Physics

Choobus · 02-15-2009, 12:35 AM

The American Physical Society (of which I am a member) has made some papers available for free, with really good commentary. I highly recommend it.

The new free online publication Physics (physics.aps.org) was launched last year to inspire readers to learn more about exciting developments in physics, whether inside or outside their own subfield.

http://physics.aps.org/

Tenspace · 02-15-2009, 01:36 AM

Physics. Fuck yeah.

psychodiva · 02-15-2009, 02:39 AM

Thanks Choobs

Smellyoldgit · 02-15-2009, 04:05 AM

I struggled to scrape an A-level in 1973.
Any chance of a translation service for someone hard-of-intelligence?

Sternwallow · 02-15-2009, 06:57 AM

Quote:

Choobus wrote

The American Physical Society (of which I am a member) has made some papers available for free, with really good commentary. I highly recommend it.

The new free online publication Physics (physics.aps.org) was launched last year to inspire readers to learn more about exciting developments in physics, whether inside or outside their own subfield.

http://physics.aps.org/

Thanks, Choobus. It looks great and I fear the extinction of any of my remaining discretionary time if I become addicted to it, as seems likely.

02-16-2009, 12:40 PM

Sweet! Thanks for the info Choobus. I'm not going to see my family for days while I'm reading through all of that!

Broga · 02-17-2009, 04:28 PM

Quote:

Choobus wrote

The American Physical Society (of which I am a member) has made some papers available for free, with really good commentary. I highly recommend it.

The new free online publication Physics (physics.aps.org) was launched last year to inspire readers to learn more about exciting developments in physics, whether inside or outside their own subfield.

http://physics.aps.org/

Thanks. Appreciate the information. I am a non scientist and really hopeless at maths - to my lasting regret. However, I read New Scientist, Scientific American and my latest favourite Scientific American Mind. I just love anything on multiple universes, dark matter, size of the galaxy, the local galaxies and so on, black holes, string theory and that bloody cat that was alive and dead at the same time, quantum stuff. I just grasp enough to have a sense of wonder as I am utterly crap at maths, chemistry and the rest.

Tenspace · 02-17-2009, 05:43 PM

I don't know if this belongs in a physics thread, since it is about String Theory, but apparently physicists think they're now able to provide testable predictions:

A First: String Theory predicts an experimental result

02-17-2009, 06:29 PM

There's one interesting article there I can actually comment on.

Metamaterials are materials made out of periodic structures that act like atoms or molecules in naturally occurring materials, except on a scale large enough to modify - around the wavelength of microwaves at a few centimetres, generally. The most common structure is a "split ring resonator" (picture (a) in the article), which has been used in the past to achieve both a negative permittivity and permeability (which together determine the index of refraction) to make an "invisibility cloak" (worthless feat designed to intrigue the masses - even if you could make one, the outside world would be equally invisible to you).

This work takes that split-ring structure and twists it so that it's the equivalent of looking at it from a high angle. This pinwheel shape is interesting because it's similar to a chiral molecule like sugar. Chiral molecules can weakly rotate the polarization of light (as does this pinwheel), but what this work shows is that if you could nano-engineer a large molecule with the same effect but a hundred or so times stronger, you could possibly get something with a negative index in the visible spectrum.

Make something with a negative index and a low enough loss, and you could maybe make a real invisibility cloak... if you were illuminated by light that was exactly the right wavelength and polarization. More interestingly, you could image at less than the diffraction limit, and do a number of other cool things.

Tenspace · 02-20-2009, 12:27 AM

Detecting Quantum Entanglement With The Human Eye - arxiv.org, arXiv:0902.2896v1[quant-ph] - .PDF File

We show theoretically that the multi-photon states obtained by cloning single-photon qubits via stimulated emission can be distinguished with the naked human eye with high efficiency and fidelity. Focusing on the "micro-macro" situation realized in a recent experiment [...], where one photon from an original entangled pair is detected directly, whereas the other one is greatly amplified, we show that performing a Bell experiment with human-eye detectors for the amplified photon appears realistic, even when losses are taken into account.

Sternwallow · 02-20-2009, 06:46 AM

"We show theoretically..." and "appears realistic". Well, that pretty much locks it in for me! I will start shopping right away for a set of Entanglement Vision Goggles.

lostsheep · 02-22-2009, 12:00 AM

Quote:

Smellyoldgit wrote

I struggled to scrape an A-level in 1973.
Any chance of a translation service for someone hard-of-intelligence?

I 2nd that. Wish I was a mensa not a densa.

Choobus · 02-22-2009, 01:02 AM

Quote:

Sternwallow wrote

"We show theoretically..." and "appears realistic". Well, that pretty much locks it in for me! I will start shopping right away for a set of Entanglement Vision Goggles.

"We show theoretically that the multi-photon states obtained by cloning single-photon qubits via
stimulated emission can be distinguished with the naked human eye with high efficiency and fidelity"

That does sort of annoy me. Showing theoretically what can be seen by the "naked human eye" is a bit like demonstrating mathematically that fucking is statistically better than wanking.

Tenspace · 02-22-2009, 05:36 AM

Well, the next step is to 'show experimentally.'

How's that going to work?

"Okay, there! Did you see it?"
"Umm.. I think it was a green photon."
"That means the guy at the other end just saw a red photon! Woot!"

I think they just wanted to see if they could get a paper published where they used "stimulated emission" and "naked human" in the same sentence.

Sternwallow · 02-22-2009, 05:49 AM

Quote:

Tenspace wrote

Well, the next step is to 'show experimentally.'

How's that going to work?

"Okay, there! Did you see it?"
"Umm.. I think it was a green photon."
"That means the guy at the other end just saw a red photon! Woot!"

I think they just wanted to see if they could get a paper published where they used "stimulated emission" and "naked human" in the same sentence.