The neutron

I do believe a Nobel Prize is a-coming for our NIST: where neutrons meet silicon.

NIST took advantage of the neutron's wave-properties at the quantum-level, measuring the pendellösung (vibrations) in the silicon after firing a noot at it. They get an average of those vibrations after measuring a bunch of noots on their way out. I'm not told if they bothered aiming the neutrons but if it was all scattershot, they may not have had to. I just hope nobody was in the room when they ran the tests.

What they got, was a better understanding of the silicon lattice - to start with. This may push back on that nanometer problem.

For the theoreticians amongst us, we now got an actual cross-section of the free neutron. Our textbooks like to offer a chart of three quarks tied together with gluons, but at the quantum-level obviously that is not how they look anymore than a hydrogen atom has electrons in orbit. In place of that, NIST offer a charge-density chart. Turns out, the neutron is net positive in the centre and wrapped with the negative charge on the outside. All summing to zero of course. The grade of charge diffusion is related to a constant, the Charge Radius, now given a decent measure: -0.1101 ±0.0089 square femtometers. I take it the negative number reflects that electric charge.

Next, and perhaps least, NIST didn't find any "fifth force" between the distances measured, 20 picometers to 10 nano (referring to Yukawa here). Physicists couch that in terms of Constraint. UPDATE 9/18: Turtle Island is on this beat.

And the technique itself is rated Awesome so they're going to use it on other crystals. And on crystals at the supercold state, which they call "quantum ground". Wonder if that means Einstein Bose.