Physicists set a record speed
Physicists from Switzerland and the USA dispersed nanoparticles of silicon to a record for all known rotating bodies speed — more than a billion revolutions per second.
Two groups of physicists from Switzerland and the US hyped the nanoparticles to record speeds — billions of times a second. Swiss physicists have suspended silicon nanoparticles with a length of 100 nm in a high vacuum, caught in a laser trap, and irradiated them with polarized light, forcing him to spin wildly around its axis.
The experiment of American scientists from Purdue University (Indiana) was similar to Swiss, but nanoparticles had the shape of a dumbbell; the authors note that such a geometry may allow the use of a rapidly spinning nanoparticles to measure small masses.
Scientists unraveled the nanoparticles not only to put the record. Theoretically, using such a rotating particle it is possible to measure the friction of the vacuum, which is created by the collision of the rotating body with virtual particles that constantly appear and annihilate in vacuum.
Preprints of two papers published (1, 2) in the repository ArXiv.org; articles prepared for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters.