Tag: physics

Top Quark

Physicists have detected for the first time a subatomic particle, the top quark, produced without the simultaneous production of its antimatter partner – an extremely rare event. The discovery of the single top quark could help scientists better explain how the universe works and how objects acquire their mass, thereby assisting human understanding of the fundamental nature of the universe.

now about that higgs boson.

P != NP

can NP-complete problems be solved efficiently in the physical universe? All hunches would say no, but then we only discovered polynomial time factorization using quantum algorithms 10 years ago.

2011-08-12: Markets being efficient and P != NP can’t both be true, it turns out. So either you can compute fast or make money on the stock market. It remains unclear whether you can MAKE MONEY FAST or not.
2017-01-04: The history of P != NP

In 1955, John Nash sent a remarkable letter to the National Security Agency, in which—seeking to build theoretical foundations for cryptography—he all but formulated what today we call the P=?NP problem, considered one of the great open problems of science. Here I survey the status of this problem in 2017, for a broad audience of mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. I offer a personal perspective on what it’s about, why it’s important, why it’s reasonable to conjecture that P≠NP is both true and provable, why proving it is so hard, the landscape of related problems, and crucially, what progress has been made in the last half-century toward solving those problems. The discussion of progress includes diagonalization and circuit lower bounds; the relativization, algebrization, and natural proofs barriers; and the recent works of Ryan Williams and Ketan Mulmuley, which (in different ways) hint at a duality between impossibility proofs and algorithms.

2022-12-03: Why are there complete problems, really?

This, then, is how universality of computation explains the existence of complete problems. For virtually any class we might define there will be a way of handicapping the universal computer such that it is still able to solve all of the problems in the class while at the same time not breaking the class specific resource constraint.

We can now see that the existence of complete problems is a direct result of one of the core features of computers that also makes them relevant to the real world.

Black Metal

The huge increase in light absorption enabled by Guo’s femtosecond laser processing means nearly any metal becomes extremely useful anytime radiation gathering is needed. For instance, detectors of all kinds, from space probes to light meters, could capture far more data than an ordinary metal-based detector could.

why are materials science articles often so stupid? the prospect of perfect absorption in metals is exciting for sensors though. not to mention the catalytic possibilities.

Metamaterial

A metamaterial allows special optic properties, such as exceeding the diffraction limit, building cloaking devices, etc
2012-12-10: Materials science really is the unsung hero of most of our prosperity.

A new material created by Cornell researchers is so soft that it can flow like a liquid and then, strangely, return to its original shape. Rather than liquid metal, it is a hydrogel, a mesh of organic molecules with many small empty spaces that can absorb water like a sponge. It qualifies as a “metamaterial” with properties not found in nature and may be the first organic metamaterial with mechanical meta-properties.

2014-01-12: Analog computers

shining a light wave on one side of such a material would result in that wave profile’s derivative exiting the other side. Such analog computers would be much faster and energy efficient than DSPs.

2014-02-10: This is easily the most impressive nanotech demo I have ever seen.

Extremely strong yet ultra-light materials can be achieved by designing nano structured hollow lattices which promise superb thermomechanical properties at extremely low mass densities (lighter than aerogels)

2015-12-01: 1000x 3D imaging resolution

MIT researchers have shown that by exploiting the polarization of light — the physical phenomenon behind polarized sunglasses and most 3D movie systems — they can increase the resolution of conventional 3D imaging devices as much as 1000x. The technique could lead to high-quality 3D cameras built into phones, and perhaps to the ability to snap a photo of an object and then use a 3D printer to produce a replica. Further out, the work could also abet the development of driverless cars.

2021-02-07: Metalenz

Instead of using plastic and glass lens elements stacked over an image sensor, Metalenz’s design uses a single lens built on a glass wafer that is between 1×1 to 3×3 millimeter in size. Look very closely under a microscope and you’ll see nanostructures measuring one-thousandth the width of a human hair. Those nanostructures bend light rays in a way that corrects for many of the shortcomings of single-lens camera systems. The resulting image quality is just as sharp as what you’d get from a multilens system, and the nanostructures do the job of reducing or eliminating many of the image-degrading aberrations common to traditional cameras. And the design doesn’t just conserve space. A Metalenz camera can deliver more light back to the image sensor, allowing for brighter and sharper images than what you’d get with traditional lens elements.

2022-01-30: Not sure about “soon”, but

Imagine a camera that’s mounted on your car being able to identify black ice on the road, giving you a heads-up before you drive over it. Or a cell phone camera that can tell whether a lesion on your skin is possibly cancerous. Or the ability for Face ID to work even when you have a face mask on. These are all possibilities Metalenz is touting with its new PolarEyes polarization technology. Polarization imaging equipment has typically been bulky and expensive, but the PolarEyes system is compact and cost-effective enough to replace a smartphone camera.

2022-04-15: Nice overview of metamaterial capabilities and progress.

Metamaterials’ precise shape, geometry, size, orientation, and arrangements allow them to manipulate electromagnetic or mechanical waves, such as light or sound, by blocking, enhancing, and bending the waves. Their potential applications are multiples, including power transmission, energy harvesting, wireless charging, thermal management, and acoustic applications, Lidars, radars, superlenses for medical devices, AR displays. Electrical engineering, electromagnetics, classical optics, solid-state physics, microwave and antenna engineering, optoelectronics, material sciences, nanoscience, and semiconductor engineering are all involved in the metamaterial field’s advancement.
Metamaterials are impacting several industries: Infrastructure (Thermal management, Acoustic management – vibration and noise control, Seismic metamaterials), Power and Energy (Energy harvesting, Power transmission, Wireless charging), Electronics and Sensors (Lidars, Super lenses for medical applications, Programmable metamaterials, AR displays), Telecommunications (MmWave antennas, 3D radar, Holographic beamforming).
Since the first metamaterials product went to market in 2009, relatively few products became commercially available because the difficulty in designing metamaterials structures and their high manufacturing cost made them prohibitive for commercial applications. In the last few years, improvements in the software for design and simulation in additive manufacturing made the near-term scale adoption of metamaterials-based products possible. Sectors like automotive, telecommunication, and consumer electronics are ripe for disruption. Once metamaterials options reach the market, the conventional products will suffer and likely become obsolete. The metamaterials products don’t require high CapEx because they rely on conventional materials and manufacturing processes with innovative design. When considering a new investment opportunity or starting a company, keep in mind that companies such as Intellectual Ventures have aggressively acquired strategic patents and launched several spin-offs, including Kymeta, Pivotal Commware, and Echodyne. Intellectual property in this field is strategic for the survival of incumbents. Early patents are expected to expire between 2024-2028, and more companies will likely pop up in analogy to what happened in the 3D printing industry in 2005. Exciting times lie ahead to transform many industries with metamaterials products.

2023-08-07: Metalenz explainer video

Quantum Mechanics and Experience

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The more science tells us about the world, the stranger it looks. Ever since physics first penetrated the atom, early in this century, what it found there has stood as a radical and unanswered challenge to many of our most cherished conceptions of nature. It has literally been called into question since then whether or not there are always objective matters of fact about the whereabouts of subatomic particles, or about the locations of tables and chairs, or even about the very contents of our thoughts. A new kind of uncertainty has become a principle of science.