THE ADVANCED Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) can measure giant ripples in space-time that race across the cosmos. But in 2019, physicists used it for something else: to measure fluctuations at the quantum scale that jiggle the detectors super-sensitive mirrors. They published their report in Nature in July. Theorists have long predicted this behavior at the interface of light and matter, but this study is the "first to experimentally prove it" at such large scales and at room temperature, says physicist Haocun Yu of the MIT Kavli Institute, who worked on the project. It's also the first time that scientists have quantified these quantum effects. These measurements, they say, will improve gravitational wave detectors and other instruments that are influenced by quantum noise.
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