Yay! When does classical physics break down? Now we know!

[daaron]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120607105817.htm

With simple arguments, researchers show that nature is complicated! Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute have made a simple experiment that demonstrates that nature violates common sense -- the world is different than most people believe. The experiment illustrates that light does not behave according to the principles of classical physics, but that light has quantum mechanical properties. The new method could be used to study whether other systems behave quantum mechanically.

Light can have an electric OR a magnetic field, but not BOTH. Heavy, man.

[Enrique]

1. let me guess

does it have something to do with Jesus?`

[daaron]

2. Nah, man. Dig it - the real thing. Published in Physical Review Letters!

Check out the link... see for yourself. Science Daily's above board.

[dmallind]

3. Guess without opening the link....two slits? nt

[daaron]

4. Nope! Sorry all, but this ain't what you think.

No skeptic-baiting here. Just some cool science, if you can dig it and click the damn link before posting.

It's not a birthday present - just open it already!

[bongbong]

5. The HELL with all that complicated sciencey stuff, says the repig

"I can't understand how my calculator adds 2+2, much less physics! Addition is too tough to do in my head so I need my calculator! But it is GOD telling those little display pixels to light up! Something as complex as a CALCULATOR could ONLY be created by a sky genii!!!"

[daaron]

6. Weird responses to my OP -->

Has anyone bothered to click on the link? I figured "Science" was the correct forum for this article since it involves, y'know, actual science. The link was not a joke or a con or a link to Electric Sun or Shrinking Planet or Holistic Digital Universe or any other woo. It's Science Daily, man. Dig it, I got the link on AtheistNexus, but am an avid ScienceDaily reader, anyway (they have some of the best coverage of advances in quantum computing and climate science).

Maybe it will help to quote some more of the news article about the research (sorry, but I'm not paying for the journal article -- I'll wait for it to come out on DVD, as it were - though I think some of the prelims are on ArXiv.org for interested parties):

...explains Eran Kot, PhD-student in the research group, Quantum Optics at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

Based on a series of experiments in the quantum optics laboratories, they examined the state of light. In classical physics, light possesses both an electric and a magnetic field.

"What our study demonstrated was that light can have both an electric and a magnetic field, but not at the same time. We thus provide a simple proof that an experiment breaks the classical principles. That is to say, we showed light possesses quantum properties, and we can expand this to other systems as well" says Eran Kot.

And:

"We are endeavouring to develop future quantum computers and we therefore need to understand the borders for when something behaves quantum mechanically and when it is classical mechanics," says professor of quantum physics Anders S. Sørensen, explaining that quantum computing must necessarily be composed of systems with non-classical properties.

So the point of the research was to better discover under what conditions a system breaks with classical mechanics, in order to better understand really just that - when DOES classical mechanics break down? Obviously, it breaks down sometimes - we wouldn't be using solar panels if we didn't understand that. But clearly having a better idea of how that occurs is invaluable info, especially for researchers in the field of quantum computing, where it's of paramount importance to control entanglement and decomposition.

Anyway - just thought the responses so far have been unscientific and dismissive, without having even read the article in question it was assumed to be woo. Not woo, just some groovy science for nerds.

ETA: Anyone who doubts the cred of ScienceDaily.com clearly isn't a real Scotsman, I mean Nerd. It's geek heaven. It makes SciAm look Republican. This is where I go for hard-hitting science news and articles, written for the lay-reader. Just check out their global warming section. Not comprehensive; yes reliable. Don't forget to 'scroll down', all you post-first-interrogate-later folks.

[FiveGoodMen]

7. Interesting article. I didn't see any crazy there.

I do wish they'd have provided a little more detail.