Nothing lasts forever, right? People, planets, stars, galaxies, and maybe even the Universe itself, have their own lifespan.
However, the quantum world has its own rules.
Physicists have been able to establish that quasiparticles (a concept in quantum mechanics to simplify the description of complex quantum systems) can be immortal.
Such quantum systems can be destroyed, but after this the particles are rebuilt and everything returns to its original state. This can go on, perhaps ad infinitum.
The quantum world can be very strange, but even experienced physicists admitted that this discovery was a surprise to them.
“Before this discovery, it was assumed that quasiparticles in interacting quantum systems decay after a certain time. Now we know that interactions can stop decay altogether, ”said physicist Frank Polman of Munich Technical University.
The quasiparticles involved in the experiments are not just particles, but rather perturbations in a solid caused by electric or magnetic fields, which together begin to behave as separate particles.
For example, phonon, a quasiparticle introduced by the Soviet scientist Igor Tamm, oscillates in the atoms of the crystal lattice. The system of such quasiparticles lends itself to decay, but with subsequent self-healing.
“After a quick decay, a back reaction begins and the debris converges again. This process, reminiscent of real-time rewinding, can be repeated over and over, ”explained physicist Ruben Verresen of the Technical University of Munich and the Max Planck Institute.
Literally in a year, we learned that in the quantum world: there is no objective reality, teleportation is possible, vacuum is capable of transmitting energy and immortality is a normal phenomenon.
