment suggested a cat could exist in a superposition of being both alive and dead.

The idea is to zap a glass sphere 40 nanometres in diameter with a laser while it is inside a small cavity. This should force the sphere to bounce from one side of the cavity to the other. But since the light is quantum in nature, so too will be the position of the sphere. This forces it into a quantum superposition.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20712-how-to-be-in-two-places-at-the-same-time.html



This is such cool science. :)

[TlalocW]

1. Oh, keeping a cat both alive and dead isn't good enough for physicists anymore.

I see. Have to move on to glass spheres and whatnot!

TlalocW

[FLPanhandle]

2. In their defense, as much as cats sleep, it's hard to tell the difference between alive and dead

Probably tough to validate your data with cats. :)

[mindwalker_i]

3. Unfortunately for us...

We're all macroscopic objects, thus making it almost completely impossible to maintain superposition. Now if you're talking about Bachman's brain, that's a completely different story. It's small enough, but decoherance will be a serious problem. Romney seems to be pretty good at keeping his mouth in two places at once.

[unblock]

4. republican brains are capable of being in zero places at the same time.