Are Atoms Like Snowflakes? Physicist Proposes a New Test
A paper in Physics Letters B explores quantum mechanical tests of distinguishability and determinism in atoms.
Snowflakes. Photo credit: Christmasstockimages.com, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Is every atom in the universe unique? If so, this would make them distinguishable from each other, which goes against current scientific dogma. In a newly published paper in the journal Physics Letters B, University of Texas at Austin physicist Mark Raizen argues that a certain property of the atomic nucleus, the magnetic moment, could be slightly different for each one. Raizen proposes an experimental test with stable strontium atoms in a single-ion clock.
In the same paper, he wonders, could one predict when a single radioactive atom will decay? According to the theory of quantum mechanics, decay of a radioactive atom is probabilistic, not deterministic. But Albert Einstein believed that probability is not physical reality, and that the quantum world is deterministic. Now, Raizen proposes to test this question experimentally using radioactive strontium atoms in a single-ion clock.
