New kind of light created in physics breakthrough
Photons are cooled down enough to form one giant blob that could be useful in creating lasers.
COLD BLOB: An illustration of a "super photon" created when physicists turned photons of light into a state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate. (Photo: Jan Klaers/University of Bonn)
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This article was wonderful. I can't even pretend to fully understand it, or even marginally understand it really.. but the fraction that I do understand only drives me to understand more. Science is such a phenomenal field and what they discover is awe-inspiring.
Great! It looks like we can have a super high energy x-ray laser in orbit!!! roll on the department of defense... "It's Vital To Our National Security". not.
I mean seriously, does no one else think that this could be used to create a megabuster from Megaman?
Super-Photons manipulated with electromagnetic fields could be the basis of the most awesome holograms ever! Just think of what you could do with TV and Movies!
if the light doesn't move, it never reach your eyes, how do you see it?
the light saber was so dubbed simply because it 'emitted' (visible) light as opposed to being truly 'composed' of light. That said, who's to say a controlled matrix of a substance filling a very small but rapidly expanding 'container' of sorts (a crude example being a flaccid male organ's vascular tissue expanding under increased blood flow to the region, for you e-peen-focused types), originating from a nice, shiny handle couldn't work, considering how the 'lightsaber' behaved while drawn in.... More
You said exactly what needed to be said about this new amazing technology. Your hired.
You can't control light like they do in Star Wars. It is Science Fiction. You can make extremely bright flashlights, but lightsabers? You would be in the same basic dream world as the Laser Pistol Person. (If you are not them) If you are the Laser Pistol Person, you really need to come ti reality.
People like to make the assumption that the weapons in star wars are based on lasers... The most likely way that light sabers would be possible is with superheated plasma, contained by a magnetic field generator (which we can currently do with large machines and actually fits the physical properties imagined for the films), contained within the hilt. This is far from our current technological capabilities but not "impossible" in the future. (the same goes for the guns in star wars, contained.... More
With two degrees in chemistry and one in physics, I know too well that Newton, probably the greatest physical science mind of all, believed light was a particle. But almost everyone who studied serious physical science in the 20th century was taught Newton was wrong - even though I taught my student light acts as if it has "shoulders" when it bends due to refraction.
Now this article makes the statement that the condensate causes "photons, and indeed all particles, to behave as both a.... More
How is it possible to do a degree in physics and not know that light has both wave and particle properties. And i thought I didn't go to enough lectures. wow
Well said sir.
Light is a 'particle' (but not) and it was Einstein who used the photoelectric effect to show that. of course, light is not a 'particle', in any sense human beings can think of for that word, but really we should say it carries energy that comes in 'bundles' so if you want some energy from light you have to take a certain number of bundles. you can't get half a bundle.
as for controlling light, that is made difficult because, unlike other 'particles' like electrons, photons (there.... More
I find your lack of humor disturbing.
You can't control light like they do in Star Wars. It is Science Fiction. You can make extremely bright flashlights, but lightsabers? You would be in the same basic dream world as the Laser Pistol Person. (If you are not them) If you are the Laser Pistol Person, you really need to come ti reality.
if light is hotter than room temperature until it's messed with like this why don't we feel it?
Because it is a type of energy that is fet when focused throughSomething like circular glass. It is like... sub-atomic particles. We can't see the with the naked eye, but you know they are there.
Who thought of that?
what if, along with mirrors, they used magnetics to some degree?
one step closer to materializing a lightsaber
Or GTFO!!!!
We are still a while from researching putting super photons into a pistol. Even then, it would take at least a decade to perfect. But anyway this article was interesting.
MLIA
All I want to know is, since they've discovered this, when can I get my laser pistol? I've got some Star Wars fantasies to achieve.
WTF does that even mean, cooling down photons. Photons don't vibrate against each other in the way atoms do.
Listen, when the dye particles "exchanged thermal energy" they couldn't have re-emitted the photons. The dye particles exited by the original photons can only emit certain photons of certain energies, the same energies of the photons that excited the die in the first place.
Actually, a process called intersystem crossing could occur, where some of the photon energy absorbed is transferred to vibrational motion, and the rest of the excited energy will be re-emitted. This is actually the basis for fluorescence and phosphorescence, where the re-emitted photon is of longer wavelength, and thus lower energy
O sorry I just perceived it differently that way reality works so Quantum Physics now works like that.
This discovery is enthralling, but I am disappointed that the author got their facts wrong and said that absolute zero has been attained. Scientists have gotten to within a billionth of a degree to absolute zero, but that is very different from absolute zero itself.
"Particles in a traditional Bose-Einstein condensate are cooled down close to absolute zero..." Read better next time!!!!!!!!
This isn't about reading comprehension, the article just got it WRONG. Scientists haven't reached absolute zero yet, they've only gotten to a billionth of a degree to it.
The possibility of having lasers with less UV light is as equal as better health.
