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Meanwhile...

Physics Says: You Will Slow Down in a Vacuum

by Max Eddy | 12:55 pm, February 12th, 2011

Eventually, this ball will stop moving

Conventional physics holds that in a perfect vacuum, a spinning object would never slow down since there is nothing else to act on it. But this may not be true, according to a new study by Alejandro Manjavacas and F. Javier García de Abajo and recently covered by The New Scientist. So, it starts out innocently enough with a statement like “it turns out that in a total vacuum objects will eventually slow down!” If all you want out of life is very simplistic understanding of modern science, then walk away now, because this discovery is about to board the crazy train called quantum mechanics.

In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle says we can never be sure that an apparent vacuum is truly empty. Instead, space is fizzing with photons that are constantly popping into and out of existence before they can be measured directly. Even though they appear only fleetingly, these “virtual” photons exert the same electromagnetic forces on the objects they encounter as normal photons do.

That pop you just heard may have been the sounds of several minds being blown at once. But if you can accept the idea that because of the uncertainty principal — that you can never know both the speed position of a particle a the quantum level — little fake photons (the particles that make up light and do all sorts of crazy nonsense) can exert force on other objects then you are good to go. Really. The rest may be crazy, but that’s the biggest hurdle.

Still with us? Good.

Just as a head-on collision packs a bigger punch than a tap between two cars one behind the other, a virtual photon hitting an object in the direction opposite to its spin collides with greater force than if it hits in the same direction.

See? Easy. The fake photons smack into the object and because they are moving super fast (like, the speed of light) then they exert force on the object, eventually slowing it down. But wait, we’re not through. It turns out there’s some limitations to this. If, for instance, the object in the vacuum is made of a material that doesn’t readily absorb electromagnetic energy, like gold, then the force of colliding fake photons is reduced.

Temperature may be the greatest limiting factor, however. Apparently fewer fake photons appear in colder environments, greatly diminishing the chance of collisions.

At 700 °C, an average temperature for hot areas of the universe, that same speed decrease would take only 90 days. In the cold of interstellar space, it would take 2.7 million years.

And now, dear friends, you have a slightly more nuanced understanding of how objects behave in a perfect vacuum. It goes on to talk about how this might have huge implications for the question of whether or not “quantum information” can ever be destroyed, and how through the use of high-powered lasers these findings may be testable in the very near future. But that, friends, is a tale for another time.

(via New Scientist, image via Ben Husmann)

  • http://www.facebook.com/afk.family.photo Matt Soup Foley

    Interesting, got into quantum physics in my normal physics class in high school and stayed perputually intrigued by it. However, on a side note, all three instances of your “than”s are really “then”s, since “than” is used in comparisons, and “then” shows progressions (be they thoughts or processes).

  • Rbynum3965

    So your saying that in an imperfect vacuum spinning objects will slow down? Ah the wonder of science.

  • http://twitter.com/Ouroborus777 Ouroborus

    So the idea seems to be that virtual particles appear and collide with the spinning object in a direction against it’s spin thereby slowing it down. But wouldn’t there also be virtual particles colliding with the spin there by speeding it up so the net effect over time being no change in spin?

  • http://www.thechildhealthsite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=1 Edcedc8

    only pinning in one direction with virtual particles going EVERY direction.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Hawk-III/100001561115256 James Hawk III

    As the OP wrote, virtual particles colliding in the direction of spin will provide less energy to the object than the virtual particles colliding opposite the direction of spin will take from it. F(spinward) object slows down. At some point the system reaches equilibrium.

  • Msd1

    no, theyre saying theres NO SUCH THING as a perfect vaccuum.

  • Crowbar

    Not to mention the “uncertainty principal” and “the pop you just head”.

  • Florian

    It slows down relative to what?
    If it slows down in some frame of reference, it speeds up in another.

  • Anne Ominous

    This is incorrect. Someone did not put on their thinking cap the day they dreamed this up.

    As Einstein clearly showed (and experiment has borne out), light travels at the same velocity relative to an object or surface, regardless of the motion of that object or surface relative to the light source. (In this case the light source is the point of origin of a “virtual” photon.)

    Since the light is always traveling at the same velocity relative to whatever it strikes, it has the same momentum and can’t preferentially affect something moving toward it more than something moving away from it.

    Busted.

  • Anne Ominous

    Except that it doesn’t. See my post below.

  • Anne Ominous

    Having stated that:

    The appearance of massive particles (particles other than photons) may very well slow the object down. But the use of photons as an example is just plain WRONG. It was exactly the wrong (and as far as I know the ONLY possible wrong) example to use.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001822634392 Edward Alan Ward

    i thought that matter was never created or destroyed but only transformed and this says that the photons pop into and out of existence. i find what they said is wrong.

  • smyth

    The speed is the same, the speed of light, but the energy is not. The one from opposite direction will have a blueshift,  a higher frequency, therefore a higher energy. the one in the same direction will have a redshift, lower frequency, kess energy. I guess … :)


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