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Physicists Successfully Store and Retrieve Nothing

sciencenow.sciencemag.org — It sounds like a headline from the spoof newspaper The Onion, but for physicists, this is actually an achievement: Two teams have stored nothing in a puff of gas and then retrieved it a split second later.

Who dugg this? Made popular Mar 2, 2008

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182 Comments

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  • bobisoft2k5, on 03/02/2008, -5/+353*****
  • Falldog, on 03/02/2008, -1/+270I do that all the time, it's called a bank account.
  • wonderchemist, on 03/02/2008, -5/+240And I bet they get nothing as a reward.
  • gdixon, on 03/02/2008, -1/+190it seems that nothing can come of this experiment
  • loganhid, on 03/02/2008, -10/+140..........
  • Zarokima, on 03/02/2008, -4/+86Well said.
  • AndrewDB, on 03/02/2008, -7/+63So, they invested in the United States Economy ?
  • dedkittens, on 03/02/2008, -1/+55anyone want to explain in english?
  • tmlee, on 03/02/2008, -3/+50sounds like my brain...
  • rolf, on 03/02/2008, -1/+40So how many Seinfeld episodes can they store?
  • Coolmatt49, on 03/02/2008, -0/+36Where's Pacman when you need him?
  • bjos144, on 03/02/2008, -0/+36You cant really explain quantum in English, sadly you need math. English is used to connect us with others who share our experience. As our experience is based in a macroscopic classical world, English is not a suitable tool to explain quantum phenomenon. The best you can do is fuzzy analogies. Sorry.
  • BlaenkDenum, on 03/02/2008, -3/+37When I saw the headline, I /did/ think it was from the Onion.
  • gavintlgold, on 03/02/2008, -0/+27Question: how did you do that? Enter and not putting anything in gets an error...

    funny.
  • bdogm, on 03/02/2008, -0/+25Wait, the Onion is a spoof newspaper?
  • mooninite, on 03/02/2008, -0/+24*****
  • Ephemeralnode, on 03/02/2008, -1/+25So by toying with uncertainty, they created a squeezed a vacuum of nothing. They then shined a low noise laser on nothing which displayed signs of uncertainty. This only lasted the amount of time it takes light to move 2/3 of a kilometer.

    I'm uncertain if nothing happened?
  • PabloMac, on 03/02/2008, -4/+27I saw this on Seinfeld.
  • MasterThief117, on 03/02/2008, -2/+23Best comment today.
  • deadcrickets, on 03/02/2008, -0/+20This is most illogical. An item not understood by the people here has hit the front page of Digg. Captain, I believe we are in a mirror universe.
  • neio, on 03/02/2008, -2/+22Paradoxes, everything I say is a lie.
  • lemur, on 03/02/2008, -2/+21I'll be more interested when they devise a way to store something.
  • bsonline, on 03/02/2008, -0/+18Saying they "Stored Nothing" kind of plays down what has actually been done. While not the best analogy, they formated the world's smallest and fastest hard drive. They wiped the random data that was there, and then verified it.
  • PoeticExplosion, on 03/02/2008, -1/+19People generally avoid duplicating posts. So, if there's going to be a duplicate post, it will probably be in a situation where both were posting at the same time.

    In addition, two duplicated posts close together is a very obvious pattern, so you notice it whenever it happens. This makes it seem much more common to your brain than it actually might be.
  • zeromancer, on 03/02/2008, -4/+22so i've noticed a strange phenomenon on digg. why do similar comments always get posted together? this parent and the one above it are the same and were submitted 1 minute apart. i've seen this happen in a lot of other threads. has anyone else noticed this? i used to write it off as kids posting the same thing at the same time in their computer class or something, but i see it at all times of the day. am i the only one?
  • trilorez, on 03/02/2008, -0/+18Actually The Onion is distributed in paper form.
  • inactive, on 03/02/2008, -0/+18I....err................what?
  • firebhaal, on 03/02/2008, -0/+17I don't see what you did there
  • OrangeSoda31, on 03/02/2008, -1/+18I see what you did there
  • Jeffler, on 03/02/2008, -3/+20I agree!
  • chrisduser, on 03/02/2008, -0/+16By teleporting nothing, they have technically teleported nothing.
  • insertAliasHere, on 03/02/2008, -1/+16Good point.
  • inactive, on 03/02/2008, -2/+17In the beginning, there was nothing... And God said, "Let there be light." And there was light. But there was still nothing.

    But by God, you could SEE it...

    ;)
  • Jaq524, on 03/02/2008, -0/+15I count 10 nothings.
  • tattertech, on 03/02/2008, -0/+14Hmm, getting results and press out of making nothing? Sounds like physicists have finally figured out every web 2.0 business plan.
  • FaithclubDotNet, on 03/02/2008, -0/+13Call me when they can teleport nothing.
  • inactive, on 03/02/2008, -2/+13It's quantum uncertainty gone bad. That's what. Einstein bitterly denounced it, saying "God does not throw dice on Digg." Shortly thereafter, 14 Diggers posted a story about his statement.
  • DiggDuggDugged, on 03/02/2008, -1/+11I think what they discuss could be considered a way of taking a fingerprint of the laser beam they shine through the stuff. Any photon in that beam has a unique wavelength that could be used to identify it and this is a way of storing that identity. I don't think this has much of an application outside of quantum cryptography (yet) and like all things quantum-related it's hard to get your mind around.
  • coyote1284, on 03/02/2008, -0/+10Did you copy and paste that all by yourself?
  • bwdd, on 03/02/2008, -0/+10Replying to your comment adds nothing to these comments, so I will reply to your comment right now.
  • inactive, on 03/02/2008, -0/+9♂
    well, something screwed up...
  • Coded1, on 03/02/2008, -2/+11I find the same thing.
  • Primatelord, on 03/02/2008, -0/+9Nothing, here, makes sense.
  • adooga, on 03/02/2008, -0/+9When you see this happen, it usually means they've changed something. Watch out.
  • ricree, on 03/02/2008, -0/+9Unless someone here is a specialist in quantum physics (or knows a place online where a quantum physicist has explained this), then the article is probably the best explanation you're going to get. Like bjos144 said, when you are talking about something this deep in quantum physics you really need to get into math to have any hope of understanding it, and in this case I suspect that it is somewhat involved and complicated math.
  • Mcaruso, on 03/02/2008, -0/+9​Google "zero width space".​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
  • spyd3rweb, on 03/02/2008, -1/+10collective consciousness.
  • pk7677, on 03/02/2008, -0/+8You have a lot of good points.
  • Jammer, on 03/02/2008, -1/+910 bucks they try to eat it.
  • itanshi, on 03/02/2008, -0/+8not true, you can order a subscription, i've seen papers laying around a cafe some years ago. if they stopped it since then, feel free to correct me.
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