{"id":230079,"date":"2026-01-29T09:12:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T15:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/measuring-the-quantum-extent-of-a-single-molecule-confined-to-a-nanodroplet"},"modified":"2026-01-29T09:12:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T15:12:12","slug":"measuring-the-quantum-extent-of-a-single-molecule-confined-to-a-nanodroplet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/measuring-the-quantum-extent-of-a-single-molecule-confined-to-a-nanodroplet","title":{"rendered":"Measuring the quantum extent of a single molecule confined to a nanodroplet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/measuring-the-quantum-extent-of-a-single-molecule-confined-to-a-nanodroplet2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There is no measurement that can directly observe the wave function of a quantum mechanical system, but the wave function is still enormously useful as its (complex) square represents the probability density of the system or elements of the system. But for a confined system, the wave function can be inferred.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists from China have now shown that the wave function\u2019s dependence in space can be determined for a single molecule embedded in a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2023-07-dynamics-molecular-rotors-bulk-superfluid.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">superfluid helium nanodroplet<\/a>. Their research has been <a href=\"https:\/\/link.aps.org\/doi\/10.1103\/lq3l-bxn7\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Physical Review Letters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is no measurement that can directly observe the wave function of a quantum mechanical system, but the wave function is still enormously useful as its (complex) square represents the probability density of the system or elements of the system. But for a confined system, the wave function can be inferred. Scientists from China have [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1617,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quantum-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230079","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\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}