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While some scientists are working on an invisibility cloak to hide things, Cornell postdoctoral researcher Moti Fridman and his colleagues have been working on a “temporal cloak,” to hide events in time.
A physical object or even another beam of light in the laser beam’s path could create a change in the laser light that the detector would register. But with some clever optics, Fridman and his colleagues were able to open up a brief time gap in the beam and then close it back up as if the beam had gone undisturbed, and such that the detector did not register the interruption. The gap allows anything that would have otherwise affected the beam to instead slip right through [see animation below], leaving no trace for the detector to pick up.
The events that can slip through the cloak have to be very fast: the gap is only 50 trillionths of a second. The video at the link explains the process much more clearly. Link -via Monkeyfilter
The Philips company introduces lights that run without electricity or solar power. Instead, they harness the bioluminescence of bacteria. You have to feed them fuel, namely methane and compost. The lights developed so far aren’t bright enough to read by, but they may have other uses, like illuminating dark roads and exit signs. Link -via Buzzfeed
A new art installation at the Holburne Museum in Bath, England, uses a “garden” of 5,000 lights planted on the grounds. Artist Bruce Munro was inspired by fields of flowers blooming in the Australian desert. See more pictures of the work called Field of Light in all its glory at Kuriositas. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Richard Breakspear)
We showed you the night lights that Jason Hull (jayfish) makes out of vintage cameras. He has since opened an Etsy store, although the inventory is a little thin so far. But you can make your own! Hull has also posted the process for converting old flash cameras into night lights at Instructables. Link
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Someone
told you that you can't create something out of nothing? Why, sure you
can! At least in the quirky world of quantum physics.
Physicists have created light out of nothing by simulating moving a mirror at nearly the speed of light:
At the heart of the experiment is one of the weirdest, and most important, tenets of quantum mechanics: the principle that empty space is anything but. Quantum theory predicts that a vacuum is actually a writhing foam of particles flitting in and out of existence.
The existence of these particles is so fleeting that they are often described as virtual, yet they can have tangible effects. For example, if two mirrors are placed extremely close together, the kinds of virtual light particles, or photons, that can exist between them can be limited. The limit means that more virtual photons exist outside the mirrors than between them, creating a force that pushes the plates together. This 'Casimir force' is strong enough at short distances for scientists to physically measure it.
For decades, theorists have predicted that a similar effect can be produced in a single mirror that is moving very quickly. According to theory, a mirror can absorb energy from virtual photons onto its surface and then re-emit that energy as real photons. The effect only works when the mirror is moving through a vacuum at nearly the speed of light — which is almost impossible for everyday mechanical devices. [...]
The physicists have managed to build such a "mirror-like" device using quantum electronics, and confirmed the predictions: Link
Image from NeatoShop's Sciencists Do It T-Shirts series: Dyslexic Physicists Do It With Hadrons
Brian Hart creates these really cool light painting photographs by using exposure times up to 20 minutes long. Now that’s what I call bending light! These images are so detailed that I can’t help but wonder what sort of reference he uses while the shutter is open.
One-Minute Physics explains how to break the speed of light by pointing a laser at the moon. I think this boils down to appearance vs. reality, but I may be mistaken. Anyway, it sounds fun to try! -via The Daily What Geek
Scientists at CERN in Geneva are releasing results of an experiment and are asking for scientific reviews. They’ve found that subatomic neutrinos may move faster than photons, which means faster than the speed of light. If all findings are accurate, this would debunk Einstein’s theory of relativity claim that nothing can move faster than light.
Over 3 years, OPERA researchers timed the roughly 16,000 neutrinos that started at CERN and registered a hit in the detector. They found that, on average, the neutrinos made the 730-kilometer, 2.43-millisecond trip roughly 60 nanoseconds* faster than expected if they were traveling at light speed. “It’s a straightforward time-of-flight measurement,” says Antonio Ereditato, a physicist at the University of Bern and spokesperson for the 160-member OPERA collaboration. “We measure the distance and we measure the time, and we take the ratio to get the velocity, just as you learned to do in high school.” Ereditato says the uncertainty in the measurement is 10 nanoseconds.
However, even Ereditato says it’s way too early to declare relativity wrong. “I would never say that,” he says. Rather, OPERA researchers are simply presenting a curious result that they cannot explain and asking the community to scrutinize it. “We are forced to say something,” he says. “We could not sweep it under the carpet because that would be dishonest.” The results will be presented at a seminar tomorrow at CERN.
*60 nanoseconds = 0.00000006 seconds. Double-checking the results must be painstaking.
Last year, the folks at Big Cat Rescue showed us how big cats react to catnip. Here they investigate another burning question: will big cats chase a laser dot the way house cats do? Let’s hide and watch. -via The Daily What
Comments Off Sure, just about everyone who reads has a book light. But do you have a light made of a book? Don’t be sad; neither do I… yet. This video shows the process (rather quickly) on how to build your own cool lamp. For the tutorial, check out Grathio Labs. Link
via Make Online
Darth Vader LEGO Star Wars Key Light – $11.95
Have you been searching the galaxy and galaxies far, far away for the perfect keychain? You need the Darth Vader LEGO Star Wars Key Light from the NeatoShop. Darth Vader’s movable arms and legs makes dancing around the Dark Lord so much fun. This is an impressive, most impressive, keyring.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Star Wars Items.
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They say that something can’t be created out of nothing, but that’s what researchers may have done- sort of. Quantum theory states that even in a vacuum some particles do exist. Testing this, scientists in Sweden claim to have made sparks in a vacuum.
According to quantum theory, empty space is, well, not that empty after all. Rather it is full of virtual particles – particles that quickly blip in and out of existence. Theory states that a mirror can absorb energy from some of these virtual photons, and re-emit it as actual photons. Of course, this only works if the mirror is traveling through the vacuum at nearly the speed of light, making it difficult to prove, to say the least.
Artist Tanya Clarke takes old plumbing fixtures and turns them into light installations! The “drips” are hand-sculpted glass containing energy-efficient LEDs. Link | Product Site -via Dark Roasted Blend
The Gippsland Lakes are a chain of lakes in eastern Victoria, Australia. A combination of fire and floods changed the conditions of the water and led to the proliferation of Synechococcus, a photosynthetic cyanobacteria. But that wasn’t what knocked everyone’s socks off.
As summer took hold at the end of 2008, what happened surprised everyone – a new species called Noctiluca Scintillans began to prosper, by feeding on the Synechococcus.
In contrast to the widespread bright green of the Synechococcus, Noctiluca Scintillans was visible during the day as localised murky red patches, often building up on sections of shoreline facing the wind during the day. At night though, Noctiluca Scintillans produced a remarkable form of bioluminescence (popularly referred to as ‘phosphorescence’) – the water glowing brightly wherever there was movement – in the waves breaking on the shore, in ripples in the water and wherever people played in the water.
See more pictures of this phenomena at Phil’s Blog. Link -via Monkeyfilter
German designer Manfred Kielnhofer designed this chair of plexiglass and light tubes. What an eye catcher!
Light art object or cosy chair? Get two features in one. Once put in the lobby, in the hall or in your shop – the interlux (or plexi-tube) chair will be the perfect eye catcher.
You can also change the light tubes easily – so you can change the colours and enjoy different atmospheres. Try a fresh green in spring, a warm orange in autumn and a golden shine at Christmas!
More photos of the interlux chair are included in a page about Kielnhofer’s similar chair made of tubes fashioned from recycled newspapers. Link
Sex In Progress Light - $19.95
The Sex In Progress Light from the NeatoShop is the perfect Valentine’s day gift for someone who is :
A. feeling Frisky
B. perpetually optimistic
C. feels the need to announce to the world that he got lucky
D. all of the above.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Valentine’s Day foolishness.
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Animals use a lot of things to defend themselves: skunks use bad odor, armadillos use their tough leathery armor shell, and porcupines use their sharp quills.
But scientists studying the clusterwink snail have discovered what could be the strangest defensive weapon used by an animal: light.
Dimitri Deheyn and Nerida Wilson of Scripps Oceanography (Wilson is now at the Australian Museum in Sydney) studied a species of "clusterwink snail," a small marine snail typically found in tight clusters or groups at rocky shorelines. These snails were known to produce light, but the researchers discovered that rather than emitting a focused beam of light, the animal uses its shell to scatter and spread bright green bioluminescent light in all directions.
The researchers, who describe their findings in the Dec. 15 online version of Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences), say the luminous displays of Hinea brasiliana could be a deterrent to ward off potential predators by using diffused bioluminescent light to create an illusion of a larger animal.
See also: 10 of the Most Bizarre Animal Defense Mechanisms over at WebEcoist
Bang Goes the Theory is a popular science show on BBC One. In this clip, host Jem Stansfield visited the Solar Furnace Research Facility in France and witnessed how much power can be generated from 2 square meters of sunlight when it’s all focused on one small spot.
via Make
Artist Robert Mathy created “Light Sensitive Fingertips” — a musical instrument that has light sensitive phototransistors in the tips of the fingers. It’s played by moving the sensors over light sources of varying intensity:
Light, emitted by the displays of activated mobile phones, functions as the origin of the sounds. As each mobile phone’s display generates a different light frequency, each results in an audio signal with a different pitch. In addition, other electronic devices, such as flashing bicycle lights, can be used to generate rhythmic tones.
In the links, you can find a video of Mathy playing this instrument.
Link via GearFuse | Video | Photo: Robert Mathy
When you get up in the dark of the night, what is it that you really need to see? The toilet! LavNav lights up only the toilet, so you can see where you are “going”. It’s motion-triggered, which saves batteries, and glows red when the seat is up and green when the seat is down. What will they think of next? Link -via the Presurfer
Here’s a pretty nifty night light for LEGO lovers: the LEGO Brick Light ($15.95) is a portable LED light that can be attached to walls, under shelves or anywhere light is needed. The unit easily detaches from the mount just like a regular LEGO brick.
From the NeatoShop: Link | More LEGO lights
New Zealand design studio 326 created a lamp out of a drum on a stand. To turn it on and off, all you have to do is tap on it: Link (with video clip) – via Notcot
When it comes to light, scientists have found that plants can "think" and "remember" in ways very similar to our own nervous system:
In their experiment, the scientists showed that light shone on to one leaf caused the whole plant to respond.
And the response, which took the form of light-induced chemical reactions in the leaves, continued in the dark.
This showed, they said, that the plant "remembered" the information encoded in light.
"We shone the light only on the bottom of the plant and we observed changes in the upper part," explained Professor Stanislaw Karpinski from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences in Poland, who led this research.
Fard is an animated short directed by Luis Bricenco and David Alapont. It’s in French with no subtitles, but the plot is visual. The action really gets going about four minutes in. The style and effects make it quite memorable. Link -via Metafilter
Some people (up to 24% in one survey) tend to sneeze when they are exposed to bright light. A new name for this reflex is Autosomal Cholinergic Helio-Ophtalmologic Outburst syndrome, or ACHOO for short. Har har. The same researchers who came up with this acronym compared EEGs of people who sneezed as response to light and those who don’t. The subjects also filled out a questionnaire designed to stimulate brain activity, and also to find out how much their noses tickled in response to light. Bursts of light accompanied the EEGs.
You can see the red line above showing the photo sneezers had much higher nose-tickle response to bright light, and showed stronger activity in the somatosensory cortex, an area that processes sensory information. So it appears that people with ACHOO Syndrome have higher sensory responses to both the tickle sensation and to the visual stimulus of the bright light.
Unfortunately, they weren’t able to come up with a connection between the two areas and a sneeze reflex center (we’re not that good yet), but it’s certainly a first step, and the hypothesis is that the insula, may link the areas, though other pathways could exist as well (the insula is totally everyone’s favorite brain area right now, ain’t it?).
Could it possibly be that some people are just more sensitive than others? Link
This looks way cool. You can ignite the particles in a stream of smoke! It’s not so cool when you think about how this would work in a burning house. -via reddit
Now here’s a clever lamp, with a light bulb as a wrecking ball! It’s made of solid bronze. See it and a companion piece the Crane Lamp at Designboom. Link -via Laughing Squid
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Did you know there’s a word for those stunning light beams that shoot through trees, clouds and stained glass windows? I sure didn’t, but apparently the proper term is Crepuscular Rays and Environmental Graffiti has a great collection of photos that have perfectly captured these beams of light.
Link Image by Mila Zinkova
Neatorama has pointed out great works of light painting before, but Darcy Pendergrast of Dee Pee Studios has made one of the best videos of the artform around.
Lucky by All India Radio, is the viewable blood, sweat and tears of Australian based animation company ‘Dee Pee Studios’.
It involves a painstaking animation technique, whereby the team paints in the air with glow sticks, frame after to frame to create entire sequences of animation, usually taking a whole night to shoot.
Link to Artist’s Site.
Points for you if you already understand this physics-based bumper sticker. The effect is called blue shift. From Wikipedia:
Blue shift is the shortening of a transmitted signal’s wavelength, and/or an increase in its frequency, due to the Doppler Effect, which indicates that the object is moving toward the observer. The name comes from the fact that the shorter-wavelength end of the optical spectrum is the blue (or violet) end, hence, when visible light is compacted in wavelength, it is shifted towards the “blue” end of the spectrum. Since the longer-wavelength end of the visible electromagnetic spectrum is red, the opposite effect, of a lengthening of a signal’s wavelength, is referred to as redshifting.
While the terms “redshifting” and “blueshifting” imply significantly redder or bluer light, only the most distant galaxies and those moving at speeds far above average emit light that arrives with perceptible red or blue tinges. For the most part, shifting is not a visible phenomenon.[1]
