Recent events have caused some panic among physicists. If you’re not up to date, a neutrino faster than light has been measured at Cern, read here. The video is from a local show interviewing some of my physics professors, it’s quite funny if you can understand Dutch! ^ ^
physics + fashion
ridicule is nothing to be scared of
daily musings & inspirational pictures from a shoe-addicted, leather sniffing, colour-obsessed physics student
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2011-09-26 0 notes
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2011-08-18 23 notes
Fresnel’s Surface
Right, normally I copy text from Google for science stuff, but I didn’t find much on this. Basically, if you want to describe waves in anisotropic media, such as crystals, it leads to Fresnel’s equation. This is a biquadratic equation, which tells us there are two different wave types in each direction. These are represented by two different wave surfaces. Now, in this particular crystal there are two optical axes, where the two surfaces meet. This picture shows them quite clearly, in contrast to the usual pictures of Fresnel’s surface.
(Picture credit: The singular terms in the fundamental matrix of crystal optics)
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2011-08-16 33 notes
In black and white: Vertical magnetic field in solar photosphere (magnetogram), values range between -3.5 kG (black) and 3.5 kG (white).
In color: Subsurface magnetic field strength on a vertical cut through the center of the spot pair, values range from 0 G (black) to 8 kG (white).
Source: Sunspots and Photospheric Dynamics, High Altitude Observatory, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Source: scienceisbeauty
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2011-08-09 25 notes
A graph of the evolution in time t of the concentrations of an n=5 fluid for a viscous compressile barotropic Navier-Stokes model comprised of the gases: Ar, Kr, SO2, O2 and H2O at 293 Kelvin.
Credit&Source: Craig Michoski, College of Natural Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin
Source: scienceisbeauty
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2011-07-02 125 notes
The original Gravitationaly-Confined-Detonation simulation
Source: The Flash Center for Computational Science (The University of Chicago), Images
(Although I’ve chosen this photo in particular, each picture on this site could fit in Science is Beauty, check it out through the above link)
Source: scienceisbeauty
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2011-06-02 5 notes
The Kerr waterfall
The geometry of a rotating black hole is described by the Kerr metric, discovered by the New Zealander Roy Kerr in 1963. The Kerr geometry shares with the Reissner-Nordström geometry the property of having an inner horizon, which connects to a white hole, which connects to a new universe.
The centrifugal force causes the horizon of the black hole to bulge out into an ellipse. The same centrifugal force opens the singularity into a ring. The outer horizon and inner horizon form confocal ellipsoids, with the ring singularity at the focus of the ellipsoid.
The rotating black hole drags space around with it. Outside the horizon of the black hole is a region called the ergosphere, where space is dragged around so fast that nothing can remain at rest there.
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2011-06-01 24 notes
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59 notes
Gravitational lensing is so much fun! (it really is :P)
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2011-05-22 104 notes
Simulation of a detection of the Higgs boson in the CMS equipment.
Source: Texas A&M Physicists Celebrate Birth of Large Hadron Collider, Texas A&M University, College of Science
Source: scienceisbeauty
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2011-04-23 25 notes
Schematic diagram of a mixture of spin-up and spin-down lithium atoms confined to an array of one-dimensional tubes. The number of spin-up atoms (shown in blue) exceeds the number of spin-down atoms (orange). The mixture separates for high polarization (upper tube) into a partially polarized inner region surrounded by wings of spin-up atoms or for lower spin imbalance (lower tube) , into a partially polarized inner region with paired wings. At intermediate polarization (central tube) the whole cloud is partially polarized.
Source: Spin-imbalance in 1D, Hulet Atom Cooling Group, Rice University
Source: scienceisbeauty
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2011-04-14 1,104 notes
By feeding them mixtures containing dyes, researchers have helped silkworms spin fluorescent, coloured silk.
SILK WORMS THAT PRODUCE vibrantly coloured and luminescent silks have been created by scientists in Singapore. The resulting fibre offers a cheap way to circumvent the dying process and may even have medical applications.
“The new, more environmentally friendly method allows us to integrate colours into the very fabric of silk and does away with the need for manual dyeing,” says Dr Natalia Tansil.The process “provides a green alternative method of dyeing silk for the silk industry by reducing the vast amounts of water and dyes used in the labour-intensive conventional dyeing process.
(via abbakafka)
Source: australiangeographic.com.au
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2011-04-09 55 notes
Electron microscope image shows two pairs of fibers coated with zinc oxide nanowires and alternately with gold (top fiber). The fibers would rub together to produce a small electrical current. Many pairs of these fibers could be woven into a garment to produce a “power shirt.”
Credit: Zhong Lin Wang and Xudong Wang
Source: Georgia Institute of Technology, Power Shirt: Fiber-based Nanotechnology in Clothing Could Generate Electricity by Harvesting Energy from Physical Movement
Source: scienceisbeauty
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2011-03-26 Notes
Super-photon: A Bose-Einstein condensate with practical potential
Illustrated super-photon….Credit: Jan Klaers, University of Bonn
Is it time to start investing in Bose-Einstein condensates? They’re not dew drops, of course. Anything with ‘Einstein’ in it has got to be physics. So what kind of condensate is this, and what makes it (potentially) useful?
The concept of Bose-Einstein condensates, often abbreviated BEC, was theorized by Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein in 1924-1925, but not produced in a laboratory until 1995. Carl Wieman, Eric Cornell, and Wolfgang Ketterle received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics for the work. Still, Bose-Einstein condensates are not well known outside the physics community (understatement). To use the colloquial, they’re pretty special.
To begin with, only certain atoms qualify to become a Bose-Einstein condensate. They must be bosons, identical particles with an integer spin (the rotation of each particle is a whole number). Photons qualify as do Helium-4 atoms (sort of) and Rubidium atoms. The key is that boson particles can exist together at the same quantum state, which makes it possible to concentrate them. The first BEC particles were made by cooling a gas of rubidium atoms to 170 nanokelvin. The Kelvin scale of temperature starts at absolute zero (0 degrees Kelvin or -273 degrees Celsius). That is so cold even atoms have no motion, no energy. 170 nanokelvin is just a smidgeon above absolute zero (1.7 x 10-7 to be exact). At that extreme temperature the bosons fall (“condense”) into the lowest quantum state, and as Einstein predicted, a new kind of matter is created – a single ‘super-particle’.
A super-photon is one of these new kinds of matter. It was not considered possible to create them. Although Bose and Einstein stated their theory in terms of photons, physicists were unable to make them in the laboratory because as photons cool toward absolute zero they disappear. They disappear literally and figuratively: As they lose temperature photons change their light frequency until finally they leave the visible spectrum and become infrared light (invisible to the human eye). As photons cool through the infrared spectrum, there are fewer and fewer of them – until there are no more. This disappearing act appears to make a Bose-Einstein condensate of photons seemingly impossible.
Physicists, however, can be clever. Four physicists at Bonn University (Germany), Jan Klaers, Julian Schmitt, Dr. Frank Vewinger, and Professor Dr. Martin Weitz published their successful technique in the November 2010 issue of Science [Bose–Einstein condensation of photons in an optical microcavity]. They created a specialized cold-chamber (actually a miniscule cavity) with two highly reflective mirrors and bounced light (photons) between them. Between the mirrors was a layer of dissolved pigment molecules in a fluid. As the photons passed through the layer, some of them temporarily became engaged with the pigment and cooled to the pigment’s temperature – room temperature. As the temperature dropped, a laser beam was added to excite the pigment molecules so that even more photons were cooled. Eventually the point of condensation was reached, and the photons ‘clumped together’ (condensed) into a super-photon particle.
Remember, this condensate is made of photons – light – so the end product is a new kind of light. In fact, when it was first created, the scientists knew it was there because in the center of the chamber there was a yellow laser-like light.
A ‘photonic Bose-Einstein condensate’ has the characteristics of a laser light source, so at least theoretically it could be used for laser-type applications. Here is where the commercial interest begins. Unlike ordinary lasers, which operate in the visible light spectrum, a BEC super-photon operates at X-ray frequencies. The X-ray frequency (wave length) is much shorter and more powerful than visible light. This could be extremely valuable in the process of etching silicon chips with complex and very, very small circuitry. (Current chips are made with standard lasers.)
The technique could also be used to create solar cells that can focus and capture sunlight even on a cloudy day.
No surprise, however, that these practical applications are potential only. Harnessing photons to make a BEC is considered relatively simple by this method, but that’s in a laboratory. At a commercial scale and in a variety of environments – well let’s say that success is not a given. However, now that a BEC super-photon is no longer theory, there will be many who will push very hard to find practical applications – any of them could revolutionize the making of electronics, or change the game in solar energy.
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2011-03-18 Notes
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2011-03-13 15 notes
Orrery of Kepler’s Exoplanets
Here’s a terrific visualization of all the multiple-planet systems discovered by the Kepler spacecraft as of February 2, 2011. The planets’ orbits go through the entire 3.5 year mission. The different colors represent different sized planets — “hot” colors are the big planets, cooler colors are the smaller ones, relative to the other planets in the system. [Universe Today]
Source: unknownskywalker
