It sounds like an old-school vinyl record, but the distinctive crackle in the music streamed into Chris Holloway’s laboratory is atomic in origin. The group spent years finding a way to directly measure electric fields using atoms. They don’t expect the atomic-recording’s lower sound quality to replace digital music recordings, but the team is considering how this “entertaining” example of atomic sensing could be applied in communication devices of the future.
Source: EurekaAlert, https://www.eurekalert.org