http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228392.700-light-pulled-out-of-empty-space.html
By: Michael Brooks
Source: New Scientist
Did you know that you can literally get light out of nothing? As long as you're going at the speed of light. The whole idea of getting something out of nothing revolves around a 41 year old principle that says that there is no empty space, but particles are constantly moving in and out of existence. This is a fact that has been long established since the discovery of the Casimir effect in which two mirrors face parallel two each other with a tiny space between them. They are pushed together by the radiation pressure since the number of virtual photons on the outside is much grater than the ones in between which pulls the two mirrors together. This experiment, however, is conducted by one mirror moving at the speed of light through virtual photons in empty space. Since it is quite hard to move a mirror at the speed of light they instead used a superconductor to simulate this. This produced particles right out of the vacuum, out of nothing.
I thought that this article was really fascinating because I've never actually heard of virtual photons or the Casimir effect which is really interesting. I thought the principle that nothing is empty, but rather particles jump in and out of existence was really interesting and new to me. I chose this article because writing about something complex and new to me helped me understand what was going on and how the experiment worked.
By: Michael Brooks
Source: New Scientist
Did you know that you can literally get light out of nothing? As long as you're going at the speed of light. The whole idea of getting something out of nothing revolves around a 41 year old principle that says that there is no empty space, but particles are constantly moving in and out of existence. This is a fact that has been long established since the discovery of the Casimir effect in which two mirrors face parallel two each other with a tiny space between them. They are pushed together by the radiation pressure since the number of virtual photons on the outside is much grater than the ones in between which pulls the two mirrors together. This experiment, however, is conducted by one mirror moving at the speed of light through virtual photons in empty space. Since it is quite hard to move a mirror at the speed of light they instead used a superconductor to simulate this. This produced particles right out of the vacuum, out of nothing.
I thought that this article was really fascinating because I've never actually heard of virtual photons or the Casimir effect which is really interesting. I thought the principle that nothing is empty, but rather particles jump in and out of existence was really interesting and new to me. I chose this article because writing about something complex and new to me helped me understand what was going on and how the experiment worked.
This is potentially a very complex article to understand, I agree, but I know you like a challenge as well. It is interesting that particles can just in and out of existence. Well written.
ReplyDelete