It May Be Cold, But We Think It's Hot

By Shannon in News on Feb 24, 2007 4:30PM

In the interests of making our readers' heads explode, we deliver the following story right to your mental doorstep. An Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago is attempting to test a theory relating to the Big Bang, quantum mechanics, computers, and the very fabric of the universe itself. We don't know about you, but we get a funny feeling just thinking about it.

Cheng Chin plans to dump some spare atoms he just had laying around (OK, they're fermions) into a supercooled vacuum chamber only two feet in height. It's so blisteringly cold that the tube will register only a few billionth of a degree above absolute zero. And you thought the past few weeks' worth of weather was bad. Chin wants to find out how these atoms will react under such extreme conditions, the kind of conditions that existed in the void when the universe stormed into being. Under one theory, particles will be scattered in an utterly random pattern. In another theory, some particles will group together via a "phase transition," much like snow forms out of frozen water; in other words, it'd be a less-than-random occurrence.

What practical use does all this high-falutin' horsehockey have? Scientists like Chin believe that studying the particles' behavior and possible patterns will yield breakthroughs in quantum computers. No one needs to tell us twice that functioning quantum computers, while mostly still a pipe dream, would be a tremendous boon for the scientific world. Problems that would take years to solve on traditional machines would take mere seconds. With a $625,000 grant over five years, Chin hopes to push the envelope of what we know about the subatomic world. And right in our own backyard!

Image via wvallen.