Experimental Schematic (IMAGE)

University of California - Berkeley

Experimental Schematic

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In a new study, University of California, Berkeley, researchers show that heat energy can travel through a complete vacuum thanks to invisible quantum fluctuations. In the experiment, the team placed two gold-coated silicon nitride membranes a few hundred nanometers apart inside a vacuum chamber. When they heated up one of the membranes, the other warmed up, too, even though there was nothing connecting the two membranes and negligible light energy passing between them.

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Zhang Lab, UC Berkeley

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