{"id":17782,"date":"2018-10-05T08:34:54","date_gmt":"2018-10-05T13:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=17782"},"modified":"2018-10-05T08:36:13","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T13:36:13","slug":"a-glitch-in-our-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/10\/05\/a-glitch-in-our-design\/","title":{"rendered":"A Glitch In Our Design?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps this is another bug in our home computer. You know, the one that’s simulating our Universe. At least, this weirdness sounds like it. From<\/a> NewScientist<\/strong><\/em> (22 September 2018, extended):<\/p>\n

Chemists have a plan to make ghosts in the lab, by bonding an atom to a patch of empty space.<\/p>\n

Normal chemical bonds anchor two atoms together, usually through sharing their electrons. Now, theorists have worked out how to trick a single hydrogen atom to form a bond with nothing, by luring the atom\u2019s lone electron into the same position and state it would be in a real bond.<\/p>\n

Matt Eiles of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana and his colleagues are building on work from\u00a0two years ago that saw the creation of\u00a0strange, super-sized bonds<\/a>\u00a0in other molecules, such as diatomic caesium.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

In that case, one caesium atom is in a rare condition called a\u00a0Rydberg state<\/a>, which allows its bonding electron to stretch up to a thousand times further than normal from the other caesium atom, essentially forming a super-sized bond.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Eiles says that by imitating this Rydberg state with single hydrogen atom, they can make it bond to nothing. The trick involves exposing the hydrogen atom and its electron to a series of delicate magnetic and electric fields.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe predict it would live for several hundred microseconds, or even longer in a cold environment,\u201d says Eiles. But his team won\u2019t be trying to make any ghostly bonds. \u201cAs simple theorists, we\u2019ll leave this challenge to the experts, the experimentalists,\u201d he says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, it’s all theory. Some folks think it can be done, but until it is done, no one can be sure. And is it really a bond, or just an anomaly in the path of the electron? Does that even make sense to say for a quantum particle?<\/p>\n

Still sounds like a bug to me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps this is another bug in our home computer. You know, the one that’s simulating our Universe. At least, this weirdness sounds like it. From NewScientist (22 September 2018, extended): Chemists have a plan to make ghosts in the lab, by bonding an atom to a patch of empty space. \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17782"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17784,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17782\/revisions\/17784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}