Re: a question to Bob Silverman about factorization - OT: Recent Two-Slit Experiment result

From: Andrew Swallow (am.swallow_at_eatspam.btinternet.com)
Date: 03/21/04 

Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2004 01:36:42 +0000 (UTC)

"John A. Malley" <102667.2235@compuserve.com> wrote in message
news:405BEC18.5060805@compuserve.com...
[snip]
>
> If you think the two-slit experiment with electrons is weird, look at
> the recent results reported by Anton Zeilinger and his colleagues at the
> University of Innsbruck in Austria in Nature and Science.
>
> They demonstrated the transition from quantum (wave-like) behavior to
> classical (particle-like behavior) and back gain with
> buckminsterfullerene molecules (C_70) shot through gratings one molecule
> at a time. They measured bucky ball impacts on the other side of the
> slits. They detected peaks and troughs in the spatial layout of impacts
> with (relatively) low-temperature bucky balls. Each molecule apparently
> interfered with itself as it passed through the slits. The peak and
> trough pattern smoothly changed as they laser-heated the bucky balls
> from 1000 Degrees Kevin to 3000 Degrees Kelvin at which the quantum
> interference patterns disappeared. The bucky balls acted as classical
> particles at 3000 Degrees Kelvin temperature.
>
> Bucky balls are quite big compared to electrons, protons or neutrons.
> This is mesoscopic matter behavior.
>
> See http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/303/5661/1119a
>
Doubly so since they are happening at over 700 degrees
Centigrade. You normally have to be near absolute zero.

Andrew Swallow

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