Detecting Quantum Phenomena

How do you detect the effects of quantum mechanics? Start with a metric ton of aluminum and make it very cold...

Just what are the effects of quantum mechanics?, you ask and it's an interesting question. To discuss it we have to rouse Schrodinger's Cat, a thought experiment that has a cat in a sealed box with some uranium. Uranium decays and releases deadly radiation. Once the radiation is detected a vial of poison is smashed inside the box releasing a gas and killing the cat. However, the cat can be said to be alive and dead at the same time until we open the box to see if the uranium has decayed or not. 

It is an experiment designed to show that we cannot know the out come of a random event without making an observation, and therefore the determination  of the outcome is dependent on it being observed. Were you around to hear that tree fall? This is called the Copenhagen Interpretation. Even Einstein had a lot of trouble with this. Either the cat is dead, or the cat is still alive, it can't be both at once right? 

Many in the world believe the way to observe matter existing in two places or states at the same time is to catch it in the act. In order to do this one needs to make matter so cold that the vibration of its sub atomic particles nearly stops, slowing it down so that one can see it in both states at the same time. Some researchers in Podova, Italy (A bit South and West of Venice) have cooled that block of aluminum alloy (weighing a metric ton) to within a few millionths of a degree of absolute zero. They are trying to detect waves of gravity from far off cosmic events, such as the collision of two of black holes. Because the aluminum rings like a bell at the slightest touch, it is thought that the vibration from a quantum event, like the decay of an isotope, could be detected as it evolves from one state to another. If this proves out, it could help us better understand the arena of the very small and it's relationship to the arena of the very large--the one in which we live. 

Here's the article if you want to get into the technicalities of it. Even though you are much warmer, it might make your head ring trying to think about it. 

Back Yard Black Holes

I found out today that if you have a spare $10 billion laying around you can make your very own black hole. The LHC (large Hadron Collider), located near Geneva, Switzerland, is a machine designed to send a stream of protons around a big circle at ever increasing speeds in opposite directions, and then smash them in to each other. It's like a infinitesimally small version of demolition derby, but it costs about 10,000,000 times as much. That's okay, because the Swiss have lots of money and little else to do; what with all that snow and those big mountains everywhere. 

Seriously, the reason for going to such great expense to smash things you can't see is to try to detect a specific particle that could reveal the mysterious things we see out in the farthest reaches of outer space. It's a little dew-hickey  called the Higgs boson. Some have deemed it the "God Particle" because they believe it is fundamental to all of the matter that we see today. Scientists at CERN (which stands for European Organization for Nuclear Research, don't ask how) fired this baby up to see if they could prove themselves right about the existence of such a particle. The theoretical  sub-atomic particle is said to exist because it is the only thing that makes sense. I'm not sure if it is going to answer questions, or create more of them. Either way it will be interesting to find out what conditions may have been like a few billionths of a second after the Big Bang. 

Smashing protons together is cool and all, but what is really amazing is what it took to build this thing. You can't just go around smashing protons any old place because when you do, you wind up with temperatures about 100,000 times hotter than the sun. And when you get those protons really zooming, and I mean zooming (99,99% of the speed of light) you need a track they will stay on. In fact, when the protons are at full speed they will go around the 17 miles of track 11,245 times per second (Al Unser Jr. eat your heart out).  And to do that you need lots of super cooled magnets, and by cool I mean cold (-271.3º Celsius, or 456.34ºF). Brrrr. They use liquid helium. Imagine what your voice would sound like on that. 

Many are worried that when the LHC starts directing the two opposing streams of protons into each other that a small black hole (watch for the tin foil hat) will be created . But the problem with this worry is that a black hole requires a lot of mass to sustain its light-sucking gravity, and without that initial mass a black hole can't form - theoretically speaking. But you know how it goes, when ever anyone builds something new or figures out a new way of doing anything, there will always be those who think it's crazy. I think that if they do create a black hole and it does swallow the earth that we wouldn't have any clue it even happened because it would happen, in our perception of time,  instantly.