It’s one of gentlest caresses imaginable: the touch of a single atom of gas. Now, scientists have measured its impact.
A levitating nanoparticle jiggled when hit by individual gas atoms or molecules in a nearly empty vacuum chamber, scientists report in the October 23 Physical Review Letters.
The force exerted by a gas is usually the result of many atoms or molecules bouncing around all at once: Think of the air inside a balloon keeping it inflated. But even an individual atom can exert a tiny force. To detect that force, researchers used a laser to levitate a glass sphere, just 100 nanometers across and weighing about a quadrillionth of a gram, inside a vacuum chamber. Then, the researchers added small amounts of a heavy gas, either krypton, xenon or sulfur hexafluoride. The first two are gases made up of atoms, while the third consists of molecules.
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