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Comment on Physicists Create First-Ever Antimatter Qubit, Making the Quantum World Even Weirder

MBech@feddit.dk ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

I love shit like that.

We have this incredibly expensive machine that was made by incredible engineers and scientists who spent an ungodly amount of hours on it. And their solution to some kind of problem with the machine, was to wrap a part in kitchengrade alu-foil, probably from the employee kitchen.

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atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The Voyager spacecrafts had some of their wires wrapped in, cleaned, store bought aluminum foil after a last minute change in the expected environment around Jupiter.

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qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Aluminum foil is very common in physics labs. And a main use for it is “baking”! To get ultra high vacuum (UHV)* you generally need to “bake out” your chamber while you pump down.

Sadly, it’s usually not food grade aluminum foil, as that can contain oils, and oils and vacuum are generally a big no-no.

*Just how good is UHV? Roughly: I live in San Francisco, which is ~7 miles by ~7 miles (~11km). Imagine you raise that by another 7 miles to make a cube. Now, evacuate every last molecule of gas out of it. Now take a family sedan’s trunk, fill it with 1 atmosphere of gas, and release that into the 7 mile cube. That’s roughly UHV pressure.

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- notabot@piefed.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Thanks for the analogy, that really helps to put it in perspective. I was trying to work out the number of molecules per metre that would leave you with, but either my sense of scales is off kilter or I've got it wrong.
  
  From what I can find, there are approximately 2.5e25 molecules per m³ at 1atm. Given an 11km cube has a volume of 1.3e12 m³, that gives around 2e13 molecules per m³ per m³ released. That sounds high, have I got the figures wrong somewhere?
  
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  - qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Your numbers seem reasonable — more intuitive for me to work in terms of pressure. Atmosphere is (roughly) 1e3 Torr, good UHV can be around 1e-10, so that’s 13 orders of magnitude, which is (roughly) the same difference that you calculated.
    
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- MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  How can a metal contain oil?
  
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  - morbidcactus@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It’d be coated, but processing, rolling metal generates a lot of heat, especially going that thin (thinnest I was around often was ~0.2mm), we’d often temper the material after processing, mainly for surface finish, mill rolls would be sprayed with lubricating coolant really close to what you’d see in use on a milling machine. This was with steel but same principle applies, pretty sure the lubricant we used is also labeled for use on aluminum mills, but you’d use food safe stuff for kitchen foil.
    
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  - Passerby6497@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Aluminum foil that’s food grade will have coatings on it to assist with food release. I assume that’s part of why one side is more shiny than the other.
    
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    Krudler@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I have always understood the rough side to simply be an outcome of the rolling process.
    
    If I’m wrong I’d love to know!
    
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    MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Ah, it’s coated.
    
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