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Recent Posts
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Technology / IBM Unveils Groundbreaking Quantum Computing System I
« Last post by Unbeliever on January 14, 2019, 12:05:52 PM »Quote
The Q System One is the first quantum system to consolidate thousands of components into a glass-enclosed, air-tight environment built specifically for business use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRaEvXF4YBg
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Technology / Imaging at the Speed of Light
« Last post by Unbeliever on January 13, 2019, 03:34:43 PM »https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok7JuMgVjEw
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Tiny micro- and nanoscale structures within a material’s surface are invisible to the naked eye, but play a big role in determining a material’s physical, chemical, and biomedical properties.
Over the past few years, Chunlei Guo and his research team at the University of Rochester have found ways to manipulate those structures by irradiating laser pulses to a material’s surface. They’ve altered materials to make them repel water, attract water, and absorb great amounts of light—all without any type of coating.
Now, Guo, Anatoliy Vorobyev, and Ranran Fang, researchers at the University’s Institute of Optics, have advanced the research another step forward. They’ve developed a technique to visualize, for the first time, the complete evolution of micro- and nanoscale structural formation on a material’s surface, both during and after the application of a laser pulse.
“After we determined that we could drastically alter the property of a material through creating tiny structures in its surface, the next natural step was to understand how these tiny structures were formed,” Guo says. “This is very important because after you understand how they’re formed you can better control them.”
Having that control will open the way for improvements in all kinds of technologies, including anti-corrosive building materials, energy absorbers, fuel cells, space telescopes, airplane de-icing, medical instrumentation, and sanitation in third world countries.
In a paper published in the Nature journal Light: Science & Applications, the group introduced a scattered-light imaging technique that allows them to record an ultrafast movie of the ways in which laser radiation alters a material’s surface. The technique opens a window on the entire process, from the moment a laser hits the material to melting, transient surface fluctuations, and resolidification resulting in permanent micro- and nanostructures.
It currently takes about an hour to pattern a one-inch by one-inch metal sample. Identifying how micro- and nanostructures form has the potential to allow scientists to streamline the creation of these structures—including increasing the speed and efficiency of patterning surfaces.
Creating and altering these small structures makes properties intrinsically part of the material and reduces the need for temporary chemical coatings.
To produce these effects, researchers use a femtosecond laser. This laser produces an ultra-fast pulse with a duration of tens of femtoseconds. (A femtosecond is equal to one quadrillionth of a second.)
Changing the laser’s conditions causes changes in the morphological features of the surface structures— such as their geometry, size, and density—leading the material to exhibit various specific physical properties.
It is difficult to obtain detailed images and movies of events in micro- and nanoscales because they occur during a matter of femtoseconds, picoseconds (one trillionth of a second), and nanoseconds (one billionth of a second).
To put this into perspective: Vorobyev explains that it takes about one second for light to travel from Earth to the moon. However, light travels only about one foot in a nanosecond and approximately 0.3 micrometers in a femtosecond, which is a distance comparable to the diameter of a virus or bacteria.
A typical video camera records a series of images at a rate of five to 30 frames per second. When playing the series of images in real time, human eyes perceive continuous motion rather than a series of separate frames.
So how was Guo’s team able to record frames at an interval of femtoseconds, picoseconds, and nanoseconds? They used a technique involving scattered light. During a femtosecond laser pulse, the beam is split in two: one pump beam is aimed at the material target in order to cause micro- and nanostructural change, and the second probe beam acts as a flashbulb to illuminate the process and record it into a CCD camera—a highly-sensitive imaging device with high-resolution capabilities.
“We worked very hard to develop this new technique,” Guo says. “With the scattered light pulsing at femtosecond time intervals, we can capture the very small changes at an extremely fast speed. From these images we can clearly see how the structures start to form.”
Guo explains that this scattered light visualization technique has applications for capturing any process that takes place on a minute scale. “The technique we developed is not necessarily limited to just studying the surface effects produced in my lab. The foundation we laid in this work is very important for studying ultrafast and tiny changes on a material surface.” This includes studying melting, crystallography, fluid dynamics, and even cell activities.
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Books, Movies, Music etc. / Sandkings
« Last post by Unbeliever on January 12, 2019, 03:27:37 PM »Here's a story I read a long time ago, in OMNI magazine. It's about a guy who really likes his pets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandkings_(novelette)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VVGrmQHgkg (audio only)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandkings_(novelette)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VVGrmQHgkg (audio only)
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Mathematics / The Most Misleading Patterns in Mathematics | This is Why We Need Proofs
« Last post by Unbeliever on January 12, 2019, 12:03:48 PM »6
Astronomy/Cosmology / Spinning Black Holes
« Last post by Unbeliever on January 11, 2019, 03:05:50 PM »Quote
A pulsing black hole in the centre of a distant galaxy sheds light on black hole and galaxy formation. How fast are black holes rotating and how does that rotation change over its life-span?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu3645D4ZlI
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Astronomy/Cosmology / The Strange Case of the Hypatia Stone
« Last post by Unbeliever on January 08, 2019, 04:52:35 PM »Quote
The Hypatia stone is one of the weirdest rocks on the planet. It's not just out of this world, it might be out of this solar system!
At 0:54 Reid says "Meteorical Society," but it should be "Meteoritical Society."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQxc0EV7HQ8
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Astronomy/Cosmology / These Types of Black Holes Are Exploding Right Now
« Last post by Unbeliever on January 08, 2019, 03:52:17 PM »https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rr0y77NgEE
Here is a Hawking radiation calculator:
http://xaonon.dyndns.org/hawking/
Here is a Hawking radiation calculator:
http://xaonon.dyndns.org/hawking/
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Technology / AMAZING PHYSICS TOYS TO MAKE YOU SAY WOW!
« Last post by Unbeliever on January 08, 2019, 03:25:20 PM »Quote
This video contains :
👉 The Milky Way in a Sphere: the distribution of stars in our home galaxy, laser etched into a crystal sphere, according to the most recent telescopic surveys and mappings- including the stars in the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy
👉 Heng Balance Lamp: magnetic suspension sculpture and light- with two neodymium magnets on cords suspended by their mutual magnetic attraction. In this design by Zanwen Li, the bottom cord engages the light switch.
👉 Rubin Vase: the physics and psychophysics of vision and perception are on display with this glazed ceramic version of psychologist Edgar Rubin's famous vase.
👉 Kinetic Rubin Vase by exploratorium
👉 I ❤️ Holograms: put on these specs and every source of light gets a holographic image of a heart overlaid- in this case a candle flame and a dot from a red laser.
👉 Primed Siphon: liquid moves until the water levels are equal- curious combination of the effects of gravity, molecular cohesion, and atmospheric pressure.
👉 Plasma Arc Lighter Physics: dual arcs of plasma exceed 1100 C (2000 F) on this flameless lighter.
👉 360° Book: Earth and Moon by Yosuke Oono- whimsical art for the science and sci-fi enthusiast. Love the UFO abducting the cow!
👉 Big Dipper in a Box: fiber optic points of light represent the actual configuration of the stars that make up the Big Dipper. Only from the point of view of our sun do they look like the "dipper"- note that one star is much further away than the others.
👉 SpinFlo: kinetic art with rheoscopic fluid in a rotating base. The capsule glides on bearings for long spin times.
👉 Automated Lenticular Display: motion animation lenticular postcard with magnetic pendulum rocking display. This Getty Museum postcard captures about 40 frames of a 2001 art video by Martin Kersels and is looped as the card rocks to and fro. The swinging is maintained by a simple magnetic kicking circuit that pushes a magnet in the bottom of the pendulum until the AAA battery runs down in a few weeks.
👉 SpinForce Globe: entering through trap doors two spring powered toy cars hug to the inside of the acrylic sphere.
👉 Fused Optical Fiber Inverter: image conduit with a twist! Each tiny optical fiber acts as a pixel of the transmitted image- and here you can see that the bundle of fibers has been twisted 180 degrees to invert the image without using lenses.
👉 12-Faced Holoscope: a dodecahedron of mirrors. A type of kaleidoscope based on truncated Platonic solids by artist Gary Allison.
👉 The Holoscope: a cube of mirrors. The work of artist Gary Allison- kaleidoscopes from truncated Platonic solids.
👉 Catenary Arch by exploratorium : when an arch is built in the shape of this special mathematical curve (even with slippery blocks) the compression forces between each block are always parallel to the curve- the stack is stable with no tendency to buckle.
👉 Centripetal Spheres: two ball bearings connected by a rubber band orbit each other as energy oscillates between elastic potential energy and rotation kinetic energy. Just wind up the rubber band and let go.
👉 Pencil Hyperboloid: a perfect gift for any math teacher- the precisely oriented holes in this base direct 16 pencils to reveal a hyperboloid, the 3D surface traced by revolving a diagonal(skew) line, the outline of which is the conic section of the hyperbola. A doubly ruled surface for any desktop!
👉 Hyperboloid Spinner: the HypnoGizmo toy consists of a set of slanted straight nylon lines arranged to form the outline of a hyperboliod- the quadratic surface related to the revolution of hyperbola around its axis of symmetry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtB0I8_9Hzg
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Technology / The incredible inventions of intuitive AI
« Last post by Unbeliever on January 08, 2019, 01:51:47 PM »Quote
What do you get when you give a design tool a digital nervous system? Computers that improve our ability to think and imagine, and robotic systems that come up with (and build) radical new designs for bridges, cars, drones and much more -- all by themselves. Take a tour of the Augmented Age with futurist Maurice Conti and preview a time when robots and humans will work side-by-side to accomplish things neither could do alone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR5N2Jl8k14