It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
originally posted by: DigitalJedi805
you're after things like 'I'd like to design a perpetual energy generation platform', for instance, right?
originally posted by: InverseLookingGlass
There is a great danger that AI will arrive and will judge humans on merit.
originally posted by: Blue Shift
The thing is, not going to the moon is not a real problem. If we never go back to the moon, we'll get by just fine.
originally posted by: Blue Shift
A problem would be something like the world running out of easily accessible fresh water for drinking and irrigation. If you put interest and resources into that problem, you'll get just as much out of it (maybe more) than going for another trip to the moon, where fundamental, direct returns on investment are extremely low.
Breaking time-reversal symmetry
Haldane had suggested that it might be possible to create an entirely new class of materials with exceptional properties determined by their topology. Mathematically, objects have the same topology if they can be transformed into each other by continuous deformations, such as compression or stretching. For instance, an orange could be deformed into a banana. If the transformation requires a cut, then two objects are topologically distinct; for example, a Möbius strip can not be transformed into a normal strip without first cutting and then reassembling it.
ETH Professor Tilman Esslinger and his group at the Institute for Quantum Electronics investigate artificial graphene; its honeycomb structure consists not of atoms, but rather of light. The researchers align multiple laser beams in such a way that they create standing waves with a hexagonal pattern. This optical lattice is then superimposed on potassium atoms in a vacuum chamber, which are cooled to near absolute zero temperature. Trapped in the hexagonal structure, the potassium atoms behave like the electrons in graphene.
Solid-state physicists had hoped they would be able to create the Haldane model with real graphene - in vain until now, says Esslinger: "Now we've done it with a different system. This is a beautiful and significant new step."
"We work with atoms in laser beams because it provides us with a system that can be controlled better and observed more easily than the material itself,"
phys.org...
news.discovery.com...
A group of scientists group led by Harvard professor of physics Mikhail Lukin and MIT Professor of Physics Vladan Vuletic has made photons link up to form something like a molecule. It’s a state of matter that was previously only theoretical. Such “solid” light has been a fixture in science fiction — Star Wars’ lightsaber is the most famous example.
Making lightsabers though, isn’t what the scientists were after. The real use for photons that interact with each other is in quantum computing. One of the challenges to making a working, reliable quantum computer is that each bit is contained in a single photon. But because photons don’t interact with each other, information can’t be exchanged the way it is in a conventional computer that works using electrons.
news.discovery.com...
A 20-year-old specializing in DIY lasers has apparently made his own version of a functional Star Wars lightsaber. In a video demonstration, he uses the device to light things on fire — paper, a match, even a ping-pong ball.
Scientists Discover a Way to Turn Light Into Matter .
Now, scientists at the Imperial College London in England are working to develop a photon-photon collider that might be able to turn light into matter, which is a process that also takes place during the largest explosions in the universe called gamma-ray bursts.
In 1905, the famous physicist Albert Einstein theorized that light was actually a particle, which helped explain the photoelectric effect.
Now, scientists at the Imperial College London in England are working to develop a photon-photon collider that might be able to turn light into matter, which is a process that also takes place during the largest explosions in the universe called gamma-ray bursts.
The idea is based on a theory from 1934, which claimed that when two photons, or light particles, smash together, it would create matter in the form of an electron and a positron.
Professor Steven Rose from the Department of Physics at the Imperial College London is quoted as saying: "What was so surprising to us was the discovery of how we can create matter directly from light using the technology that we have today in the UK. As we are theorists, we are now talking to others who can use our ideas to undertake this landmark experiment."