by
Brendon Nafziger, DOTmed News Associate Editor | February 01, 2010
The researchers measured this system with laser spectroscopy, a technique that uses a pulsed laser to analyze energy states of molecules. However, the results were blurred by noise. To identify the noise that was disturbing the results, Varcoe employed a magnetometer the team developed. By adding quantum coherence to a gas cell, they made the device "incredibly sensitive to magnetic field," he says. A remote coil is attached to pick up the fields that are generated and then relays them to the sensor.
After working on the device, it struck Varcoe that the sensor could be of some use in medicine. One of his graduate students at the time, Melody Blackman, has spent several years developing the magnetometer so it could be ready for clinical use. (She now works for a medical device company.)
"It's really an experiment in a corner of our lab," Varcoe explains. "It's not really suitable at this point for tests on animal or human subjects. I think probably what we'll do, the next phase of operation is to start waving it about in front of somebody seeing what precisely its clinical value will be."
As for the ongoing research on quantum mechanics, Varcoe says they are still working toward an answer, one that might involve quantum gravity.
"There have been several proposals by many people, that when an entanglement or an entangled state reaches a certain level of complexity, the interaction with the background quantumness of space which drives quantum gravity, causes the superposition to break down, so this is actually what we're starting to focus on," he says.
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