Quantum chaos unveiled?

SALT LAKE CITY - A University of Utah study is shedding light on an important, unsolved physics problem: the relationship between chaos theory - which is based on 300-year-old Newtonian physics - and the modern theory of quantum mechanics. The study demonstrated a fundamental new property - what appears to be chaotic behavior in a quantum system - in the magnetic "spins" within the nuclei or centers of atoms of frozen xenon, which normally is a gas and has been tested for making medical images of lungs. The new study - published in the Aug. 8 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters - was led by Brian Saam, an associate professor of physics and associate dean of the University of Utah's College of Science. Quantum mechanics - which describes the behavior of molecules, atoms electrons and other subatomic particles - "plays... [read full story]