3 ms·
Noobie question: how do they know that this actually happened? I would have thought that having some sort of detector inside the tiny mirror box would disturb
by danparsonson 16y ago
Noobie question: how do they know that this actually happened? I would have thought that having some sort of detector inside the tiny mirror box would disturb the experiment? How do you measure something like this?
- danparsonson 16y agoShould've read the other article linked on here (http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101124/full/news.2010.630.html http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101124/full/news.2010.630.ht...): The team could tell when the transition had occurred because the small number of photons in the BEC formed an intense beam of yellow light — like a laser — in the centre of the cavity, surrounded by the 'gas' of remaining normal photons. To double-check that they were seeing a BEC of light, the researchers repeated the experiment with different numbers of photons. In each case, once the transition had taken place, they measured the spectrum of light leaking from the cavity and found that it matched theoretical predictions for the corresponding BEC. (BEC == Bose-Einstein Condensate)