PHYSICS IN PHILOSOPHICAL REALMS

11^th Oct 2012-  U.S. physicist David Wineland and France's Serge Haroche  the Nobel Prize winners in Physics  applied one of the most successful theories in physics - quantum mechanics, which for a century has governed the micro-world where even an atom looms large - to objects in the lab.  In the quantum world discovered by Niels Bohr, Erwin Schroedinger and other giants of early 20th-century physics, tiny objects such as electrons can be in two places at once, and can behave as a particle one moment and as a wave the next, depending on how an observer tries to measure it.

In other words, the mere act of observation determines which form they take and even what reality is.It is like a Nano-version of a marble rolling back and forth in a bowl and being on the right side and the left side simultaneously.

In one seminal experiment, they hit atoms - which are huge by quantum standards - with laser light. After a while, the atom would absorb a photon, or light particle, and move. If the scientists turned off the light sooner, the atom remained where it was. If they shined the beam for the right amount of time, the atom would have a 50-50 chance of moving.

 In quantum mechanics, this 50-50 chance is called a "superposition," and is best known from the whimsical example, named for the Austrian physicist Schroedinger, of an imaginary cat.

Imagine that a cat is locked in a box with a radioactive atom, Schroedinger said, and that the atom has a 50-50 chance of decaying in one minute. If it decays, it emits a particle that hits a vial of cyanide and releases the poisonous gas, killing the cat.After a minute has passed, is kitty alive or dead? According to "superposition", the atom is in a combined state of intact and decayed, and so is kitty - in a superposition of alive and dead. Only when an observer looks into the box does one of the possibilities - alive or dead - become reality.

The work holds the promise of leading to such new technologies as quantum computers, which would make a conventional laptop, look like an abacus in terms of power and speed.

They would overcome the rapidly approaching limits of miniaturization in silicon-based components by allowing transistors - which can either be on or off in existing machines - the ability to be both on and off at the same time, just as Schroedinger's cat is simultaneously alive and dead. In theory, at least, this would vastly increase the speed at which they carry out calculations.

Imagine a travelling salesman working out the shortest route around town. A traditional computer would try every possible route in sequence and then choose the shortest. A quantum computer would be able to do the calculation in one step.

A quantum computer for your desk, much less your mobile phone, is still many years away: but some of the materials needed to build quantum devices have already been synthesized.  MagiQ in the U.S. and Swiss firm ID Quantique, are already selling quantum cryptography equipment that allows un-hack able communication using the same fundamental theory.

Question;- My query to readers is that how this marvelous discovery of cosmos working in infinitely miniaturization space would impact the humanity to encompass the wonders of the Creator yet to be explored in coming times?  Does it also imply that a certainty is uncertainty at the same moment and if so how do you conceptualize it. Think the imponderables and peep into future.