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Chu's Final Breakthrough Before Taking Office
KentuckyFC writes "While preparing for the job of US Secretary of Energy in the incoming Obama administration (and being director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a Nobel Prize winner to boot), Steven Chu has somehow found time to make a major breakthrough in the world of atom interferometry. One measure of an interferometer's sensitivity is the area that its arms enclose. Chu and colleagues have found a way to increase this area by a factor of 2,500 by canceling out the noise introduced by lasers, which work as beam splitters sending atoms down different arms (abstract). One thing this makes possible is the use of different types of atoms in the same interferometer, allowing a new generation of tests of the equivalence principle. (This is the assumption that the m in F=ma and the m's in F= Gm1.m2/r^2 are the same thing). Let's hope he's got equally impressive breakthroughs planned for his encore as US Secretary of Energy."
(This is the assumption that the m in F=ma and the m's in F= Gm1.m2/r^2 are the same thing).
That's what she said.
The title seems to imply he wont make any more breakthroughs after taking office. Yet I hope and I think that he should continue to due science work even after taking office and there is no reason why he couldnt.
In case you're an idiot like me, you might appreciate to know that interferometry is about studying the properties of two or more waves by looking at the pattern of interference created by their superposition. The instrument used to interfere the waves together is called an interferometer.
What, you don't remember this stuff from Physics 101? Shame on you...
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There was a researcher named Alex Chu who was involved in measuring the effects of oscillating magnetic fields in near-body encompassments. I remember he had made some significant progress, but haven't heard much else about it in a while.
I wonder if they are related.
...the article didn't say who did the work.
Just the politician whose name is attached to it.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
AASOCIATION O$F outstrips
Obviously this is just an attempt by the democrats to distract from the nation's problems as Obama takes office. They should be ashamed of themselves for exploiting the public's interest in atom interferometry this way.
It's a nice change from the previous high level government officials of the Bush Administration, who were appointed not based on their knowledge and experience in a given field, but their willingness to bend the truth according to the Bush administration dogma.
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From http://arXiv.org/auth/show-endorsers/0901.1819 :
Holger Müller: Is registered as an author of this paper.
Sven Herrmann, Sheng-wey Chiow and Steven Chu are not registered as owners of this paper.
Sure, it doesn't nail down who did what exactly, but if I had a question about the paper, I'm asking Holger first.
Hard to think of many examples where a brilliant researcher turned into a great administrator. James D. Watson is perhaps exception that proves the rule - he was brilliant but lazy, who seemed to be in the right place at the right time when he co-discovered the structure of the DNA molecule.
Meanwhile at NASA we have Michael Griffin, and the Ares/Direct controversy that sprung up around him. Doesn't this kind of thing make the Obama people (and Congress) nervous?
Our incoming president reads spiderman comics and his secretary of energy is some incredible nobel prize winning genius who ran a program called "Bio-X", can we possibly get more nerdy?
Nice that Obama is all techno- and elitist, but how is this going to change the lives of Joe Sixpack? Oh wait, the elected officials are not concerned with Joe Sixpack, just maintaining their power.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The last thing you want is someone so hands on in a high level position. Those people need to know how to pick people they can trust to properly carry out tasks. In this case a knowledge of business and how the world works is far superior to some idealistic lab experience.
I'm a huge nerd- and I usually enjoy talks of nerdy things- but
English motherfuckers, do you speak it?
1. Prove the Riemann Hypothesis.
2. Bring peace to the Mid-East.
3. Turn out that to have made an amazingly human AI in his free time that escaped and now calls itself Randall Munroe and writes xkcd.
...but fu manchu.
It's great and all that he's so smart, but how will his experience translate into change in our nation's energy policy? We get most of our power from coal, oil, natural gas, and hydro, so how does his research have any bearing on those sources?
LRN 2 SWM
There is a world of difference between physics and the Department of Energy. One deals with particles and waves and mathematics, the other deals with human beings, tangled networks of regulations, and discordant policy objectives. Mr. Chu's qualifications as a scientist will have no bearing in his new role.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Chew on THIS, you wankers! We've got a a spidey and an x man inbound, so, unlike yours, we have some enlightened phat to Chu on...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
"... cancelling out the noise introduced by lasers, which work as beam splitters sending atoms down different arms ..."
Lasers work as beams splitters ?
Sending atoms ?
Um, yeah, right.
I don't know about that, but it certainly sounds like a recipe for disaster.
When Obama turns into an evil Oba-man we'll know who to blame.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
... Which probably means he is just being credited as administrator of the Lab.
Yeah, because that's worked *SO* well for the past 38 years.
fixed
This is what I get for quitting caffeine cold turkey.
it should read 28 years!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
... I'll bet Chu will be thinking that physics is a piece of cake compared to governing the US.
Steven Chu is the head of a laboratory of 1,100 people. I doubt he has much time to work in a laboratory. It would be interesting to know what work on this he actually did himself.
At least it should not be a national goal to take the people who are expanding the realm of human knowledge and chain them to a desk managing federal middle managers. It's cruel. It's wasteful.
Kudos to the incoming administration for being able to figure out who the thinkers in their country are. That's a refreshing change from the previous administration. Now please - for the sake of us all - when you identify them, leave them in place and appoint administrators to get stuff out of their way. For all our sakes, don't take them from their honest work and make lobbyists out of them. I'd rather you set money on fire. Really.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The highest IQ guy I've ever met (that I know about) drove a car for a living and aspired to not work any harder than he had to. His greatest aspiration was to get laid today if he could. He seldom met this goal. His IQ was measured at 165. He was interesting to talk to. Most people aren't.
His hero was Groo the Wanderer.
What did this experience teach me about intelligence? Exactly nothing. Which is what I gained from your post. But at least you didn't puke in my shoes like he did.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Politics aside, Bush was a lazy President.
He fucked around and of course things went to pot. He took more vacation days than any other President.
It's that lack of work more than ideology that got us in such a mess. These mistakes had little if anything to do with liberal vs conservative. (disclaimer - I am quite liberal)
The war and occupation would have appeared a whole lot less stupid if they had actually been thoroughly planned.
Deregulation may have weakened the safeguards of the financial system, but it didn't eliminate them; they just were ignored. That was negligence more than lazzis faire.
The handling of Katrina was a tragedy and the treatment of the victims afterwords was a crime. Any other conservative with the power of the government at their disposal would have used that power to save lives.
Say what you want, but the memo entitled 'Bin Laden determined to strike targets in the US' was ignored. Even if the attack could not have been prevented, the military and intelligence services could have been on high alert and emergency services on a higher alert. Lazy! Lazy! Fucking life threatening laziness.
Then to completely throw the feeling of empathy the world had for the US into the trash. Was it policy, or was it just easier to act unilaterally? What a waste!
It's refreshing to see a team that actually wants to work and get things done.
Governments don't want people in top jobs who are too highly qualified because they tend to think that reality is not just what lobbyists think it is.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Lasers work as beams splitters ?
Sending atoms ?
Um, yeah, right.
I'm not familiar with the details, but at first sight, I don't see a problem with those statements.
Remember, this is an atom interferometry. The "beam" refers to a beam of atoms. It's the wavefunction of the atoms that are being used to produce the signal, not the laser (which is the more garden-variety interferometry like one used in LIGO). From the description I get in the abstract, it sounds like they first laser-cool the atoms in a trap (probably magnetic, as the atoms used are frequently paramagnetic and can be trapped), then release the trap letting the atoms drop.
If you have a laser in the atom's path, by appropriately tuning the laser you can produce repulsive force on the atoms (I forget whether this has to be blue-shifted or red-shifted from the transition, but either way it can be done), so much like a rod in a stream, it will force the atoms to take one path or another as it drops under gravity.
The actual scheme in the experiment is probably way more complicated than this (they do claim factor of 2500 increase in the area covered, so the atoms must travel longer somehow), but it's nothing ridiculous. Maybe a little too technical for someone who's not an atomic physicist to grasp immediately.
How does this relate to the earlier story about a laser-based system having noise that was considered evidence for the holographic principle? If the noise could be eliminated doesn't that mean the evidence is invalid?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Wrong, in so many ways wrong. Here's interferometry for the liberal arts majors: A laser generates a beam of light. The beam can be thought of as a stream of photons. The laser beam is split in two by a beam splitter. The two beams are recombined. Objects in the confluence can be detected by the interference patterns they generate. Note: A laser is a device that produces phase coherent light. A laser is not a beam splitter. A beam splitter is a pair of prisms formed into a cube used to split light beams. Putting a laser in an atom's path is ... best I stop now.
discovering how Michele Obama's salary took a huge leap after her Senator husband funneled some money towards the hospital where she worked.
(This is the assumption that the m in F=ma and the m's in F= Gm1.m2/r^2 are the same thing).
I think 350 years of experiments on Newtonian physics have shown that they are the same thing except in weird-ass quantum or near-speed-of-light situations that don't really matter anyway.
Don't go confusing the high school kiddies, please. They're already confused enough about evolution thanks to media spinelessness.
I piss off bigots.
. . . between Obama and Bush. Bush appointed a professional politician (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham) and then someone slightly more qualified, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_W._Bodman), a venture capitalist who had attended MIT. Abraham had nothing to do with energy Bodman has done nothing but executive positions for the last thirty years. Obama chose someone who's really qualified and isn't financially tied to our current energy industries. Considering that the inauguration is tomorrow and this man is still hard at working trying to provide energy solutions only confirms what an excellent choice he is.
The ineptitude of the Bush administration isn't just in the man himself, it was the slew of yes-men appointed to important positions that has made our government ineffective for the last eight years.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
We'll make it look as close to real as we can. (Roll cheerleader porn).
Do I have to be at death's door first, or can you just plug me into the cheerleader porn machine right now?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
His full name is Steve Chuck Norris
How can they *not* be the same? Aren't they sort of defined to be equal via the fudge-factor "G" in the second equation? If the m's were different, the value of G would just be adjusted to make them the same again, no?
Jefferson was more of a descriptive naturalist, collecting fossils and plants and the like. He commissioned several naturalist expeditions of which Lewis and Clark is the most famous.
Steven Chu has somehow found time to make a major breakthrough in the world of atom interferometry.
Hardly surprising really. Everyone knows how this happens - the graduate students do all the grunk-work and (insert up and coming scientific powerhouse name here) stea^H^H^H^H takes the credit. Business as usual in the science world.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Fortunately, Slashdot contributors seldom fall prey to "media blather". You don't "plan breakthroughs".
i have to break it to y'all ... but this isn't really steve's work. of course he's a genius, but no one (including the press) has mentioned that the last author is Holger Mueller. in the (physical and biological) sciences there's a fairly well established protocol that the first author is the one who did the actual work and the last author is the leader of the project. of course, there's exceptions to the rule and these are always stated in the footnotes.
i think this is an example of the press just trying to use someones name to get more attention.... as usual.
Hopefully he opens DOE facilities back to the public. Fences and guard boxes at the complex entrances don't inspire confidence in security at facilities carrying out non-classified research. (For your reference, I'm referring to LBNL)
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
the cake is a LIE!
-
Good news, everyone!
Probably the only cabinet member who can use LaTeX. He's gonna add chaos to the MSWord vs. LaTeX debate.
HAHA... 0, Troll. Guess, "Get Over It" won't be enough for bushwanker apologists. You can mark ME troll, but history and historians with duty to humanity will NOT be kind to nor forgiving of that being on his way out... and for good reasons.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Read that as "Cthulu's Final Breakthrough Before Taking Office"
scary stuff!
How does this relate to the beam splitting, noise-plagued GEO600 gravity wave detector that recently made the news for possibly showing the universe to be a hologram?
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
You are describing the garden-variety LASER interferometry.
Ever since we have been able to cool atoms to nano-kelvin temperatures, allowing them to remain coherent long enough for atomic inteferometry to be performed, ATOM interferometry has been possible and that's what the paper is describing. (Actually, to be fair, atom or neutron interferometry has been possible long before that, but not as popular or versatile.)
All "interferometry" means is measuring something by combining two waves together and seeing whether they interfere constructively or destructively. Nothing says that the wave has to be light wave. It can be sound waves, earthquake waves, and, for those of us who aren't stuck in the 19th century (and early 20th century), matter waves.
In September -- when gas in Europe was selling for the equivalent of $8.00 per gallon -- Chu told the Wall Street Journal, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe."
Now, if you buy into all the global warming hype, Chu's your man. Reducing everyone's standard of living is a small price to pay, if it will prevent the sea from encroaching into low-lying areas like Miami and Tuvalu.
On the other hand, if you've been paying attention, you know that the earth has been in a cooling trend since 1998, and the extent of sea ice is the same as it was 30 years ago, despite the fact that CO2 concentration increased during both of those time periods. And you'd be wise to not interfere with the decisions made by free markets about the most efficient ways to power vehicles and generate electricity.