Luca Abrahão

A translator gets distracted by every rustle in the room, and an hour-long meeting stretches into two. Quantum mechanics works the same way: any measurement disturbs the system, wiping out part of the information. Physicists have long suspected that the gravitational radiation from black holes should obey the same rules, but proving it for strong fields kept failing.

A flashlight beam in a dark room can hold a dust mote almost still: that's how optical tweezers work. But light doesn't just push the particle; it also jostles it with random kicks. Each absorbed photon strikes it like an invisible hammer. The authors of the new study have devised a light trap of a special shape.