Their study used a sophisticated setup involving superconducting devices, known as traps, with magnetic fields, sensitive detectors and advanced vibration isolation. It measured a weak pull, just 30aN, on a tiny particle 0.43mg in size by levitating it in freezing temperatures a hundredth of a degree above absolute zero—about –273 degrees Celsius.
Good god, this sounds like a difficult experiment to pull off. Thirty atto-Newtons. You don’t hear atto-anything very often.
One attoparsec is about 3cm.
No one uses attoparsecs any more than they use beard-seconds or Hubble-barns.
You made me look these up and they are hilarious. Thanks for making my day! Here are a few more on the same page, along with beard-seconds and Hubble-barns.
as a rule of thumb: the diameter of a banana is about one attoparsec. the length of a banana is about one banana, for scale.
You don’t hear atto-anything very often.
But more and more often now, the previous Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to a team that produced laser pulses with duration measured in atto-seconds.
