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News Feature
Nature 447, 772-774 (14 June 2007) | doi:10.1038/447772a; Published online 13 June 2007
Fundamental physics: Feel the force
Philip Ball1
- Philip Ball is a consultant editor for Nature.
Abstract
When two objects separated by a vacuum are barely a whisker apart, a strange attraction comes into play. Philip Ball meets the physicists who are trying to make something out of nothing.
"Nothing can come of nothing," wrote Shakespeare, but Harvard physicist Federico Capasso aims to prove him wrong. Because of the fluctuating nature of the sub-microscopic quantum world, 'nothing' — a vacuum — can generate an attractive force between two objects that are very close to each other.
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