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Scientists Create 'Fastest Man-Made Spinning Object'
dryriver sends this news from the BBC:
"A team of researchers claims to have created the world's fastest spinning man-made object. They were able to levitate and spin a microscopic sphere at speeds of up to 600 million revolutions per minute. This spin speed is half a million times faster than a domestic washing machine and more than a thousand times faster than a dental drill. The work by the University of St Andrews scientists is published in Nature Communications. Although there is much international research exploring what happens at the boundary between classical physics and quantum physics, most of this experimental work uses atoms or molecules. To do this they manufactured a microscopic sphere of calcium carbonate only four millionths of a meter in diameter. The team then used the minuscule forces of laser light to hold the sphere with the radiation pressure of light — rather like levitating a beach ball with a jet of water. They exploited the property of polarization of the laser light that changed as the light passed through the levitating sphere, exerting a small twist or torque. Placing the sphere in vacuum largely removed the drag due to any gas environment, allowing the team to achieve the very high rotation rates. In addition to the rotation, the team observed a 'compression' of the excursions or 'wobble' of the particle in all three dimensions, which can be understood as a 'cooling' of the motion. Essentially the particle behaved like the world's smallest gyroscope, stabilizing its motion around the axis of rotation."
"You guys ain't even seen angular velocity until you've seen my press conference work."
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
"A team of researchers claims to have created the world's fastest spinning man-made object."
A politician?
--
BMO
...the politician jokes!
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
Are you telling me a dental drill spins at 600,000 RPM? I seriously doubt that. That's ridiculous, it would burn your teeth and anything else it touched. You wouldn't even be able to hear the high pitch whine of the drill at that speed.
We all know that politicians are the masters of spin.
This spin speed is half a million times faster than a domestic washing machine and more than a thousand times faster than a dental drill
Wow! How many libraries of congress is that?
Yup. I saw it too in the byline and user Slashbox areas. Gone after a page refresh.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Yeah CmdrTaco will be spinning in his grave when he sees the quality of Slashdot code these days.
Today's XKCD is strangely applicable to the summary.
http://xkcd.com/1257/
n/t
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Came here for that, left satisfied.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
I spent most of the time I was reading the summary trying to come up with some really clever/sarcastic/funny comment (Electrons spin faster! -- um, no that's lame. I got it, if you spin it backwards, it just says "Paul is dead" in a chipmunk voice.)
But then I got to this:
The team then used the minuscule forces of laser light to hold the sphere with the radiation pressure of light — rather like levitating a beach ball with a jet of water. They exploited the property of polarization of the laser light that changed as the light passed through the levitating sphere, exerting a small twist or torque.
That is so indescribably cool I just had to let that stand on its own. There is so much physics wrapped up in this one experiment.
I'll just leave it at an obligatory XKCD:
Science, it works bitches.
His body doesn't count as a man-made object, or this wouldn't have broken the record.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
His body doesn't count as a man-made object, or this wouldn't have broken the record.
Indeed -- we aren't discussing woman-made objects here.
I know the team member who first suggested this research. As a kid, he was obsessed with spinning tops, bicycle wheels and everything else he could find that spins really fast. Looks like that passion of his spun out of control as he grew older!
Is the fastest spinning object, man-made or otherwise? Looking for some perspective on this.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Score: 5, Funny doesn't do this post justice. Well played, sir!
Syriasly
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
the robot from adventure time got jokes!
If your head is spinning that fast your ears could propel it to the air, like Dumbo, making it possible for you to monitor the grave situation above the border area and report any transgressions to the proper authorities.
It's spinning as fast as my head when trying to understand why people don't understand what part of "illegal" in the phrase "illegal immigrant" people do not understand.
It means "Mexican" right?
I wonder what the velocity of the outer edge is...?
It's been happening off and on all afternoon.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Chuck Norris does not spin his right foot around and roundhouse kick you in the face. He spins the world with his left foot.
They were able to levitate and spin a microscopic sphere at speeds of up to 600 million revolutions per minute. This spin speed is half a million times faster than a domestic washing machine
wtf? Washing machines spin at 599.5 million rpm?
Optical trapping can sometimes make use of radiation pressure, but that's generally not how you optically trap a particle, nor is that how they did it. Radiation pressure is characterized by absorption and reflection (like tennis balls hitting a wall). To trap a particle, you use refraction (when modeling the system with ray optics).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_pressure
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_tweezers
The change in index of refraction between water (or air) and your particle causes the light rays to "change direction" as they enter and leave the particle. There is a net momentum transferred to the particle in the direction of the focus of the laser beam, thus trapping the particle at the focus.
It only happens when the NSA is scooping your data.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So call me obtuse, but how many Libraries of Congress is this per Internet? What about how many electronic mails I can upload per Internet?
600M/500K=1200
This spin speed is half a million times faster than a domestic washing machine and more than a thousand times faster than a dental drill.
ORLY?
Obligatory xkcd: (from today, no less) http://xkcd.com/1257/
Oh, my Odin! Do not put a spell on it that feeds on itself and makes it spin faster and faster. You'll use up all the Manna in the area and Magic won't work any more!
True !
When I was home for lunch today slashdot went down, giving a blank page right before I went back to work, butt it worked from work.
Someone called with a computer problem last night; his computer froze. I told him how to restart it and he called 20 minutes later saying his facebook account was locked because of an unauthorized entry attempt and I had to explain that his account (probably his computer, he's an idiot) had been hacked. Possibly coincidental but strange anyway.
Free Martian Whores!
what about the founding fathers spinning in their graves?
I'd like to encode some data in one of these spheres and have these fine gentlemen rotate it at light speed to send it and its information back in time. Why should Biff Tanen have all the luck?
You're looking at the past with rose-colored glasses. Slashcode wasn't any better when Taco was around.
just to play Nancy NoFun: Jefferson expected these kinds of abuses and advocated appropriate responses to it. That's why he's classified as an extremist by DoD these days.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Indeed -- we aren't discussing woman-made objects here.
In Jefferson's era, men took all the credit and "man-made" certainly had to be the accepted phrase regardless of the gender that made it. In any event, he was a cooperative effort. Furthermore, he believed that we were endowed by a Creator, whose gender was commonly male. So. I think he qualified as "man-made" if you're willing to piss off the politically correct, which I certainly am.
Indeed -- we aren't discussing woman-made objects here.
In Jefferson's era, men took all the credit and "man-made" certainly had to be the accepted phrase regardless of the gender that made it. In any event, he was a cooperative effort. Furthermore, he believed that we were endowed by a Creator, whose gender was commonly male. So. I think he qualified as "man-made" if you're willing to piss off the politically correct, which I certainly am.
While "man" was definitely the gender-neutral term at the time, I think he would have considered you a heretic to consider him "man-made" -- made in God's image by God, who while he spent time as a man, was God. He'd consider himself created, not man-made, no matter how much a humanist he was.
Now I can understand that the BBC felt the need to fill the article with stupid comparisons, but why can't the summary here just replace them with ellipses for the sake of the presumably more technical readership here? One would think that the typical slashdot reader would understand 600 Mrpm just fine and wouldn't need such twaddle as "This spin speed is half a million times faster than a domestic washing machine and more than a thousand times faster than a dental drill" for edification.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm just old and bitter. Now get off of my lawn.
"I am Dr. Freud, but you may call me.siggy."
seriously, how do you measure 600 000 000 revolutions per minute on a microscopic sized ball?
Chances are they were slowing it down
...will it drain all the mana in vicinity?
No, it explains that you wasted some poor teacher's time.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
We don't understand why a sick bird of prey would be relocating to the US.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
You are beyond lucky that the VCR head didn't shatter from the stress. Work out the kinetic energy of something spinning that fast. Ain't pretty. Out of brazen curiosity: how did you reach 250,000 rpm from 65,000 rpm?
Please help metamoderate.
Murrica!