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Scientists Solve Century-Old Optics Mystery
evan_arrrr! writes "From the article:
Since the early 20th century physicists have known that light carries momentum, but the way this momentum changes as light passes through different media is much less clear. Two rival theories of the time predicted precisely the opposite effect for light incident on a dielectric: one suggesting it pushes the surface in the direction light is traveling; the other suggesting it drags the surface backwards towards the source of light. After 100 years of conflicting experimental results, a team of experimentalists from China believe they have finally found a resolution."
And the winner is... "pressure!"
Dang it!!! There goes my bet with Hawking about making a tractor beam. But wait... if we could use a photon emitted from NEGATIVE MASS it would have NEGATIVE MOMENTUM!!! Ok, Stephen... it's ON!
The mystery is whether or not giving your child the same name as a feminine pronoun is confusing.
The answer is, yes, it's very confusing.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
well doesn't everyone have to read the article first in order to comment on it?
Wait.. what the hell am I thinking?
That's what *SHE* said!
The article is unclear to me, maybe I missed something
...Weilong She and his colleagues...
...Hermann Minkowski had proposed in 1908 that light momenta is proportional to a material's refractive index then the following year, another German theorist, Max Abraham proposed the opposite...
Ok so we are talking about a guy right?
This paper is a beautiful piece of work and may become one of the classic papers on the momentum of light" said Ulf Leonhardt a researcher...
hmm not sure article doesn't indicate one way or another
Still guys right?
21st Century makeover
She and colleagues have now finally overcome these difficulties by replacing the water surface with a nanometre silica filament.
Wait who is a she???
Maybe it's hosted in China and the government deemed it questionable content.
nhk
ah the joy of field specific acronyms nobody understands.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Since it's already slahshdotted, here's the cached version.
Page wont load in google cache either. Google cache has been slashdotted.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
DUDE! Add a spoiler alert next time!
1. Posing as someone else, post false news that own lab has made a breakthrough discovery
2. Take down the faked article before any scrutiny can be applied and it is determined to be a fake
3. ???
4. Profit!
Still using a 40-columns monitor, I see.
..., so that the momentum of the photon in the medium is nhk.
Hmmm ... a bit of googling ...
NHK could be Nihon Hohsoh Kyokai, the Japanese broadcasting company.
NHK could be Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk, the Dutch Reformed Church.
But somehow, I suspect that neither was what was meant. Got a better expansion that makes sense in context?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Don't underestimate the power of Slashdot. It's as if millions of mouse clicks suddenly jumped out into the internets and the servers where suddenly silenced.
Superfluous prepositions?
Does the slashdot effect push the server over or pull it down?
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Also, as a non-physicist, it can be fun to pit theorists and experimentalists against each other in battles to the death and watch what happens.
Wow, you just don't get it. There's no need to actually pit them against each other, I can provide mathematical proof that the experimentalists will win 84.3% of the time.
Touche. But will the experimentalists be satisfied with your result, or will they want to have the fight anyway, just to be sure?
Being a computer scientist means you tell people how computers should work, not that you know how they actually work.
Zero mass is infinite mass. It's the same thing.
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
Exactly. This is why a charged battery is heavier than a dead battery (a fact you'll be thankful for if you ever have to push-start a car!)
Also, have you ever noticed how dust tends to accumulate on a window sill? As sunlight pours down through the window over time, a very tiny fraction of the light is converted from energy to mass. It happens too slowly to observe, but eventually it will accumulate into dust particles.
Different surfaces will result in different rates of mass conversion. I painted my house with a specially formulated paint with a very low rate of mass conversion, provided by a friend who has military contacts. It sure wasn't cheap, but worth it for all the time I save on dusting!
Also, as a non-physicist, it can be fun to pit theorists and experimentalists against each other in battles to the death and watch what happens.
Wow, you just don't get it. There's no need to actually pit them against each other, I can provide mathematical proof that the experimentalists will win 84.3% of the time.
Doesn't that mean that there's only a 25.7% chance that you're right?
What is the answer?
The answer is that slashdotting provides a positive force on the server regardless of the medium.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Think again. Why do you think we tell people who are dying not to go toward the light? It's pulling on them!
~
The server didn't go down. The undersea cables just went missing.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
So the fucking sun is pushing us away!