Created the fastest man-made object on the planet

Scientists set a record for himselffast rotating object made by human hands. A tiny device is capable of doing more than 300 billion revolutions per minute, while moving 500 thousand times faster than a dental drill does. According to the news portal newsweek.com, in order to set a world record, a team from Purdue University in France used the energy received from a powerful laser to accelerate a microscopic object levitating in a vacuum.

Specialists from Purdue University have developed a unique way to create the fastest object on the planet.

What does the fastest object on the planet look like?

The fastest rotating object on Earth wascreated in the walls of one of the French laboratories, where scientists with the help of light were able to make a microparticle levitate in a vacuum. This became possible due to the fact that photons - the smallest particles of light - have a barely measurable effect on any object with which they are in one way or another in contact. It is known that the force of such an interaction is the pressure of light radiation, being, in this case, millions of times weaker than gravity - one of the four fundamental forces of the Universe.

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Photons of light can accelerate particles to incredible speeds

When in 1600 Johannes Kepler first noticedthat the tails of comets are always directed in the opposite direction from the Sun, the scientist could not even imagine that his discovery could one day contribute to the creation of the fastest object that humanity has ever observed. For example, Tongtsan Lee, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University, argues that the new method of imparting speed to a small object works on the same principles that Kepler identified when studying comets. In addition, specialists used the features considered by Kepler when working with concentrated lasers to rotate nanoparticles. According to scientists, the nanoparticle created in this way is not only the fastest, but also the most sensitive of all known torque detectors.

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Despite the fact that the pressure of light radiationis an extremely weak force, the prospects for its use can reassure any fan of science fiction. So, now the technology is already being applied when testing new methods of moving spaceships, one of which was the LightSail 2 device. It is known that the solar sail project, developed by the US Planetary Society with the support of SpaceX and Ilon Mask, is able to move with the help of solar photons similar to Earth sailing boats using wind power. The technologies of the LightSail 2 project can become the prototype of creating a new generation spacecraft capable of developing incredible speeds. By the way, one of these ships will be able to reach the closest star system of Proxima Centauri to us in just a couple of decades.