Tweezers constructed from laser beams can maintain and transfer a single atom
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The way in which gravity impacts the quantum realm has to date remained mysterious. However an experiment that makes use of lasers as a pair of tweezers might let researchers assess how Earth’s gravitational pull impacts an atom that ticks like a clock.
At extraordinarily chilly temperatures – assume billionths of a level above absolute zero – quantum results make atoms behave like “matter waves” relatively than particles. Physicists have lengthy taken benefit of this: by colliding completely different matter waves and measuring the ensuing ripples, they will establish the forces…