| Two Is the Magic Quantum Number |
| Wednesday, 28 July 2010 12:27 |
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The double-slit experiment embodies the mystery at the heart of quantum mechanics, the famous physicist Richard Feynman observed in his Lectures on Physics. The experiment illustrates some of the strangest predictions of quantum mechanics, including the dual particle-wave nature of tiny objects. In the 1920s, German physicist Max Born proposed that particle pairs — and not triplets, quadruplets or more — can interfere, causing their wavelike forms to boost and diminish one another. Born’s math puts the interference contribution of the third slit (and any additional slits) at exactly zero. Although the reason why quantum interference stops at two isn’t clear, Born’s postulate has been widely accepted and used by physicists, yet until now it hadn’t been explicitly tested in experiments. |
Extending an experiment at the foundation of quantum physics confirms that two is company and three is a crowd. In a new twist on the famous double-slit experiment, researchers have verified a basic tenet of quantum mechanics by showing that adding a third slit doesn’t create additional interference between packets of light.
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| This Jan. 29 panorama of much of the East Coast, photographed by one of the Expedition 30 crew members aboard the International Space Station, provides a look generally northeastward: Philadelphia-New York City-Boston corridor (bottom-center); western Lake Ontario shoreline with Toronto (left edge); Montreal (near center). An optical illusion in the photo makes the atmospheric limb and light activity from Aurora Borealis appear "intertwined." Image Credit: NASA... | ||
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