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No, it can’t. Microwaves work by speeding up atoms in an object, thus generating heat. “Microwaves can only speed up atoms, not slow them down,” writes Sandeep Ravindran of Popular Science. But Ravindran was curious about whether it would be possible to build a reverse microwave — a device that can instantly chill an object:
Scientists do have a high-tech method for slowing atoms, however: lasers. Shoot a moving atom with a laser, and it will absorb the laser’s photons and re-emit them every which way, causing the atom to hold nearly still. Placing an atom at the junction of multiple beams can slow its momentum in all directions, decreasing its energy and cooling it.
This drops an atom’s temperature a couple hundred degrees Fahrenheit—much colder than anything you’d want to put in your mouth—in less than a second. But because it works most efficiently on low-density gases of atoms of a single element, physicist Mark Raizen of the University of Texas doesn’t think it will be useful for cooling food anytime soon: “Not unless you can subsist on a thousand sodium atoms.”
Link | Photo: NASA
Sandeep Ravindran writes in Popular Science that a Swiss violin maker treated a new violin with a unique fungus. The result was that the new violin beat a Stradivarius in a listening test:
A jury of experts, as well as the conference attendees, judged the tone quality of the violins, and the ultimate winner was “Opus 58″ — one of the fungus-infected violins. 90 of the 180 attendees voted for it, with the Stradivarius coming in second with 39 votes. 113 members guessed that “Opus 58″ was actually the Strad.
The wood in “Opus 58″ was treated with a fungus for the longest time: 9 months. Fungal infections are generally thought to damage wood, but results published by Francis Schwarze last year suggested that some types of soft rot fungi reduced the density of the wood, making it lighter and improving its tonal quality, without impairing its firmness. Fungi may thus help artificially replicate the unusually low density of wood that is thought to have occurred in Stradivarius’ time. The “Little Ice Age” that occurred at this time brought about long winters and cool summers in Central Europe, causing trees to grow slowly and uniformly and creating wood with great tonal qualities.
Image: U.S. Department of the Interior
