26 posts · 20,152 views
Skulls in the Stars
26 posts
Sort by Latest Post, Most Popular
View by Condensed, Full
- November 20, 2008
- 01:03 PM
- 1,265 views
X-rays from Scotch tape?
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
One of the joys of physics, and science in general, is that even seemingly mundane objects occasionally yield physical surprises. A great example of this made the news about a month ago: the observation that, under the right circumstances, x-rays can be generated by the peeling of Scotch tape! The phenomenon is an extreme example [...]... Read more »
Carlos G. Camara, Juan V. Escobar, Jonathan R. Hird, & Seth J. Putterman. (2008) Correlation between nanosecond X-ray flashes and stick–slip friction in peeling tape. Nature, 455(7216), 1089-1092. DOI: 10.1038/nature07378
- January 25, 2009
- 07:52 PM
- 1,174 views
Measuring the ‘kick’ of a photon leaving a fiber!
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
In physics, there are a number of fundamental and seemingly simple questions which have remained a source of controversy for years, even decades. Last month, a paper was published by a Chinese research group describing an experiment which throws new light on one of these controversies, the so-called Abraham-Minkowski controversy. For nearly a century, theorists [...]... Read more »
Weilong She, Jianhui Yu, & Raohui Feng. (2008) Observation of a Push Force on the End Face of a Nanometer Silica Filament Exerted by Outgoing Light. Physical Review Letters, 101(24). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.243601
- November 10, 2008
- 02:11 PM
- 1,081 views
Focusing through a ‘maze’ of strong scattering
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
One of the broad challenges in a lot of optical applications involving visible light is simply that most materials aren’t particularly transparent. This is rather obvious, at a glance: materials can be strong absorbers of light, strong reflectors of light, or highly dispersive. Even materials which do not suffer from these problems can still strongly [...]... Read more »
I. M. Vellekoop, & A. P. Mosk. (2008) Universal Optimal Transmission of Light Through Disordered Materials. Physical Review Letters, 101(12). DOI/10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.120601
- December 6, 2008
- 03:19 PM
- 1,074 views
Turning a problem into a solution: aquatic clean energy from vortex-induced vibration?
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
About a week ago, I came across an intriguing article on telegraph.co.uk, entitled, “Ocean currents can power the world, say scientists.” Such a title is an immediate eyebrow-raiser for me, knowing the propensity of the news media to (a) overhype scientific results to the point of absurdity, and (b) fall for lots of suspicious “free [...]... Read more »
Michael M. Bernitsas, Kamaldev Raghavan, Y. Ben-Simon, & E. M. H. Garcia. (2008) VIVACE (Vortex Induced Vibration Aquatic Clean Energy): A New Concept in Generation of Clean and Renewable Energy From Fluid Flow. Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering, 130(4), 41101. DOI: 10.1115/1.2957913
- December 15, 2011
- 05:10 PM
- 1,072 views
Sir Edmond Halley takes a dive! (1714)
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
If you study enough history of science, you learn that the things that scientists are most famous for are often not their only work of interest — or even the most fascinating thing they’ve done! The significance of a scientist’s … Continue reading →... Read more »
Edmond Halley. (1714) The Art of Living under Water: Or, a Discourse concerning the Means of furnishing Air at the Bottom of the Sea, in any ordinary Depths. Philosophical Transactions, 492-499. info:/
- October 8, 2008
- 09:11 PM
- 1,070 views
Optical coherence tomography and the art world
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
In recent years, scientific tools have been increasingly applied to the study of artwork, for numerous reasons: determination of authenticity, determination of provenance, analysis for restoration, or even for finding ‘hidden’ art buried behind or underneath existing masterworks. Some time ago, Jennifer at Cocktail Party Physics wrote a fascinating post on the use of X-ray [...]... Read more »
P. Targowski, B. Rouba, M. Góra, L. Tymińska-Widmer, J. Marczak, & A. Kowalczyk. (2008) Optical coherence tomography in art diagnostics and restoration. Applied Physics A, 92(1), 1-9. DOI/10.1007/s00339-008-4446-x
- August 20, 2008
- 11:33 AM
- 1,024 views
New ‘cloaking’ results? Not really, but interesting anyway
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
About a week ago, I reported on another ‘teaser’ in the media about ‘optical cloaks’, hypothetical devices which would in principle make objects contained in their core completely invisible. Such devices have gotten a lot of attention, both scientifically and in the press, since the publication of two fascinating theoretical papers in 2006. [...]... Read more »
J Yao, Z Liu, Y Liu, Y Wang, C Sun, G Bartal, A Stacy, & X Zhang. (2008) Optical Negative Refraction in Bulk Metamaterials of Nanowires. Science, 321(5891), 930-930. DOI/10.1126/science.1157566
Jason Valentine, Shuang Zhang, Thomas Zentgraf, Erick Ulin-Avila, Dentcho Genov, Guy Bartal, & Xiang Zhang. (2008) Three-dimensional optical metamaterial with a negative refractive index. Nature. DOI/10.1038/nature07247
- June 19, 2009
- 04:10 PM
- 1,019 views
Invisibility physics: Hiding and seeking, all at once!
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
When the first papers on the idea of a “cloaking” device came out in 2006, lots of people were immediately worried that the CIA would soon be peering right over their shoulder from the shelter of invisibility cloaks. Many scientists, including myself, pointed out the flaw in that reasoning: a “perfect” cloak would direct all [...]... Read more »
Alù, A., & Engheta, N. (2009) Cloaking a Sensor. Physical Review Letters, 102(23). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.233901
- July 25, 2008
- 11:05 PM
- 1,003 views
Freezing images in an atomic vapor!
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
I thought I’d step out of my comfort zone and specific field of expertise for once and do a post on some interesting quantum optics. In a June issue of Physical Review Letters, an Israeli research group experimentally demonstrated the ability to store and retrieve optical images in an atomic vapor using so-called ‘electromagnetically ... Read more »
M Shuker, O Firstenberg, R Pugatch, A Ron, & N Davidson. (2008) Storing Images in Warm Atomic Vapor. Physical Review Letters, 100(22). DOI/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.223601
- August 13, 2008
- 12:27 PM
- 986 views
The cloaking craze: A look at the original papers
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
As I noted a couple of days ago, apparently there has been another significant experimental breakthrough in the development of dielectric cloaking devices. Researchers at UC Berkeley were responsible, though it is a little unclear what exactly the breakthrough is. The results will appear this week in Science and Nature. In the [...]... Read more »
U Leonhardt. (2006) Optical Conformal Mapping. Science, 312(5781), 1777-1780. DOI/10.1126/science.1126493
J Pendry. (2006) Controlling Electromagnetic Fields. Science, 312(5781), 1780-1782. DOI/10.1126/science.1125907
- October 10, 2010
- 11:51 AM
- 958 views
Twisting light into a Möbius strip
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
Some months ago, I wrote a post introducing the subfield of optics known as singular optics. Singular optics is concerned with the behavior of wavefields in the neighborhood of regions where the intensity of the wave is zero, and the … Continue reading →... Read more »
Freund I. (2010) Multitwist optical Möbius strips. Optics letters, 35(2), 148-50. PMID: 20081950
- October 31, 2009
- 11:59 PM
- 823 views
Boo! The optics behind “ghost” imaging
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
Halloween seemed like the perfect time to talk about an unconventional sort of optical imaging, referred to as “ghost” imaging. I should point out at the beginning, however, that I’m not talking about this sort of ghost imaging:
Don’t get too disappointed, however! Ghost imaging is in fact a fascinating and relatively new technique in which [...]... Read more »
Bromberg, Y., Katz, O., & Silberberg, Y. (2009) Ghost imaging with a single detector. Physical Review A, 79(5). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.79.053840
- May 27, 2011
- 06:04 PM
- 773 views
Water has properties that are positively electrifying!
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
Most people certainly understand how important water is for our survival, but we often overlook how weird it can be. I can compile a short, though not exhaustive, list off the top of my head: Water is less dense in … Continue reading →... Read more »
Sharma M, Resta R, & Car R. (2007) Dipolar correlations and the dielectric permittivity of water. Physical review letters, 98(24), 247401. PMID: 17677991
- September 9, 2009
- 11:56 AM
- 745 views
Quasicrystals… now all natural!
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
This result came out a few months ago, and I’ve been looking for the time to write about it ever since: in a paper published in the June 5 issue of Science, scientists reported the discovery of the first natural quasicrystal!
Of course, in order to get excited about this result, one needs to know what [...]... Read more »
Bindi, L., Steinhardt, P., Yao, N., & Lu, P. (2009) Natural Quasicrystals. Science, 324(5932), 1306-1309. DOI: 10.1126/science.1170827
- May 12, 2011
- 11:43 AM
- 721 views
It’s not shrinkage — it’s relativity! (1889)
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
The best stories in the history of physics are those in which someone comes from humble origins and, seemingly out of nowhere, makes a brilliant discovery that changes everything. Such stories, however, can give a very misleading impression of the … Continue reading →... Read more »
G. FitzGerald. (1889) The Ether and the Earth's Atmosphere. Science (New York, N.Y.), 13(328), 390. PMID: 17819387
- June 1, 2011
- 12:29 AM
- 652 views
Mpemba’s baffling discovery: can hot water freeze before cold? (1969)
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
“My name is Erasto B Mpemba, and I am going to tell you about my discovery, which was due to misusing a refrigerator.” With those words, Tanzanian student Erasto Mpemba entered scientific history, and also sparked a scientific mystery and … Continue reading →... Read more »
E.B. Mpemba, & D.G. Osborne. (1969) Cool?. Physics Education, 172-175. info:/
- November 19, 2009
- 11:07 PM
- 637 views
Reversing optical “shockwaves” using metamaterials
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
In a recent issue of Physical Review Letters was an article with the intriguing (to me) title of “Experimental verification of reversed Cherenkov radiation in left-handed metamaterial,” by a collaboration from Zhejiang University in China and MIT. The paper is an experimental verification of an effect predicted for metamaterials way back in 1968 by the [...]... Read more »
Xi, S., Chen, H., Jiang, T., Ran, L., Huangfu, J., Wu, B., Kong, J., & Chen, M. (2009) Experimental Verification of Reversed Cherenkov Radiation in Left-Handed Metamaterial. Physical Review Letters, 103(19). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.194801
- March 4, 2010
- 03:36 PM
- 633 views
Rolling out the (optical) carpet: the Talbot effect
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
One of the wonderful things about having a career in science is that a deeper understanding of the science leads to a greater appreciation of its beauty. In physics, this usually requires a nontrivial amount of mathematics, but there are some phenomena that are self-evidently beautiful; unfortunately, many of these are also not very well [...]... Read more »
H.F. Talbot. (1836) Facts relating to optical science. No. IV. Philosophical Magazine, 401-407. info:/
- December 3, 2010
- 11:16 PM
- 563 views
Re (not the sun god) hypothesizes a solar atom (1903)
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
It is fair to say that the decade surrounding the start of the 20th century was an amazingly perplexing time to be a physicist. Mounting experimental evidence strongly suggested that something was amiss with classical physics, especially in the understanding … Continue reading →... Read more »
Fillipo Re. (1903) Hypothése sur la nature des corps radioactifs. Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l'Académie des sciences, 1393-1395. info:other/
- July 13, 2010
- 12:22 AM
- 546 views
Freaks & geeks: optical freak waves in the laboratory
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
One of the most fruitful and intriguing avenues for developing novel scientific research is through cross-pollination with other fields of study. This is one of the reasons I’m proud of my excessively liberal arts-focused education, as well as one of the reasons I like reading blogs on diverse subjects outside of my field: interesting ideas [...]... Read more »
Höhmann, R., Kuhl, U., Stöckmann, H., Kaplan, L., & Heller, E. (2010) Freak Waves in the Linear Regime: A Microwave Study. Physical Review Letters, 104(9). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.093901
topics
join us!
Do you write about peer-reviewed research in your blog? Use ResearchBlogging.org to make it easy for your readers — and others from around the world — to find your serious posts about academic research.
If you don't have a blog, you can still use our site to learn about fascinating developments in cutting-edge research from around the world.
