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Two Diamonds Linked by Strange Quantum Entanglement

Two Diamonds Linked by Strange Quantum Entanglement
Scientists have linked two diamonds in a mysterious process called entanglement that is normally only seen on the quantum scale. Entanglement is so weird that Einstein dubbed it "spooky action at a distance." It's a strange effect where one object gets connected to another so that even if they are separated by large distances, an action performed on one will affect the other. Entanglement usually occurs with subatomic particles, and was predicted by the theory of quantum mechanics, which governs the realm of the very small. But now physicists have succeeded in entangling two macroscopic diamonds, demonstrating that quantum mechanical effects are not limited to the microscopic scale. "I think it's an important step into a new regime of thinking about quantum phenomena," physicist Ian Walmsley of England's University of Oxford said." Another study recently used quantum entanglement to teleport bits of light from one place to another.

DNA molecules can 'teleport', Nobel Prize winner claims A Nobel Prize winning biologist has ignited controversy after publishing details of an experiment in which a fragment of DNA appeared to ‘teleport’ or imprint itself between test tubes. According to a team headed by Luc Montagnier, previously known for his work on HIV and AIDS, two test tubes, one of which contained a tiny piece of bacterial DNA, the other pure water, were surrounded by a weak electromagnetic field of 7Hz. Eighteen hours later, after DNA amplification using a polymerase chain reaction, as if by magic the DNA was detectable in the test tube containing pure water. Oddly, the original DNA sample had to be diluted many times over for the experiment to work, which might explain why the phenomenon has not been detected before, assuming that this is what has happened. The phenomenon might be very loosely described as 'teleportation' except that the bases project or imprint themselves across space rather than simply moving from one place to another. What does all of this mean?

Why there is no such thing as empty space MacGregor Campbell, contributor Could the universe have appeared out of nothing? In a previous video, we argued that typical notions of 'something' and 'nothing' don't really make sense according to modern physics. But many commenters objected to this idea, calling it a semantic game. In our latest animated explainer, we pick up where we left off and look at whether true nothingness is possible according to physics. You can find out more about the void in our full-length feature: Nothingness: The turbulent life of empty space. For more mind-bending physics, check out this explainer on how to build a time machine, or visit our archive of One-Minute Physics videos.

Physics Community Afire With Rumors of Higgs Boson Discovery | Wired Science One of the biggest debuts in the science world could happen in a matter of weeks: The Higgs boson may finally, really have been discovered. Ever since tantalizing hints of the Higgs turned up in December at the Large Hadron Collider, scientists there have been busily analyzing the results of their energetic particle collisions to further refine their search. “The bottom line though is now clear: There’s something there which looks like a Higgs is supposed to look,” wrote mathematician Peter Woit on his blog, Not Even Wrong. According to Woit, there are rumors of new data that would be the most compelling evidence yet for the long-sought Higgs. The possible news has a number of physics bloggers speculating that LHC scientists will announce the discovery of the Higgs during the International Conference on High Energy Physics, which takes place in Melbourne, Australia, July 4 to 11. The new buzz is just the latest in the Higgs search drama.

How the universe appeared from nothing MacGregor Campbell, consultant There's no such thing as a free lunch, or so the saying goes, but that may not be true on the grandest, cosmic scale. Many physicists now believe that the universe arose out of nothingness during the Big Bang which means that nothing must have somehow turned into something. How could that be possible? Due to the weirdness of quantum mechanics, nothing transforms into something all the time. The less energy such a system has, the longer it can stick around. If you take inflation into account, which physicists think caused rapid expansion in the early universe, we begin to see why MIT physicist Alan Guth calls the universe the "ultimate free lunch." You can read the full story here or check out the rest of our Existence special. In our previous animated explainers, you can find out why free will is an illusion or how animals shaped the human mind.

The mention of “spin” of a particle is one that... - Say It With Science Ultrafast Camera Records at Speed of Light Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) have developed an imaging system that can acquire visual data at a rate of one trillion exposures per second–fast enough to produce a slow-motion video of a burst of light traveling the length of a one-liter bottle, bouncing off the cap and reflecting back to the bottle’s bottom. As Ramesh Raskar, an associate professor in M.I.T.’s Media Lab, explains in the video below, a high-speed camera can capture the image of a bullet mid-flight. The M.I.T. camera can capture the movement of photons, which travel about one million times faster than bullets. The researchers use a titanium-sapphire laser as a pulsed light source and direct the beam using mirrors to a plastic bottle that helps illuminate the light. Their camera consists of an array of 500 sensors, each triggered at a trillionth-of-a-second delay, Media Lab postdoctoral associate Andreas Velten says in the video.

Free particle One Per Cent: Fastest ever camera captures light in a flash Jacob Aron, technology reporter Photographers normally use a flash to freeze quick-moving subjects, but now a team at MIT have created a camera so fast that it can video a flash of light itself. The camera records one trillion exposures per second, enough to capture a pulse of light passing through a bottle in slow-motion. This unusual requirement means the camera is only suitable for capturing scenes in which the same action is repeated over and over, hence the carefully-timed light pulses seen in the video above. As such, the new technique is unlikely to find its way into consumer cameras.

Atoms Reach Record Temperature, Colder than Absolute Zero Absolute zero is often thought to be the coldest temperature possible. But now researchers show they can achieve even lower temperatures for a strange realm of "negative temperatures." Oddly, another way to look at these negative temperatures is to consider them hotter than infinity, researchers added. This unusual advance could lead to new engines that could technically be more than 100 percent efficient, and shed light on mysteries such as dark energy, the mysterious substance that is apparently pulling our universe apart. An object's temperature is a measure of how much its atoms move — the colder an object is, the slower the atoms are. Bizarro negative temperatures To comprehend the negative temperatures scientists have now devised, one might think of temperature as existing on a scale that is actually a loop, not linear. With positive temperatures, atoms more likely occupy low-energy states than high-energy states, a pattern known as Boltzmann distribution in physics.

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