{"id":177262,"date":"2023-12-02T09:23:39","date_gmt":"2023-12-02T15:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/the-universe-in-a-lab-testing-alternate-cosmology-using-a-cloud-of-atoms"},"modified":"2023-12-02T09:23:39","modified_gmt":"2023-12-02T15:23:39","slug":"the-universe-in-a-lab-testing-alternate-cosmology-using-a-cloud-of-atoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/the-universe-in-a-lab-testing-alternate-cosmology-using-a-cloud-of-atoms","title":{"rendered":"The Universe in a lab: Testing alternate cosmology using a cloud of atoms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-universe-in-a-lab-testing-alternate-cosmology-using-a-cloud-of-atoms2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the basement of Kirchhoff-Institut f\u00fcr Physik in Germany, researchers have been simulating the Universe as it might have existed shortly after the Big Bang. They have created a tabletop quantum field simulation that involves using magnets and lasers to control a sample of potassium-39 atoms that is held close to absolute zero. They then use equations to translate the results at this small scale to explore possible features of the early Universe.<\/p>\n<p>The work done so far shows that it\u2019s possible to simulate a Universe with a different curvature. In a positively curved universe, if you travel in any direction in a straight line, you will come back to where you started. In a negatively curved universe, space is bent in a saddle shape. The Universe is currently flat or nearly flat, according to Marius Sparn, a PhD student at Kirchhoff-Institut f\u00fcr Physik. But at the beginning of its existence, it might have been more positively or negatively curved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the basement of Kirchhoff-Institut f\u00fcr Physik in Germany, researchers have been simulating the Universe as it might have existed shortly after the Big Bang. They have created a tabletop quantum field simulation that involves using magnets and lasers to control a sample of potassium-39 atoms that is held close to absolute zero. They then [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,41,48,1617,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-information-science","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}