Today’s Popular Posts
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Tag Archives: laser
Laser sparkplugs: off the drawing board
In the never ending search to squeeze energy savings out of old technology, in this case the internal combustion engine, researchers working with Takunori Taira at the Japanese National Institute of Natural Sciences have developed what appears to be a production capable laser sparkplug. Let’s unpack the last four words: Sparkplug – those are the [...]
Technology advances: Powering space elevators with laser beams
As serendipity would have it, there is a mini-flood of sci-tech news concerning the use of light (lasers mostly) just when SciTechStory introduces a new impact area – photonics – the study of energy in the bandwidth of light. Here are the two most recent posts: Transformation optics: The light fantastic Optogenetics: Controlling live neurons [...]
Posted in News: Space Exploration Also tagged NASA, optogenetics, photonics, space elevator, space exploration, Tsiolkovsky 1 Comment
Optogenetics: Controlling live neurons with light
“We can activate or inactivate individual neurons or muscle cells, essentially turning the worm into a virtual biorobot.” Dr. Aravinthan D. T. Samuel, professor of physics at Harvard Center for Brain Science (Massachusetts, USA) is talking about optogenetics, one of the newest fields in science. The pioneer work was done around 2002. The name, optogenetics, [...]
Posted in News: Neuroscience Also tagged biorobot, C. elegans, genetic modification, genetics, GM, neuron, optical control, optics, optogenetics, photonics Leave a comment
Progress report: Plasmon spasers
It’s almost commonplace in technology that when there seem to be limits, somebody will figure out a way to exceed them. In a way, Moore’s Law about the seemingly never ending increase in the power of computer processors is built on constantly – somehow – extending the limits. That’s also, apparently, the situation for lasers. [...]
Posted in News: Nanotechnology Also tagged Moore’s Law, photolithography, photon, plasmon, SPASER 1 Comment
Quantum dots do it: The dark pulse laser
Lasers come in many variations of light: Red, blue, infrared, ultraviolet and so on. Now there is a laser that produces non-light – the dark pulse laser. Developed by a joint project of the National Institute of Standards (NIST, USA) and Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA, University of Colorado, USA), the dark pulse laser [...]
Posted in News: Quantum Physics Also tagged crystals, dark pulse, JILA, NIST, qdots, quantum dots, quantum physics, semiconductor Leave a comment
A coming marriage: Additive Manufacturing and Nanotechnology
It could be a marriage made in engineering heaven: Additive manufacturing and nanotechnology. First, let’s introduce additive manufacturing. Throughout history manufacturing of metallic parts and most other materials as well starts with a solid shape of the material and gets cut down to size. If you want to make a sword, you first get a [...]
Posted in Impact: Nanotechnology Also tagged additive layers, additive manufacturing, AM, carbon nanotubes, nanomanufacturing, nanoparticles, nanotechnology, PEEK, polymers 2 Comments
Evaluating two alternative energy technologies
Sometimes it’s difficult to evaluate technologies that are just starting, that have no experimental results, and are at best speculative. It’s also difficult to evaluate technologies that have been under development for a long time that have many ‘results,’ mainly from discoveries in the lab, and are also still speculative. Here are two examples from [...]
Posted in Impact: Alternative Energy Also tagged atomic fusion, boron (11), cellulosic ethanol, fusion energy, ICS, inertial confinement system, National Ignition Facility, NIF, side-on block ignition Leave a comment
Phonons in our future
Ever heard of a ‘phonon torpedo’? How about a ‘phonon laser’? Not that either? No wonder, they don’t exist. Although a phonon is to sound as the photon is to light, we do not know much about working with phonons. However, here is news concerning research that – one day – may bring about devices [...]
Posted in News: Quantum Physics Also tagged optical laser, phonon, phonon laser, photons, quanta, quantum mechanics, quantum wells Leave a comment
A lasing germanium
Germanium, a semiconducting element, is not supposed to lase. That is, when it gets its electrons excited, they go flying off as heat – not light. So the conventional wisdom in microelectronic circles (and textbooks) is that germanium does not lase – and can’t be made to work in a laser. This was unfortunate, because [...]
Posted in News: Communications Also tagged communications, gallium arsenide, germanium, MIT, optical computing, photons, semiconductor Leave a comment
Powerful X-Ray laser – powerful science
Although sometimes lost in the background, many of the important breakthroughs in science are made possible by advances in scientific instrumentation. This is particularly and most obviously true for particle physics. For a while now, the big news in this area has been about the trials and tribulations of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in [...]
Better communications: One laser – 26 Terabits per second, a new record