Easily - look at the publication. When a "study" comes out that says, that, say, secondhand smoke isn't dangerous, and the scientists are funded by big tobacco, we can rightly conclude that it's bogus. However, we don't need to know who funded the study to see this; such studies are rarely, if ever published in a reputable journal. They're just cited by the interested parties (big tobacco).
In this case, we have researchers publishing in Nature. Nature is *the* preeminent scientific publication in the world. A top notch professor at Caltech (where I'm a graduate student) might get 4 articles in Nature _in their entire lifetime_. As a researcher, getting a paper or two in Nature practically guarantees me a associate professorship at a major university when I graduate. In other words, getting into Nature is quite difficult, and any article that's in there is peer-reviewed up the ass.
So, if this Congressman has any clue as to the process of peer review, he already knows that the study is reputable. He's just trying to inspire personal fear in climate change researchers.
It is a small RC plane, with built in gizmos. Us RC types have been building things this scale for ~5 years. However, it's real difficult to build things much smaller and have them fly well in the outside world. Smaller flyers have been built (see here:http://touch.caltech.edu/research/bat/bat.htm l), but wind gusts make them impractical for outdoor use.
From the article:
"...costing an awesome $175 billion over 50 years"
and:
"...could generate about $135 billion for the state over the 50-year span"
Notice the $40 billion difference? Somehow, I doubt the private contractor, Cintra, is going to pony this up out of the goodness of their warm, fuzzy, corporate heart.
That's because transmission holograms only work with monochromatic light. So a "special" flashlight would be one with a color filter. Note that it doesn't have to be the same color, either - using a different probe wavelength will rescale the image, but it'll still be visible.
Yes, it is. If the electric field of the laser beam (remember, it's an EM wave) exceeds the breakdown voltage of air, you'll get ionization.
There was a company at Photonics West a few years back that ran a neat demo along these lines. They had a clear plastic tube (just to protect onlookers) inside of which they brought a pulsed laser to a tight focal point. When they pulsed the laser, it created a 1-inch ball of plasma at the focal point.
I am an optical engineer, and have a couple of comments -
+ Spherical aberration is traditionally compensated for by using compound lenses (stacked lenses, cemented together). More recently, with the advent of CNC fabrication and moldable glass, glass aspherical lenses are increasingly available. The first widespread use of an asphere was a single plastic molded lens on the Kodak disc camera.
+ Diffraction limits will become increasingly important. For an F/10 lens, the minimum spot size that can be well-resolved is about 10 microns. As sensors get more and more pixels, the silicon area will have to increase - otherwise, there's just no point. Since silicon cost goes up exponentially with die area, we likely won't see huge megapixel arrays make it to the consumer anytime soon.
You're quite right. You can't have anything other
than passive elements in the circuit; EDFA's will
destroy the polarization state of a given photon,
removing entanglement.
You can have arbitrarily long links, but the data
rates will be very low.
An attacker, however, can't tap into the fiber near
the transmitter, grab a photon, and remain undetected. Data's usually sent in time-synced single photon pulses, so an attacker would be apparent.
You're missing the point here...
Quantum cryptography _creates_ a set of 1 time
pads that both the sender and receiver have. So,
a fairly small one-time pad is generated, and then
the data is encoded & transmitted over a fast line. This is why it's often referred to as QKD
(quantum key distribution). For absolute security,
you only send data encrypted directly with your key,
which is slow, but can't be decoded by a 3rd party.
You mean, like...mineral oil?
I know a guy who put his
entire motherboard in an
aquarium tank of mineral oil; it's
non-conductive, has reasonable heat
transfer, and won't dissolve PCB's.
Only problem was that hardware changes
were...messy
Here's what I don't get:
1) Even at UV wavelengths, diffraction limits the feature size for writing masters
2) So, you use an electron beam to write the master.
3) And you read it...how?
Remember, optical systems possess this neat property called symmetry. In the absence of nonlinear elements, light propagates the same way regardless if direction. A system in which writing features is limited by diffraction will be limited by diffraction when those features are read.
I too am an R/C flyer (slope gliders). Modern gyros are small & fast enough these days that it's quite easy to fly a small (30"), light (10oz) glider in, say, 20 mph winds with 10 mph gusts.
Re:let's see them sup up...
on
Hack Your Car
·
· Score: 1
Volvo engines are some of the toughest in the business. What this means is that you can increase the manifold pressure by a bundle without destroying your engine. A turbo 240 can have its output increased from ~ 150 hp to ~ 250 hp.
The neat thing about silicon-on-insulator
photonics is the bending radius. Since the index
contrast is so high (3.5 vs 1.5), bends with
radii under 50 microns are easily achievable.
This makes high levels of integration possible.
Thus, you can have modulators, wavelength filters,
etc all on the same chip. Now your CPU can talk to your RAM at 16 Gbits with, say, 8-wavelength multiplexing.
The other way to look at this is:
"Gee, a free PC arrived in the mail! I've always wanted an extra server box."
Soon, requests for your time will disappear.
The advent of CCD-based astronomy has relegated light pollution to mere nuisance level. It's effects can be dramatically reduced by chopping
the steering mirror, or longer integration times.
I'm more interested in how they plan on preventing
feedback loops and other nasty behaviour in a system with FOUR fully active mirrors (each of which has zillions of transducers on it). Seems
messy.
Slashdot Mirror
Easily - look at the publication. When a "study" comes out that says, that, say, secondhand smoke isn't dangerous, and the scientists are funded by big tobacco, we can rightly conclude that it's bogus. However, we don't need to know who funded the study to see this; such studies are rarely, if ever published in a reputable journal. They're just cited by the interested parties (big tobacco).
In this case, we have researchers publishing in Nature. Nature is *the* preeminent scientific publication in the world. A top notch professor at Caltech (where I'm a graduate student) might get 4 articles in Nature _in their entire lifetime_. As a researcher, getting a paper or two in Nature practically guarantees me a associate professorship at a major university when I graduate. In other words, getting into Nature is quite difficult, and any article that's in there is peer-reviewed up the ass.
So, if this Congressman has any clue as to the process of peer review, he already knows that the study is reputable. He's just trying to inspire personal fear in climate change researchers.
It is a small RC plane, with built in gizmos. Us RC types have been building things this scale for ~5 years. However, it's real difficult to build things much smaller and have them fly well in the outside world. Smaller flyers have been built (see here:http://touch.caltech.edu/research/bat/bat.htm l), but wind gusts make them impractical for outdoor use.
...for orcas http://www.extremescience.com/orcavshark.htm
From the article: "...costing an awesome $175 billion over 50 years" and: "...could generate about $135 billion for the state over the 50-year span" Notice the $40 billion difference? Somehow, I doubt the private contractor, Cintra, is going to pony this up out of the goodness of their warm, fuzzy, corporate heart.
That's because transmission holograms only work with monochromatic light. So a "special" flashlight would be one with a color filter. Note that it doesn't have to be the same color, either - using a different probe wavelength will rescale the image, but it'll still be visible.
Dude. You don't have to put line returns in; they'll be inserted automatically.
This is, like, *exactly* out of Spinrad's book, "The Plabue Years".
I wonder just how big pharmaceutical companies are going to try to suppress this work.
Yes, it is. If the electric field of the laser beam (remember, it's an EM wave) exceeds the breakdown voltage of air, you'll get ionization. There was a company at Photonics West a few years back that ran a neat demo along these lines. They had a clear plastic tube (just to protect onlookers) inside of which they brought a pulsed laser to a tight focal point. When they pulsed the laser, it created a 1-inch ball of plasma at the focal point.
I am an optical engineer, and have a couple of comments -
+ Spherical aberration is traditionally compensated for by using compound lenses (stacked lenses, cemented together). More recently, with the advent of CNC fabrication and moldable glass, glass aspherical lenses are increasingly available. The first widespread use of an asphere was a single plastic molded lens on the Kodak disc camera.
+ Diffraction limits will become increasingly important. For an F/10 lens, the minimum spot size that can be well-resolved is about 10 microns. As sensors get more and more pixels, the silicon area will have to increase - otherwise, there's just no point. Since silicon cost goes up exponentially with die area, we likely won't see huge megapixel arrays make it to the consumer anytime soon.
You're quite right. You can't have anything other than passive elements in the circuit; EDFA's will destroy the polarization state of a given photon, removing entanglement. You can have arbitrarily long links, but the data rates will be very low. An attacker, however, can't tap into the fiber near the transmitter, grab a photon, and remain undetected. Data's usually sent in time-synced single photon pulses, so an attacker would be apparent.
You're missing the point here... Quantum cryptography _creates_ a set of 1 time pads that both the sender and receiver have. So, a fairly small one-time pad is generated, and then the data is encoded & transmitted over a fast line. This is why it's often referred to as QKD (quantum key distribution). For absolute security, you only send data encrypted directly with your key, which is slow, but can't be decoded by a 3rd party.
You mean, like...mineral oil? I know a guy who put his entire motherboard in an aquarium tank of mineral oil; it's non-conductive, has reasonable heat transfer, and won't dissolve PCB's. Only problem was that hardware changes were...messy
Here's what I don't get: 1) Even at UV wavelengths, diffraction limits the feature size for writing masters 2) So, you use an electron beam to write the master. 3) And you read it...how? Remember, optical systems possess this neat property called symmetry. In the absence of nonlinear elements, light propagates the same way regardless if direction. A system in which writing features is limited by diffraction will be limited by diffraction when those features are read.
I too am an R/C flyer (slope gliders). Modern gyros are small & fast enough these days that it's quite easy to fly a small (30"), light (10oz) glider in, say, 20 mph winds with 10 mph gusts.
Volvo engines are some of the toughest in the business. What this means is that you can increase the manifold pressure by a bundle without destroying your engine. A turbo 240 can have its output increased from ~ 150 hp to ~ 250 hp.
The neat thing about silicon-on-insulator photonics is the bending radius. Since the index contrast is so high (3.5 vs 1.5), bends with radii under 50 microns are easily achievable. This makes high levels of integration possible. Thus, you can have modulators, wavelength filters, etc all on the same chip. Now your CPU can talk to your RAM at 16 Gbits with, say, 8-wavelength multiplexing.
The other way to look at this is: "Gee, a free PC arrived in the mail! I've always wanted an extra server box." Soon, requests for your time will disappear.
The advent of CCD-based astronomy has relegated light pollution to mere nuisance level. It's effects can be dramatically reduced by chopping the steering mirror, or longer integration times. I'm more interested in how they plan on preventing feedback loops and other nasty behaviour in a system with FOUR fully active mirrors (each of which has zillions of transducers on it). Seems messy.