BBC Focus Magazine

[Shadowwolf]

Rice University physicists have gone to extremes to prove that Isaac Newton's classical laws of motion can apply in the atomic world: They've built an accurate model of part of the solar system inside a single atom of potassium.

In a new paper published this week in Physical Review Letters, Rice's team and collaborators at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Vienna University of Technology showed they could cause an electron in an atom to orbit the nucleus in precisely the same way that Jupiter's Trojan asteroids orbit the sun.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120124162351.htm

[Willxx]

I'm sure that should spark many "Hey maybe our universe is only an atom........." debates in student common rooms across the land after last orders or after smoking some hippy substances??

[MikeG]

This might be quite significant, because from what I understand, models which work on an atomic level don't seem to apply on the macro level. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a first as far as I'm aware.

[Shadowwolf]

So it seems, but I think the note that Newtonian physics can apply to the atomic scale is significant as well. It can apply with careful engineering, but as a rule it won't be much use at these scales.

The Caped one might be able to explain that better mind.

[MikeG]

It speaks volumes for both Newton and Neils Bohr that they could have come so far with the limited resources (read computing) they had at their disposal. I find it amazing that Bohr could have read so deeply into Newtons calculations, details which are only being glimpsed today.

[Jamie]

In such excited states, the potassium atoms become hundreds of thousands of times larger than normal and approach the size of a period at the end of a sentence

I have to admit, I almost haven't a clue what they are on about. But very interesting, none the less. I wonder if this is any help in the search for a TOE?