sooner this class , researchersdiscoveredthat photon - emitting particle prompt through a vacuum go through a friction - corresponding force never detected before . This was not just unexpected but it also challenged one of the all-important principles of Einstein ’s special relativity .
The team looked at the whole frame-up again trying to understand if the effect was real , what could its cause be , and if it was a infraction of relativity . As describe in their novel paper published in theJournal of Modern Optics , the effect is very existent but it was not a violation . However , the novel coming has direct them to a young means to derive tocopherol = mc2 in purgative .
The principle of relativity only states that if there are no external power a stationary aim stays stationary , and objects in motion will proceed to move with a unvarying speed . This principle was first written out by Galileo in 1632 and became a cornerstone of mechanics and eventually of Einstein ’s theory .
The team had studied this in an delirious two - level mote . Such an atom would emit a photon to go from an delirious state of matter to the ground Department of State . If the atom was stationary , once it emits the photon it would recoil , just as ask . But in the move atom , depending on which direction the photon has been emitted ( either slow-witted or forward ) the impulse was not maintain any longer . This was have by the Doppler event and it created quite a problem with the hypothesis .
“ In myopic , we have a rubbing military unit associated with the spontaneous emission issue . Yet the existence of a force in one frame that does not exist in another seems to be at betting odds with both the Galilean and Einsteinian precept of relativity . Hence we have a paradox , ” the researchers Stephen Barnett and Matthias Sonnleitner , from the University of Glasgow , explain in thepaper .
So , how did they solve the paradox ? The team in reality used high school physics , but with a wind . Usually , in preservation of impulse problems , you vary the speed of your billiard balls or trash skaters , or whatever you ’re using , but the mass stick the same . The researchers or else allow for both the mass and the velocity to switch . Not only did it solved the paradox , it also delivered to the researchers a conversant equating .
By allowing the heap to change , they proved that the mass red ink by the atom forsake its excited state is tantamount to the energy of the photon escaping . Their study find the aggregated - zip equivalence that made Einstein famous , and surprisingly they found it without have to use any relativistic ideas .
[ H / T : Gizmodo ]
