{"id":237755,"date":"2026-05-26T15:14:54","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T20:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/scientists-discover-atoms-suddenly-spinning-backward-in-quantum-experiment"},"modified":"2026-05-26T15:14:54","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T20:14:54","slug":"scientists-discover-atoms-suddenly-spinning-backward-in-quantum-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/scientists-discover-atoms-suddenly-spinning-backward-in-quantum-experiment","title":{"rendered":"Scientists discover atoms suddenly spinning backward in quantum experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-discover-atoms-suddenly-spinning-backward-in-quantum-experiment.webp\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists have directly watched angular momentum move through a crystal for the very first time \u2014 and discovered a bizarre twist along the way. Using ultra-powerful terahertz laser pulses, researchers triggered tiny atomic rotations inside a quantum material and found that the direction of rotation can unexpectedly flip as momentum is transferred. The strange reversal happens because of the crystal\u2019s underlying symmetry, creating an almost impossible-sounding effect where two rotations combine into one spinning the opposite way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists have directly watched angular momentum move through a crystal for the very first time \u2014 and discovered a bizarre twist along the way. Using ultra-powerful terahertz laser pulses, researchers triggered tiny atomic rotations inside a quantum material and found that the direction of rotation can unexpectedly flip as momentum is transferred. The strange reversal [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237755","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\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}