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MyspaceUCSB researchers John Mantis, Andrew Cleland, and Aaron O’Connell last week demonstrated that the theory of quantum mechanics, the set of scientific principles that describes the behavior of energy and matter on an atomic level, is applicable to the mechanical motion of macroscopic objects. During a successful experiment that’s received worldwide attention, the team first cooled a mechanical resonator to as close to total “stillness” as possible, then added a single unit of quantum energy to the device, causing a piece of material in it to move as theoretically predicted. Using this process of turning mechanical motion into electrical energy, the discovery was described by one of the researchers as a stepping stone in the development of a quantum computer.
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Comments
Not a single comment about a significant scientific and engineering achievement. I wonder if it's because my fellow citizens find science and engineering dull and boring.
Shame on us all.
CharlesB (anonymous profile)
March 26, 2010 at 8:43 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Charles, I thought the same thing. Things of such significance seem always to get relegated to the microscopic in terms of coverage by the ubiquitously lurid.
Details of drunk killers and car hijackers are so much more enriching, don't you know. The day warp drive is achieved it will most likely be but a footnote to, say, Sarah Palin blithering on and on about how the gubment needs to be taken back through the scope of a rifle.
Thus far, the first decade of the 21st Century has unfolded not too surprisingly in miracles, wonders, & morons.
Lots of morons . . .
Draxor (anonymous profile)
March 28, 2010 at 7:38 a.m. (Suggest removal)