I was wondering last night: are any of the fundamental forces "blocked" by an intervening object? I assume not, since there is nothing like that in the equations. But that is kind of interesting, since sometimes you hear talk of hypothetical particles like gravitons.
That's a very deep question. In some sense no, in some sense yes. I would say on the deepest level, no, they are not blocked.
Blocked? No. Greatly attenuated and restricted in what modes can be accommodated? Yes.
More critically though the study gets into how they used a reference wave packet to establish a stationary baseline for the interferometer. Assuming the experiment is sufficiently isolated to reduce noise below the necessary threshold this can work in principle.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aec8045
> Blocked? No. Greatly attenuated and restricted in what modes can be accommodated? Yes.
Can you give me some examples? I guess I'm thinking lead barriers or a Bose Einstein condensate but curious what you mean here.
Your house has walls to attenuate photons.
Casimir plates are a good example, although Faraday cages are probably better known along with Mu-metal.