Can We Really Create Infinite Photons? Physicists Reveal What Might Happen if We Try to Cut Light in Half
Physicists from the University of Oslo have theorized that attempting to 'cut' a photon using a shutter could result in the creation of multiple new photons. This counterintuitive result highlights the complex nature of quantum superposition and particle behavior.
Why it matters
The study challenges fundamental understandings of light and quantum mechanics, potentially influencing future quantum computing research.
Add ScienceAlert on Google A visualization of a photon, courtesy of researchers at the University of Birmingham. (Benjamin Yuen/University of Birmingham) Photons act in freaky ways that remind us that nothing is as it seems at the smallest scales and most fundamental levels of existence .
Photons are the smallest possible bits of electromagnetic energy and are massless, allowing them to travel at the speed of, well, light.
Yet these feats may be their least fascinating properties because they also exhibit wave-particle duality , behaving both like waves and particles depending on how they're measured – as shown in Thomas Young's famous 19th-century double-slit experiment .
Further probing this wave-like duality, physicists from the University of Oslo (UiO) explored a question that has never been asked before: what happens when you try to cut a photon in two, like lopping off the ickily oxidized end of an overripe banana?
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in