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Speed of Light Lingers in Face of New Camera - Işık Hızında Çalışan Bir Fotoğraf Makinesi

More than 70 years ago, the M.I.T. electrical engineer Harold (Doc) Edgerton began using strobe lights to create remarkable photographs: a bullet stopped in flight as it pierced an apple, the coronet created by the splash of a drop of milk.

Di Wu and Andreas Velten, MIT Media Lab

SLOW DOWN M.I.T.'s camera captures light particles seemingly in motion by using repeated exposures, creating a “movie” of a nanosecond-long event.

Now scientists at M.I.T.’s Media Lab are using an ultrafast imaging systemto capture light itself as it passes through liquids and objects, in effect snapping a picture in less than two-trillionths of a second.

The project began as a whimsical effort to literally see around corners — by capturing reflected light and then computing the paths of the returning light, thereby building images coming from rooms that would otherwise not be directly visible.

“When I said I wanted to build a camera that looks around corners, my colleagues said, ‘Pick something that is more safe for your tenure,’ ” said Ramesh Raskar, an associate professor of media arts and sciences at the Media Lab. “Now I have tenure, so I can say this is not so crazy.”

Dr. Raskar enlisted colleagues from the chemistry department to modify a “streak tube,” a supersensitive piece of laboratory equipment that scans and captures light. Streak tubes are generally used to intensify streams of photons into streams of electrons. They are fast enough to record the progress of packets of laser light fired repeatedly into a bottle filled with a cloudy fluid.

The instrument is normally used to measure laboratory phenomena that take place in an ultra-short timeframe. Typically, it offers researchers information on intensity, position and wavelength in the form of data, not an image.

By modifying the equipment, the researchers were able to create slow-motion movies, showing what appears to be a bullet of light that moves from one end of the bottle to the other. The pulses of laser light enter through the bottom and travel to the cap, generating a conical shock wave that bounces off the sides of the bottle as the bullet passes.

The streak tube scans and captures light in much the same way a cathode ray tube emits and paints an image on the inside of a computer monitor. Each horizontal line is exposed for just 1.71 picoseconds, or trillionths of a second, Dr. Raskar said — enough time for the laser beam to travel less than half a millimeter through the fluid inside the bottle.

To create a movie of the event, the researchers record about 500 frames in just under a nanosecond, or a billionth of a second. Because each individual movie has a very narrow field of view, they repeat the process a number of times, scanning it vertically to build a complete scene that shows the beam moving from one end of the bottle, bouncing off the cap and then scattering back through the fluid. If a bullet were tracked in the same fashion moving through the same fluid, the resulting movie would last three years.

“You can think of it as slow motion,” Andreas Velten, a postdoctoral researcher who is a member of the design team, said during a recent technical presentation. “It is so much slow motion you can see the light itself move. This is the speed of light: there’s nothing in the universe that moves faster.”

Dr. Raskar says the technology has a variety of promising commercial applications. Last year, for example, one of his graduate students, Jaewon Kim, published a thesis envisioning portable CAT-scanning devices.

Dr. Raskar said he could also envision smartphone software that would capture and interpret reflections from, say, fruit. “Imagine if you have this in your phone about 10 years from now,” he said. “You will be able to go to your supermarket and tell if your fruit is ripe.”

Until now, picosecond speeds have largely been the province of an elite group of scientists clustered at the nation’s weapons laboratories.

At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Gary Jones is an optical physicist who builds ultrafast imaging systems that help characterize the first microseconds of events like laser fusion and nuclear explosions. “To get a two-dimensional image within a picosecond means you have to have a lot of electronics moving really fast,” he said.

For Dr. Raskar — who optimistically calls the project “femto photography,” using the term for quadrillionths of a second — it is about more than just engineering or science. “We were inspired by looking at the world in a unique way just because we could,” he said.

The system allows the naked eye to see information that has until now been rendered as data and charts. The proper analogy is to the way astronomers use instruments like radiotelescopes to create images with “fake” colors to see things in new ways — or to the original inspiration of Eadweard Muybridge, the 19th-century British photographer who achieved a new understanding of a horse’s gait by creating a camera array with electromagnetic shutters set off by tripwires.

“We’re still trying to get our heads around what this means,” Dr. Raskar said, “because no one has been able to see the world in this way before.”

By JOHN MARKOFF

Published: December 12, 2011

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Massachusetts Teknoloji Enstitüsü'nün Medya Laboratuarındaki araştırmacılar, ışığı sıvıların ve objelerin içinden geçerken yakalamak için ultra hızlı bir görüntüleme sistemi kullanıyor. Bu teknikle saniyenin trilyonda ikisinden az bir sürede resim çekebiliyorlar. Proje aslında "görülemeyeni görmek" yönünde tuhaf bir çaba olarak başladı. Amaç, yansıyan ışığı yakalamak ve ardından ışığın geri dönüş yollarını hesaplayıp başka türlü görülemeyecek odalarda bulunanları görüntülemekti. Medya Laboratuarı'nda medya sanatları ve bilimleri doçenti Ramesh Raskar, "Görülemeyeni gören bir kamera yapmak istediğimi söylediğimde, meslektaşlarım 'Üniversitede sürekli bir pozisyon istiyorsan başka bir konu seç' dediler. Şimdi sürekli bir pozisyonum var ve bu yüzden yaptığımın o kadar da çılgınca olmadığını söyleyebilirim" diyor. Raskar ışığı tarayıp yakalayan süper hassas bir laboratuar gereci olan "ışın tüpü"nü modifiye etmek için kimya bölümünden yardım aldı. Işın tüpleri, genelde foton akımlarını elektron akımları halinde yoğunlaştırmak için kullanılıyor. Bu tüpler, bulanık bir sıvıyla doldurulmuş bir şişenin içine tekrar tekrar verilen lazer ışığının ilerlemesini kaydedecek kadar hızlı. Söz konusu gereç normalde, çok kısa bir zaman aralığında gerçekleşen laboratuar deneylerini ölçmek için kullanılıyor.

Tipik olarak, araştırmacılara yoğunluk, konum ve dalga boyuna dair veri sunuyor ancak görüntü sunmuyor. Araştırmacılar ısın tüpünü modifiye ederek şişenin bir ucundan diğer ucuna hareket eden bir ışık atımının nasıl göründüğünü gösteren ağır çekim filmler oluşturmayı başardılar. Lazer ışığı atımları şişenin içinden geçerek uca doğru ilerliyor, bu da atım geçerken şişenin yanlarına çarpıp seken konik bir şok dalgası üretiyor. Işın tüpü ışığı, bir katot ışın tüpünün görüntüyü çıkarıp bilgisayar ekranına çizmesiyle hemen hemen benzer şekilde tarıyor ve yakalıyor. Her bir yatay ışık çizgisi sadece 1.71 pikosaniye (saniyenin trilyonda biri) beliriyor. Raskar'a göre bu, lazer ışınının sıvı boyunca yarım milimetre gitmesi için yeterli zaman. Olayı görüntülemek için araştırmacılar bir nanosaniyenin (veya saniyenin milyarda birinin) biraz altında 500'e yakın kareyi kaydediyor.

Her filmin dar bir görüntü alanı olduğu için, süreci belli sayıda tekrarlayarak, ışının şişenin bir ucundan hareket ettiğini, diğer uca çarptığını ve gerisin geri sıvının içinde dağıldığını gösteren bütünlüklü bir sahne oluşturacak şekilde süreci şişe boyunca tekrarlıyorlar. Bir atım, sıvı boyunca hareket ederken takip edilseydi, ortaya çıkan film üç yıl uzunluğunda olurdu. Tasarım ekibinin üyesi olan Yardımcı Doçent Andreas Velten, "Bunu bir ağır çekim olarak düşünebilirsiniz. O kadar ağır bir çekim ki, bizzat ışığın hareketini görebiliyorsunuz. Evrende daha hızlı hareket eden başka bir şey yok" diyor.

Raskar teknolojinin potansiyeli olan ticari uygulamaları olduğunu söylüyor. Sözgelimi geçen yıl yüksek lisans öğrencilerinden biri taşınabilir CAT tarama aygıtları tasarlayan bir tez yayınlamış. R askar, meyvelerden gelen yansımaları yakalayıp yorumlayacak akıllı telefon yazılımı da tasarlanabileceğini söylüyor. "10 yıl sonra telefonunuzda böyle bir şey olduğunu düşünün. Süpermarketinize gidip meyvenin olgun olup olmadığını anlayabileceksiniz."

Bugüne kadar pikosaniye hızları büyük oranda ülkenin silah laboratuarlarında çalışan seçkin bir bilim insanları grubunun alanıydı. Raskar için (ki projeyi, saniyenin kuadrilyonda biri için kullanılan terim üzerinden "femto fotoğrafçılık" diye adlandırıyor) bu mühendislikten veya bilimden öte bir konu. "Dünyaya eşi benzeri olmayan bir şekilde bakmak bize ilham verdi. Bu deneyi sadece yapabildiğimiz i çin y aptık" d iyor v e ekliyor: "Hâlâ bunun ne anlama geldiğini idrak etmeye çalışıyoruz, çünkü kimse daha önce dünyayı bu şekilde görebilme şansına sahip olmadı."

Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light, According to One Experiment

If it's true, it will mark the biggest discovery in physics in the past half-century: Elusive, nearly massless subatomic particles called neutrinos appear to travel just faster than light, a team of physicists in Europe reports. If so, the observation would wreck Einstein's theory of special relativity, which demands that nothing can travel faster than light.

In fact, the result would be so revolutionary that it's sure to be met with skepticism all over the world. "I suspect that the bulk of the scientific community will not take this as a definitive result unless it can be reproduced by at least one and preferably several experiments," says V. Alan Kostelecky, a theorist at Indiana University, Bloomington. He adds, however, "I'd be delighted if it were true."

The data come from a 1300-metric-ton particle detector named Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus (OPERA). Lurking in Italy's subterranean Gran Sasso National Laboratory, OPERA detects neutrinos that are fired through the earth from the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. As the particles hardly interact at all with other matter, they stream right through the ground, with only a very few striking the material in the detector and making a noticeable shower of particles.

Fat lady singing? The OPERA particle detector may have spotted neutrinos traveling faster than light, which would bring down the curtain on special relativity as an exact theory. Credit: OPERA collaboration

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.

The big question is whether OPERA researchers have discovered particles going faster than light, or whether they have been misled by an unidentified "systematic error" in their experiment that's making the time look artificially short. Chang Kee Jung, a neutrino physicist at Stony Brook University in New York, says he'd wager that the result is the product of a systematic error. "I wouldn't bet my wife and kids because they'd get mad," he says. "But I'd bet my house."

Jung, who is U.S. spokesperson for a similar experiment in Japan called T2K, says the tricky part is accurately measuring the time between when the neutrinos are born by slamming a burst of protons into a solid target and when they actually reach the detector. That timing relies on the global positioning system, and the GPS measurements can have uncertainties of tens of nanoseconds. "I would be very interested in how they got a 10-nanosecond uncertainty, because from the systematics of GPS and the electronics, I think that's a very hard number to get."

No previous measurements obviously rule out the result, says Kostelecky, who has spent 25 years developing a theory, called the standard model extension, that accounts for all possible types of violations of special relativity in the context of particle physics. "If you had told me that there was a claim of faster-than-light electrons, I would be a lot more skeptical," he says. The possibilities for neutrinos are less constrained by previous measurements, he says.

Still, Kostelecky repeats the old adage: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Even Ereditato says that one measurement does not extraordinary evidence make.

by Adrian Cho on 22 September 2011, 2:28 PM

Carbon Nanotubes Boost Power of Lithium Battery

A new battery demonstrated a power output 10 times higher, for its size, than what is expected of a conventional rechargeable lithium battery.
Imagine that the same rechargeable battery in your cell phone could power a device that requires 10 times the energy. That possibility may be closer than you think.

A battery created by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrated an increased capacity for charge by roughly a third and a power output 10 times higher, for its size, than what is expected of a conventional rechargeable lithium battery. The results were published yesterday in Nature Nanotechnology.

The research team, led by Yang Shao-Horn, an associate professor of materials science and mechanical engineering, and Paula Hammond, professor of chemical engineering at MIT, achieved this by creating an entirely new kind of electrode -- in this case, by modifying the positive end of the conventional battery, which is called the cathode.

The collaboration began through graduate student Seung Woo Lee, studying fuel cells, who was advised by both Shao-Horn and Hammond. Lee defended his doctoral dissertation this spring.

Using commercially available carbon nanotubes -- hollow cylinders 50,000 times thinner than a human hair but composed of carbon atoms -- the team fabricated the cathode entirely out of the nanotubes put down in layers.

The large surface area of a nanotube allows it to store more charge than other types of carbon, such as graphite, but previous battery fabrication methods tended to obscure these surfaces.

Using the exposed surfaces allows more charge to be stored -- increasing capacity -- while also letting those charges migrate more easily -- increasing power.

The findings of this research challenge the conventional wisdom about what materials could be used in the cathode of a battery. It also stimulates discussion about what such powerful batteries could be used for.

Small scale experiments so far

Increased power output makes for a great capacitor as well, by efficiently storing charge and delivering that energy precisely when it is needed. Their work, Shao-Horn said, could "lead to a device with performance that bridges batteries and electrochemical capacitors."

So far, the thickest cathode the group has made for these experiments is only 3 micrometers -- 3 one-thousandths of a millimeter. This is tiny when compared to conventional lithium-ion batteries that have electrodes roughly 100 to 200 micrometers thick.

In their present form, Shao-Horn said, their cathode "could be ideal for microelectronic devices."
But these battery-capacitors are also useful in a number of other applications such as emergency power, "energy capture and power assist in cars, trucks and machinery requiring many start-stop cycles," said Shao-Horn. Successfully scaling up this design could dramatically reduce the inefficiencies in future lithium-ion batteries.

However, Shao-Horn preferred to err on the side of caution when peering into the future of this new technology, saying they are only just beginning to understand the underlying chemistry involved.
"Further work is required," said Shao-Horn, "to demonstrate that power and energy performance is maintained with thicker electrodes." A crucial next step of this research is to demonstrate an electrode with a thickness of 50 micrometers -- more than 10 times the size of what they made for their experiments.

The next phase is scaling it up

Doing so would allow the researchers to test whether the electrical properties of the carbon nanotubes can be successfully scaled up to greater and greater thicknesses. Potentially, Shao-Horn said, there is "no limit" on thickness. But in order to do this, Hammond's expertise in biomaterials will be essential.

The layer-by-layer fabrication technique used to make the 3-micrometer-thick carbon nanotube electrode described in the published paper was an extremely time-consuming process. For each layer of nanotubes, a sample had to be dipped into a solution awash with nanotubes.

Then, covered in the solution, the sample had to be left out for 15 to 20 minutes as gravity slowly pulled the nanotubes down through the liquid and onto the sample surface. This procedure had to be repeated about 400 times in order to pile up enough layers to reach a thickness of 3 micrometers.

To bring the layering process up to reasonable, commercially viable speeds, Hammond is appropriating an automatic spray technique she developed for producing layers of polymer materials.

"The spray method is 40 to 100 times faster," she said, taking only seconds to lay down each new layer of nanotubes rather than the 15 to 20 minutes it normally takes. The true test will come once much thicker electrodes are tested.
Other battery research from Shao-Horn's group has been highlighted in other ClimateWire stories.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
By Darius Dixon and Climatewire | June 22, 2010

NanoCamo Is the Next Small Thing in Fashion

A new nanoassembly technique could make chameleon-like camouflage possible.

By using specially-designed proteins as nanomotors, Sandia National Laboratory researchers have created a system that can assemble quantum dots into bright, fluorescent rings. In this video, you can watch the formation of those rings, which are about five microns across, less than a tenth of the width of a human hair.
If these quantum dots were embedded on the surface of an object, the formation of the rings would cause the object to change color to the naked eye. Reverse the process and the color would change back. That raises the possibility of fast color changes of the sort that some animals use to blend in with their environments.
“Camouflage outfits that blend with a variety of environments without need of an outside power source — say, blue when at sea and then brown in a desert environment — is where this work could eventually lead,” George Bachand, the principal investigator at Sandia said in a press release.
But that’s probably a decade or more away, Bachand said.

Nobel Worthy: Best Graphene Close-Ups

Sorry diamond lovers, but graphene is the most awesome form of carbon out there. Evidence: Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, the two scientists who isolated one-atom-thick sheets of the stuff in 2004, won the Nobel Prize this morning -- netting themselves a pot of 10 million Swedish kroner (about $1.49 million).
Despite its razor-thin makeup, graphene is one of the strongest, lightest and most conductive materials known to humankind. It’s also 97.3 percent transparent, but looks really cool under powerful microscopes. We’ve corralled some of the best shots here, with a bonus video of graphene being punished by an electron beam.

Mmmm... Graphene Cake

Theoretical physicist Philip Russell Wallace predicted graphene’s existence in 1947, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that scientists began looking for it in earnest. Forty years later, researchers practically wrote off isolating single-layer graphene. If the hexagonal layers didn’t roll up into buckeyballs or nanotubes, so the thinking went, they’d disintegrate entirely.
Geim and Novoselov persisted, however, and figured out how to isolate it using objects common to any office: Scotch tape and graphite, which is found in pencil leads.
At the top-right of this image is a 10-micron-wide, 30-layer-thick slice of graphene sheets.

Image: Science

Between the Graphene Sheets

The problem with seeing a single sheet of graphene is that it’s practically invisible.
To prove in 2004 that they’d isolated one using the tape-and-graphite method, Keim and Novoselov peeled off a single flake of graphene and stuck it onto silicon dioxide (the same stuff used to make semiconductors in electronics). Similar to how a sheen of oil becomes visible in a rainbow of colors on water, the combination of graphene on oxidized silicon revealed the flake in an electron microscope.

Image: Science

There's a Hole in My Graphene

Graphene may be the strongest carbon-based material, period, but it can’t stop a beam of electrons.
In this video, Berkeley Lab scientists subject an unsuspecting sheet of graphene to the punishment of a powerful electron beam. The beam punched a hole in the graphene, causing individual carbon atoms to scramble for a spot to stick at the hole's edge.

Video/image: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Pounding the Graphene Skins

Graphene drum? Check. Laser microphone? Check. Rock on.

In a 2007 test of graphene’s ability to resonate, researchers at Pomona College in California and Cornell University in New York stretched a 2-nanometer-wide ribbon of graphene over a silicon dioxide trench, then used an electrode to vibrate the sheet.

Image: Science

Graphene Bubble

Graphene is made up of carbon arranged into chicken-wire-like hexagonal rings, yet the bonds between any carbon atoms can stretch up to 20 percent. The arrangement may seem innocuous, yet it paves the way for quantum mechanical weirdness to manifest itself.

Case in point: When scientists sandwiched graphene onto platinum, then popped out a microscopic bubble, electrons in the graphene sheet behaved as if they were being punished by a magnetic field stronger than any ever produced in a laboratory. No magnetic field was in sight, so the effect was called (naturally) pseudo-magnetism.

Image: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Ribbons 'O Graphene

To say graphene conducts electricity well is a gross understatement. The electrons buzzing around graphene’s carbon atoms are unusually free to roam and behave more like massless pieces of light called photons. This allows graphene to be used like a high-performance transistor capable of operating at speeds 100 to 1,000 times faster than silicon-based transistors.

Trouble is, graphene moves electrons around a little too well. The threshold between graphene’s on/off state is exceedingly small, causing it to conduct electricity even in an “off” state. By growing micron-thin ribbons of graphene (above) instead of full sheets, however, chemists like Hongjie Dai at Stanford University have raised that threshold more than 10,000 times. Further improvements could lead to high-speed graphene-powered electronics.

Image: Hongjie Dai/Stanford University

Graphene Transistor

Capitalizing on graphene’s electrical awesomeness, HRL Laboratories (owned by Boeing and General Motors) built the world’s first functional radio frequency (RF) transistor using graphene in 2008. The tiny device, known as an RF field-effect transistor, can pick up radio frequencies while hardly gobbling any electrical power.

The company has since scaled up a full-size chip of the transistors, but alleged practical uses in imaging and communications remain to be seen.

Image: HRL Laboratories
By Dave Mosher

October 5, 2010

New X-ray Camera Sees Through Melting Metal

A new high-speed X-ray video camera, now the fastest in the world, can see through molten metal and watch weld-weakening flaws form in real-time.

The $670,000 device successfully captured X-ray footage on Nov. 23 at 5,000 frames-per-second (fps), or five times faster than previous X-ray cameras (and 83 times faster than a consumer camcorder). The high-speed video above shows a laser welding solid aluminum in visible light, followed by the new X-ray-light welding clips.

“With visible light, we could only see the surface of the welding process. You couldn’t see what was happening inside,” said Felix Abt, one of the camera’s designers at the University of Stuttgart. “The only way to see pores that weaken weld seams was to cut the metal into pieces.”

Automotive companies use robots equipped with high-powered lasers to seam cars together with extreme speed and precision. As laser welding continues to get “more powerful, move faster, go deeper” and increase in use, Abt says, it’s increasingly important to understand the dynamics involved.

“Laser welding creates very high-pressure, high-velocity, fluctuating environments. You’re boiling metal that’s cooling almost instantly,” Abt said. “This leads to instabilities that weaken your weld.”

To capture the welding process in action, Abt and his colleague Rudolph Weber use an industrial-strength 4-kilowatt laser, which is roughly 400,000 times more powerful than a DVD drive’s beam. As their laser pummels a hunk of metal moving on a track, a tube fires X-rays through the weld and toward a high-speed video camera.

As a frame of reference, the first clip shows 10,000 fps visible light footage zoomed in on a small 10-by-5-millimeter frame. The fuzzy 1,000 fps and 5,000 fps clips that follow are the new ones filmed in X-ray light.
“The white structure on left is where the laser hits. That’s a capillary of metallic steam,” Abt said, noting aluminum boils at 4,400 degrees Fahrenheit. Whitish globules that break off the capillary are weld-weakening pores that cool in a matter of microseconds.

The new X-ray footage isn’t pretty, Abt says, but in a few months he and Weber will tune the camera to increase its clarity. They also plan to imbue welding samples with tracer materials, such as tungsten carbide, that absorb X-rays and improve image contrast.
“This is really only the beginning, but we now have the ability to watch processes that lead to porosity in real time while we’re welding,” Abt said.

Video: A 4-kilowatt laser melts solid aluminum. The first clip is 10,000 fps in visible light, followed by 1,000 fps and 5,000 fps in X-ray light. Credit: Felix Abt, Rudolph Weber/University of Stuttgart
Image: The device Abt and Weber constructed to record laser welding in X-ray light. The laser hangs from the ceiling, the X-ray cathode is on the left (as the welding itself doesn’t produce X-rays) and the digital video camera is on the right. An exhaust vent pulls fumes away from the rig during welding and a track below moves a metal sample during recording. Credit: Felix Abt/University of Stuttgart

Navy’s Mach 8 Railgun Obliterates Record

There wasn’t much left of the 23-pound bullet, just a scalded piece of squat metal. That’s what happens when an enormous electromagnetic gun sends its ammo rocketing 5,500 feet in a single second.

The gun that fired the bullet is the Navy’s experimental railgun. The gun has no moving parts or propellants — just a king-sized burst of energy that sends a projectile flying. And today its parents at the Office of Naval Research sent 33 megajoules through it, setting a new world record and making it the most powerful railgun ever developed.

Reporters were invited to watch the test at the Dalghren Naval Surface Warfare Center. A tangle of two-inch thick coaxial cables hooked up to stacks of refrigerator-sized capacitors took five minutes to power juice into a gun the size of a schoolbus built in a warehouse. With a 1.5-million-ampere spark of light and a boom audible in a room 50 feet away, the bullet left the gun at a speed of Mach 8.

All that energy was “dump[ed] in 10 milliseconds,” says Charles Garrett, project manager at Dahlgren for the railgun.

But since there no explosion powering the projectile, why should the railgun have made any noise at all? Answer: the bullet went so fast it released a sonic boom.

Since 2005, the Navy has spent $211 million testing whether it can harness electromagnetic energy into a gun. The ultimate goal is to fire the gun at 64 megajoules, making it capable of sending a bullet 200 miles in six minutes. That’s 10 times farther than the Navy’s already-powerful guns can fire, keeping its ships far out of range of enemy anti-ship systems.

The Navy wants to put the railgun on a ship and power it through the ship’s batteries, something that’ll take years to develop. And since the gun’s power can be adjusted — it depends only on the batteries and the capacitors on board a ship, railgun scientists explained — it could theoretically be used to stop cruise missiles or even ballistic missiles.

That’s still a long way off. The Office of Science and Technology will keep running tests until 2017, largely for “thermal management,” says program manager Roger Ellis, basically to ensure that the materials used for the gun don’t get as fried as the bullet under the intense power generated. The Navy guesstimates that it’ll be ready for shipboard defense between 2020 and 2025.

Oh, and the last record holder for most powerful railgun? The same gun when it fired off a shot using 10.64 megajoules two years ago.

By Spencer Ackerman December 10, 2010

Laser Light Can Lift Tiny Objects

Light has been put to work generating the same force that makes airplanes fly, a study appearing online December 5 in Nature Photonics shows. With the right design, a uniform stream of light has pushed tiny objects in much the same way that an airplane wing hoists a 747 off the ground.

Researchers have known for a long time that blasting an object with light can push the object away. That’s the idea behind solar sails, which harness radiation for propulsion in space, for instance. “The ability of light to push on something is known,” says study coauthor Grover Swartzlander of the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.

Light’s new trick is fancier than a boring push: It created the more complicated force called lift, evident when a flow in one direction moves an object perpendicularly. Airfoils generate lift; as an engine propels a plane forward, its cambered wings cause it to rise.

Lightfoils aren’t about to keep an Airbus aloft for the time it takes to fly from JFK to LAX. But arrays of the tiny devices might be used to power micromachines, transport tiny particles or even enable better steering methods on solar sails.

Optical lift is “a really neat idea,” says physicist Miles Padgett of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, but it’s too early to say how the effect might be harnessed. “Maybe it’s useful, maybe it’s not. Time will tell.”
That light can have this unexpected lift effect started with a very simple question, Swartzlander says: “If we have something in the shape of a wing and we shine light through it, what happens?” Modeling experiments told the researchers that an asymmetrical deflection of light would create a surprisingly stable lift force. “So we thought we’d better do an experiment,” Swartzlander says. “Because this just looks too pretty.”

The researchers created tiny rods shaped kind of like airplane wings — flat on one side and rounded on the other. When these micron-sized lightfoils were immersed in water and hit with 130 milliwatts of light from the bottom of the chamber, they started to move up, as expected. But the rods also began moving to the side, a direction perpendicular to the incoming light. Tiny symmetrical spheres didn’t exhibit this lift effect, the team found.
Optical lift is different from the aerodynamic lift created by an airfoil. A plane flies because air flowing faster under its wing exerts more pressure than air flowing above. But in a lightfoil, the lift is created inside the object as the beam shines through. The shape of the transparent lightfoil causes light to be refracted differently depending on where it goes through, which causes a corresponding bending of the beam’s momentum that creates lift.

These lightfoils’ lift angles were about 60 degrees, the team found. “Most aerodynamic things take off at very gradual angles, but this has a very striking, very powerful lift angle,” Swartzlander says. “You can imagine what would happen if your airplane took off at 60 degrees — your stomach would be in your feet.”
As the rods lift, they shouldn’t stall out, the paper predicts. “The subtlety is that it actually self-stabilizes,” Padgett says. “It twists a little bit one way, and you think, ‘Oh dear, it’ll stop working,’ then the light rotates it back again.”
Swartzlander says he hopes to ultimately test the lightfoils in air, too, and try different shapes and materials with various refractive properties. In the study, the researchers used ultraviolet light to generate the lift, but other kinds of light would work just as well, Swartzlander says. “The beautiful thing about this is that it would work as long as you have light.”

Video: Riding a beam of light, a tiny particle thousandths of millimeters in size is pushed sideways by the same force that keeps airplanes aloft. Credit: Swartzlander et al.

Laura Sanders, Science News December 6, 2010 - Wired Mag.

See Also http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/67050/title/Light_can_generate_lift

Antimatter held for questioning

Magnetically trapped atoms could test fundamental physics.
Eugenie Samuel Reich

For physicists, a bit of antimatter is a precious gift indeed. By comparing matter to its counterpart, they can test fundamental symmetries that lie at the heart of the standard model of particle physics, and look for hints of new physics beyond. Yet few gifts are as tricky to wrap. Bring a particle of antimatter into contact with its matter counterpart and the two annihilate in a flash of energy.

Now a research collaboration at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland, has managed, 38 times, to confine single antihydrogen atoms in a magnetic trap for more than 170 milliseconds. The group reported the result in Nature online on 17 November¹. "We're ecstatic. This is five years of hard work," says Jeffrey Hangst, spokesman for the ALPHA collaboration at CERN.

The electrodes (gold) of the trap used to combine positrons and antiprotons to form antihydrogen. N. MADSEN, ALPHA/SWANSEA

An antihydrogen atom is made from a negatively charged antiproton and a positively charged positron, the antimatter counterpart of the electron. The objective — both for ALPHA and for a competing CERN experiment called ATRAP — is to compare the energy levels in antihydrogen with those of hydrogen, to confirm that antimatter particles experience the same electromagnetic forces as matter particles, a key premise of the standard model. "The goal is to study antihydrogen and you can't do it without trapping it," says Cliff Surko, an antimatter researcher at the University of California, San Diego. "This is really a big deal."
The ALPHA claim is the first major advance since the creation of thousands of antihydrogen atoms in 2002 by a forerunner experiment called ATHENA² and by ATRAP³ (see 'A brief history of antimatter'). Both experiments combined decelerated antiprotons with positrons at CERN to produce antihydrogen atoms. But, within several milliseconds, the atoms annihilated with the ordinary matter in the walls of their containers.

To prevent that from happening, the ALPHA team formed antihydrogen atoms in a magnetic trap. Although not electrically charged like antiprotons and positrons, antihydrogen — like hydrogen — has a more subtle magnetic character that arises from the spins of its constituent particles. The ALPHA researchers used an octupole magnet, produced by the current flowing in eight wires, to create a magnetic field that was strongest near the walls of the trap, falling to a minimum at the centre, causing the atoms to collect there. To trap just 38 atoms, the group had to run the experiment 335 times. "This was ten thousand times more difficult" than creating untrapped antihydrogen atoms, says Hangst — ATHENA made an estimated 50,000 of them in one go in 2002. To do spectroscopic measurements, Surko estimates that up to 100 antihydrogen atoms may need to be trapped at once.

ATRAP still hopes to reach that goal first. In a paper due out in Physical Review Letters, the collaboration reports that it has efficiently separated antiprotons from the cold electrons that are used to cool them down, a step towards creating slower-moving antihydrogen atoms that might stay trapped for longer. "Rather than trying to demonstrate that we can confine 38 antihydrogen atoms for a small fraction of a second, we are working on new methods to produce and trap much larger numbers of colder atoms," says Gerald Gabrielse, ATRAP's spokesman. "We shall see which approach is more fruitful."

Two other collaborations aim to study antihydrogen. In 2003, the international ASACUSA experiment at CERN proposed a scheme to create a beam of antihydrogen atoms⁴. Yasunori Yamazaki, an atomic physicist at the Advanced Science Institute in Saitama, part of Japan's RIKEN network of research labs, now says the group has produced such a beam and may be able to use it to study the energy levels in antihydrogen without needing to trap the atoms. Another CERN experiment called AEgIS is starting to compare the effect of gravity on antihydrogen with that on ordinary hydrogen. Antimatter is almost certain to fall at the same rate as normal matter, but if it doesn't the results could help scientists to distinguish between alternative approaches to unifying quantum theory with general relativity.

Published online 17 November 2010 | Nature 468, 355 (2010) | doi:10.1038/468355a

World’s Most Powerful Laser on Target for Awesome Science

Scientists recently pulled together the pieces of the world’s most powerful laser and, in a first-ever complete dry run, pulled the trigger on a peppercorn-sized pellet of nuclear fuel. The energy crushed the capsule instantly, causing it to spew a shower of neutrons. In short: It worked.
The firing of the National Ignition Facility, or NIF, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, located 40 or so miles east of San Francisco, wasn’t an earnest attempt at a more-energy-out-than-you-put-in “ignition” of fusion, the same process that merges atoms at the sun’s core — and the facility’s ultimate goal. Yet the staff and independent researchers working with the $3.5 billion machine have reason to be optimistic about achieving fusion within two years, even if much of the device’s time is earmarked for defense research and prospects of near-limitless and pollution-free energy aren’t certain.
“In my mind, to have accomplished this shot is an almost unfathomable scientific achievement,” Paul Drake, a physicist at the University of Michigan using NIF as a proving ground for studying supernova physics in the laboratory, told Wired.com. “I’ve had a lifetime of experience of big science facilities, and find myself in awe of [the NIF team] having made this thing work this fast.”

The research facility’s construction began in 1997 and spreads over an area nearly the size of three pro league football fields, most of the space occupied by equipment that revs up 192 laser beams. During the Sept. 29, 2010 firing of the laser, scientists and engineers funneled these beams into a 30-foot-diameter metal sphere at the end of the complex. At the center of this chamber, a tiny plastic pellet filled with heavier forms of hydrogen received a punishing 1 megajoule zap, similar to the instantaneous oomph of a car traveling 100 mph.
According to engineering physicist Edward Moses, who heads up the NIF team, the laser burst was about 75 percent of its full energy capacity. In addition, the cryogenically cooled pellet was filled with deliberately less-than-perfect fuel.
“The last thing we’d ever think about doing is playing cowboy with this thing,” Moses said. Throughout the next year or two leading up to an all-or-nothing firing, the facility will make similar integrated shots about once a month.
Richard Petrasso, a fusion scientist at MIT who works with the machine’s diagnostic equipment, said the tiptoeing is for a good reason.
“The facility is like a new car engine,” Petrasso said. “You don’t hit the pedal all the way down to the ground the first time. You have to tune it to get all of the conditions just right — the laser, the diagnostics and the surface of the capsule.”
About 10 trillion neutrons zoomed out of the capsule during the test shot, signaling the successful fusion of some tritium and deuterium atoms — the “heavy” hydrogen fuels in the pellet. Moses said 1,000 times more neutrons should fly out during the ultimate goal of a fusion chain reaction.
At that point, if the machine can actually do it, Drake said the scientific payoffs will be huge.
“We’re still proving we can do experiments we want, and also for the broader scientific community,” Drake said. “But without hesitation, I’d say NIF is on track for doing some pretty awesome science,” including simulating Jupiter’s oddly magnetic core, the innards of stars and other hot-and-dense environments around the universe.

At the end of the day, however, most of NIF’s operating time isn’t slated for doing fundamental science. Moses said about 10 percent of the machine’s time is dedicated to that now and will go up to 20 percent after 2013. Another 40 percent (by 2013) is hedged for more ignition research, and the remaining 40 percent chunk will be for gathering data about fusion physics for the government. In other words, it will simulate fusion bomb explosions without detonating them.
“Strategic security is also part of the mission,” Moses said. “We want to make sure we can build virtual test sites on computers, but we need good data to ground the models.” If NIF achieves fusion burn, he said it will be the only facility of its kind to safely create the conditions of active weapons.
Beyond NIF’s three-pronged mission, there’s also the promise of developing a safe fusion energy source that releases 30-40 times the energy put in. The only theorized “pollution” would be helium, which is the universe’s most pervasive and inert gas.
“The energy potential is there, for sure,” Petrasso said. “The question is about practical implementation. There are a lot of … issues that have to be dealt with to turn it into a reactor that makes energy.”

Images: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 1) Inside the National Ignition Facility’s 10-meter-diameter target chamber. 2) NIF’s laser bay. 2) The container of the tritium/deuterium fuel pellet, called a “hohlraum.” Video: Wired.com

In New Attempt to Build a Practical Military Laser Weapon, Lockheed Inverts a Prism

Lasers can be powerful weapons — they can take down an aircraft at long ranges and in unstable conditions, for instance. But they are hampered by power and size limits, so they’re not widely used by the military (yet).
Lockheed Martin has a solution: a fiber laser that basically works like a backward prism.

Laser-Powered Warfare Lockheed's RELI laser, developed under a DARPA contract, works like an inverse prism to focus several different wavelengths of laser light. Lockheed Martin

Lockheed is among three firms recently awarded contracts to develop a laser for the military’s Robust Electric Laser Initiative, which seeks to improve the power of electric lasers. Fiber lasers are efficient and compact, but until now they have been weaker than other types, like chemical lasers. The RELI program seeks to improve laser strength while reducing power and cooling, so systems can be small enough to install on ships or airplanes.

A Lockheed subsidiary developed a first-of-its-kind high-powered fiber laser capable of producing 100 kilowatts or more, according to Lockheed. It uses fiber optics to produce near-perfect beams. The method also confines the laser light to the fiber’s glass structure without using mirrors or other optics.
John Wojnar, director of business development for the laser systems business, said in a September issue of Aviation Week that it works like a inverse prism: lasers with slightly different wavelengths enter a combiner, and the result is a single, focused beam. It’s called Spectral Beam Combining.
Lockheed won an initial $14 million contract from the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command to develop the system. Along with General Atomics and Raytheon, the firm must demonstrate a 25 kW system that can be scaled up to 100 kW within five years.
General Atomics will improve its Hellads distributed-gain laser approach to improve efficiency, while Raytheon will pursue a planar waveguide laser, according to Aviation Week.
Northrop Grumman is also expected to obtain a RELI contract.

Extreme PowerPoint places you in 3D slide show

IT WILL either revolutionise your presentations or make "death by PowerPoint" worse. One thing is certain: by allowing you to touch and play with light, Microsoft's LightSpace technology will make presenting more fun.

The LightSpace prototype projects slides, documents, photographs or video onto any surface, from a table to a door. Presenters can then touch and literally pick up a virtual item from a display and carry it across the room as a spot of light in the palm of their hand.

To perform commands – "play video", for example – you move your hand along a projected light beam that acts as the central control. Holding your hand in the right position on the menu for a few seconds activates the function.

"The aim is to bring the kind of multi-touch interaction you get with LCD surface displays to every surface in a room," says Andrew Wilson of the Microsoft Research lab in Redmond, Washington.

On grid

LightSpace works by using projectors, motion-tracking sensors and depth-sensing cameras.

Based loosely on Kinect, Microsoft's gaming system that tracks body movement without the need for a handheld controller, the technology is due to be demonstrated at the User Interface and Software Technology conference in New York City this week.

With Kinect, a device called a "depth camera" bathes the gamer in an infrared grid pattern whose telltale distortion lets a computer work out the distance between a camera and every pixel in the image it observes. That way, it builds a 3D image of the gamer's movements in front of the TV set.

LightSpace uses three depth cameras to create a full 3D image of the area of the room in which a presentation is being made. Instead of looking for gaming cues such as kicks and punches, it identifies which projected media the user is interacting with.

Early stages

It's a compelling prospect, but Microsoft stresses it is still a prototype and far from being out on the market. "We're still exploring the interactions enabled by this kind of technology," says co-developer Hrvoje Benko. For example, it may be most effective when accessed by multiple presenters. In tests the system has successfully tracked six people simultaneously.

Wilson says the project may yet work in concert with another Microsoft project, Skinput, in which a user-worn microprojector casts touchscreen menus on the skin, with taps on the skin recognised acoustically.

If the LightSpace technology does come to market as a presentation tool, users would need to beware of the same issues that spoil so many PowerPoint presentations, says Max Atkinson, author of the book Lend Me Your Ears, a critique of computer-assisted slide-show presentations. He points out that an audience might struggle to concentrate in a presentation with multiple active surfaces. "I'm not against digital aids for presenters, but LightSpace sounds a massive distraction."

Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s 1 p.m. on a Thursday and Dianne Bates, 40, juggles three screens. She listens to a few songs on her iPod, then taps out a quick e-mail on her iPhone and turns her attention to the high-definition television.

Just another day at the gym.
As Ms. Bates multitasks, she is also churning her legs in fast loops on an elliptical machine in a downtown fitness center. She is in good company. In gyms and elsewhere, people use phones and other electronic devices to get work done — and as a reliable antidote to boredom.
Cellphones, which in the last few years have become full-fledged computers with high-speed Internet connections, let people relieve the tedium of exercising, the grocery store line, stoplights or lulls in the dinner conversation.
The technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas.

Ms. Bates, for example, might be clearer-headed if she went for a run outside, away from her devices, research suggests.
At the University of California, San Francisco, scientists have found that when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory of the experience.
The researchers suspect that the findings also apply to how humans learn.
“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”
At the University of Michigan, a study found that people learned significantly better after a walk in nature than after a walk in a dense urban environment, suggesting that processing a barrage of information leaves people fatigued.
Even though people feel entertained, even relaxed, when they multitask while exercising, or pass a moment at the bus stop by catching a quick video clip, they might be taxing their brains, scientists say.
“People think they’re refreshing themselves, but they’re fatiguing themselves,” said Marc Berman, a University of Michigan neuroscientist.
Regardless, there is now a whole industry of mobile software developers competing to help people scratch the entertainment itch. Flurry, a company that tracks the use of apps, has found that mobile games are typically played for 6.3 minutes, but that many are played for much shorter intervals. One popular game that involves stacking blocks gets played for 2.2 minutes on average.
Today’s game makers are trying to fill small bits of free time, said Sebastien de Halleux, a co-founder of PlayFish, a game company owned by the industry giant Electronic Arts.

“Instead of having long relaxing breaks, like taking two hours for lunch, we have a lot of these micro-moments,” he said. Game makers like Electronic Arts, he added, “have reinvented the game experience to fit into micro-moments.”
Many business people, of course, have good reason to be constantly checking their phones. But this can take a mental toll. Henry Chen, 26, a self-employed auto mechanic in San Francisco, has mixed feelings about his BlackBerry habits.
“I check it a lot, whenever there is downtime,” Mr. Chen said. Moments earlier, he was texting with a friend while he stood in line at a bagel shop; he stopped only when the woman behind the counter interrupted him to ask for his order.
Mr. Chen, who recently started his business, doesn’t want to miss a potential customer. Yet he says that since he upgraded his phone a year ago to a feature-rich BlackBerry, he can feel stressed out by what he described as internal pressure to constantly stay in contact.
“It’s become a demand. Not necessarily a demand of the customer, but a demand of my head,” he said. “I told my girlfriend that I’m more tired since I got this thing.”

In the parking lot outside the bagel shop, others were filling up moments with their phones. While Eddie Umadhay, 59, a construction inspector, sat in his car waiting for his wife to grocery shop, he deleted old e-mail while listening to news on the radio. On a bench outside a coffee house, Ossie Gabriel, 44, a nurse practitioner, waited for a friend and checked e-mail “to kill time.”
Crossing the street from the grocery store to his car, David Alvarado pushed his 2-year-old daughter in a cart filled with shopping bags, his phone pressed to his ear.
He was talking to a colleague about work scheduling, noting that he wanted to steal a moment to make the call between paying for the groceries and driving.
“I wanted to take advantage of the little gap,” said Mr. Alvarado, 30, a facilities manager at a community center.
For many such people, the little digital asides come on top of heavy use of computers during the day. Take Ms. Bates, the exercising multitasker at the expansive Bakar Fitness and Recreation Center. She wakes up and peeks at her iPhone before she gets out of bed. At her job in advertising, she spends all day in front of her laptop.
But, far from wanting a break from screens when she exercises, she says she couldn’t possibly spend 55 minutes on the elliptical machine without “lots of things to do.” This includes relentless channel surfing.
“I switch constantly,” she said. “I can’t stand commercials. I have to flip around unless I’m watching ‘Project Runway’ or something I’m really into.”
Some researchers say that whatever downside there is to not resting the brain, it pales in comparison to the benefits technology can bring in motivating people to sweat.
“Exercise needs to be part of our lives in the sedentary world we’re immersed in. Anything that helps us move is beneficial,” said John J. Ratey, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and author of “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.”
But all things being equal, Mr. Ratey said, he would prefer to see people do their workouts away from their devices: “There is more bang for your buck doing it outside, for your mood and working memory.”
Of the 70 cardio machines on the main floor at Bakar Fitness, 67 have televisions attached. Most of them also have iPod docks and displays showing workout performance, and a few have games, like a rope-climbing machine that shows an animated character climbing the rope while the live human does so too.
A few months ago, the cable TV went out and some patrons were apoplectic. “It was an uproar. People said: ‘That’s what we’re paying for,’ ” said Leeane Jensen, 28, the fitness manager.
At least one exerciser has a different take. Two stories up from the main floor, Peter Colley, 23, churns away on one of the several dozen elliptical machines without a TV. Instead, they are bathed in sunlight, looking out onto the pool and palm trees.
“I look at the wind on the trees. I watch the swimmers go back and forth,” Mr. Colley said. “I usually come here to clear my head.”

Beyninizi Fazla Yormayın

SAN FRANCISCO - Bugünün akıllı telefonları ve dijital cihazları en ufak zaman dilimini bile eğlenceli ve üretken bir hale getirebiliyor. Ancak bilim insanları beklenmeyen bir yan etkiye de dikkat çekiyor. İnsanlar beyinlerini dijital verilerle meşgul ettiklerinde, aslında rahatlayacakları zamandan çalıyor ve bu yüzden algılama, öğrenme, hatırlama duyularına veya yaratıcılıklarına zarar veriyorlar. San Francisco'daki California Üniversitesi'nden araştırmacılar, farelerin yeni bir olayla karşılaştırdıklarında, mesela yeni bir bölgeyi keşfe çıktıklarında beyinlerinde yeni hareketlilikler gözlemlediler. Fareler keşiflerine ancak mola verdikleri zaman gördüklerini anlayıp hatırlayabiliyor. Araştırmacılar bu bulguların insanların öğrenme süreçlerine uygulanabileceğini düşünüyor. Aynı üniversitedeki Psikoloji Fakültesi'nden Doçent Loren Frank, "Atıl zaman neredeyse kesin bir şekilde beynin yaşadığı tecrübelerin üzerinden geçmesini, onları sağlamlaştırmasını ve uzun süreli kalıcı hatıralara dönüştürmesini sağlıyor" diyor. Beyin sürekli olarak uyarıldığında ise "Bu öğrenme sürecini engellemiş oluyorsunuz" diyor. Michigan Üniversitesi'nde yapılan bir çalışmaya göre, doğada yapılan yürüyüşün ardından insanların öğrenme kapasiteleri, kalabalık kent sokaklarında yapılan bir yürüyüşe göre çok daha yüksek. Araştırmada çok fazla bilgi yüklenmesinin insanları yorgun kıldığı iddia ediliyor. İnsanlar egzersiz yaparken veya otobüs durağında beklerken birden fazla iş yaparak eğlenip rahatlayabiliyorlar. Ancak bilim insanlarına göre bu beyni zorluyor. Michigan Üniversitesi'nden nöroloji uzmanı Dr. Marc Berman, "İnsanlar kafalarını tazelediklerini düşünüyor ancak aksine beyinlerini yoruyorlar" diyor. Ne olursa olsun artık zamanın en küçük bir anını bile doldurmak için birbiriyle rekabet eden büyük bir mobil yazılım geliştirme endüstrisi var. Endüstrinin devlerinden Electronic Arts'ın sahibi olduğu oyun şirketi PlayFish'in kurucu ortaklarından Sebastien de Halleux, "İki saatlik öğle yemeği gibi uzun dinlenme araları yerine, bir dolu mikro anlar yaşıyoruz" diyor. Oyun üreticilerinin "oyunları bu mikro zamanların içinde sığdırabilmek için yeniden yarattıklarını" söylüyor. Birçok iş adamının sürekli olarak telefonlarını kontrol etmesi gerekiyor. Ancak bu zihinsel bir yük haline gelebiliyor. San Francisco'daki 26 yaşındaki otomobil tamircisi Henry Chen'in BlackBerry alışkanlığı ile ilgili kafası biraz karışık. Chen, "Her boş zamanımda telefonumu kontrol ediyorum" diyor. Az önce fırında sırada beklerken arkadaşına bir SMS gönderiyordu. Kasadaki bayan onu uyarıp siparişini sorana kadar mesajlaşmaya devam etti. Kısa bir süre önce dükkânını açan Chen hiçbir potansiyel müşteriyi kaçırmak istemiyor. Bir yıl önce BlackBerry'e geçmiş ve sürekli iletişim halinde olmanın üzerinde bir baskı unsuru yarattığını söylüyor. "Bu bir takıntı haline geldi. Bunu talep eden müşterilerim değil, beynim. Kız arkadaşıma bu aleti aldıktan sonra kendimi daha yorgun hissettiğimi söyledim" diyor. Aynı anda fırının dışındaki otoparkta da birçok insan cep telefonuyla oynuyordu. Birçok insan günün çoğunu yoğun bir tempoda bilgisayar kullanarak geçiriyor ve boş zamanlarında da cep telefonlarıyla oynuyorlar. 40 yaşındaki Dianne Bates, sabahları daha yataktan çıkmadan iPhone'unu kontrol ediyor. Reklamcılık sektöründeki işinde bütün gününü dizüstü bilgisayarının başında geçiriyor. Ancak spor yaparken bile elektronik cihazlardan uzak duramıyor. Bir alette 55 dakika boyunca spor yaparken hiçbir şey yapmamak ona çok tuhaf geliyor. Spor yaparken iPod'undan şarkılar dinliyor, iPhone'undan e-mail gönderiyor ve sonra da yüksek çözünürlüklü televizyondan program izliyor. Ancak bazı araştırmacılar, beyni hiç dinlendirmemenin verdiği zararın, cihazların insanları meşgul tutup daha fazla spor yaptırması yüzünden dengelendiğini belirtiyor. "Egzersiz ve Beynin Devrim Yaratan Yeni Bilimi" isimli kitabın yazarı ve Harvard Tıp Fakültesi Psikiyatri Fakültesi'nden Doç. Dr. John J. Ratey, "İçinde bulunduğumuz bu hareketsiz dünyada spor hayatımızın bir parçası olmak zorunda. Bizi hareket ettirecek her şey yararlıdır" diyor. Ancak Ratley, diğer her şeyin eşit olması durumunda, insanların cihazlarından uzakta spor yapmasını tercih ettiğini söylüyor. "Moraliniz ve hafızanız için cihazlardan uzakta hareket etmek çok daha yararlı" diyor.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/08/02/technology/unplugged.html?ref=technology
MATT RICHTEL

The 10 Greatest (Accidental) Inventions of All Time

The Microwave - Percy L. Spencer

Percy Spencer, an engineer at Raytheon after his WWI stint in the Navy, was known as an electronics genius. In 1945, Spencer was fiddling with a microwave-emitting magnetron—used in the guts of radar arrays—when he felt a strange sensation in his pants. A sizzling, even. Spencer paused and found that a chocolate bar in his pocket had started to melt. Figuring that the microwave radiation of the magnetron was to blame (or to credit, as it would turn out), Spencer immediately set out to realize the culinary potential at work. The end result was the microwave oven—savior of eager snackers and single dudes worldwide.

Saccharin - Ira Remsen, Constantin Fahlberg

In 1879, Ira Remsen and Constantin Fahlberg, at work in a laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, paused to eat. Fahlberg had neglected to wash his hands before the meal—which usually leads to a quick death for most chemists, but led to him noticing an oddly sweet flavor during his meal. Artificial sweetener! The duo published their findings together, but it was only Fahlberg's name that made it onto the (incredibly lucrative) patent, now found in pink packets at tables everywhere. That is to say, Remsen got screwed—he later remarked, "Fahlberg is a scoundrel. It nauseates me to hear my name mentioned in the same breath with him."

Slinky - Richard James

In 1943, Navy engineer Richard James was trying to figure out how to use springs to keep the sensitive instruments aboard ships from rocking themselves to death, when he knocked one of his prototypes over. Instead of crashing to the floor, it gracefully sprang downward, and then righted itself. So pointless—so nimble—so slinky. The spring became a goofy toy of many childhoods—that is before every kid inevitably gets theirs all twisted up and ruins it. 300 million sold worldwide!

Play-Doh - Kutol Products

Before being found ground into the rugs of child-rearing homes everywhere, Play-Doh was ironically created to be a cleaning product. The paste was first marketed as a treatment for filthy wallpaper—before the company that produced it began to go down the tubes. The discovery that saved Kutol Products—headed for bankruptcy—wasn't that their wall cleaner worked particularly well, but that schoolchildren were beginning to use it to create Christmas ornaments as arts and crafts projects. By removing the compound's cleanser and adding colors and a fresh scent, Kutol spun their wallpaper saver into one of the most iconic toys of all time—and brought mega-success to a company headed for destruction. Sometimes, you don't even know how brilliant you are until someone notices for you.

Super Glue - Harry Coover

In what have been a very messy moment of discovery in 1942, Dr. Harry Coover of Eastman-Kodak Laboratories found that a substance he created—cyanoacrylate—was a miserable failure. It was not, to his dismay, at all suited for a new precision gun sight as he had hoped—it infuriatingly stuck to everything it touched. So it was forgotten. Six years later, while overseeing an experimental new design for airplane canopies, Coover found himself stuck in the same gooey mess with a familiar foe—cyanacrylate was proving useless as ever. But this time, Coover observed that the stuff formed an incredibly strong bond without needing heat. Coover and his team tinkered with sticking various objects in their lab together, and realized they had finally stumbled upon a use for the maddening goop. Coover slapped a patent on his discovery, and in 1958, a full 16 years after he first got stuck, cyanoacrylate was being sold on shelves.

Teflon - Roy Plunkett

The next time you make a frustration-free omelette, thank chemist Roy Plunkett, whose experienced immense frustration while inadvertently inventing Teflon in 1938. Plunkett had hoped to create a new variety of chlorofluorocarbons (better known as universally-despised CFCs), when he came back to check on his experiment in a refrigeration chamber. When he inspected a canister that was supposed to be full of gas, he found that it appeared to have vanished—leaving behind only a few white flakes. Plunkett was intrigued by these mysterious chemical bits, and began at once to experiment with their properties. The new substance proved to be a fantastic lubricant with an extremely high melting point—perfect at first for military gear, and now the stuff found finely applied across your non-stick cookware.

Bakelite - Leo Baekeland

In 1907, shellac was commonly used to insulate the innards of early electronics—think radios and telephones. This was fine, aside from the fact that shellac is made from Asian beetle poop, and not exactly the cheapest or easiest way to insulate a wire. What Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland found in instead was—get ready—polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride, the world's first synthetic plastic, commonly known as Bakelite. This pioneering plastic was moldable into virtually any shape, in any color, and could hold its form against high temperatures and daily wear—making it a star among manufacturers, jewelers, and industrial designers.

Pacemaker - Wilson Greatbatch

An assistant professor at the University of Buffalo thought he had ruined his project. Instead of picking a 10,000-ohm resistor out of a box to use on a heart-recording prototype, Wilson Greatbatch took the 1-megaohm variety. The resulting circuit produced a signal that sounded for 1.8 milliseconds, and then paused for a second—a dead ringer for the human heart. Greatbatch realized the precise current could regulate a pulse, overriding the imperfect heartbeat of the ill. Before this point, pacemakers were television-sized, cumbersome things that were temporarily attached to patients from the outside. But now the effect could be achieved with a small circuit, perfect to tuck into someone's chest.

Velcro - George de Mestral

A dog invented velcro.

Alright, that's something of an exaggeration, but a dog did play an instrumental role. Swiss engineer George de Mestral was out for a hunting trip with his pooch, and noticed the annoying tendency of burrs to stick to its fur (and his socks). Later, looking under a microscope, Mestral observed the tiny "hooks" that stuck burrs to fabrics and furs. Mestral experimented for years with a variety of textiles before arriving at the newly invented nylon—though it wasn't until two decades later that NASA's fondness for velcro popularized the tech.

X-Rays - Wilhelm Roentgen

Okay, yes, x-rays are a phenomenon of the natural world, and thus can't be created. But sshhh! The story of their discovery is a fascinating one of incredible chance. In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen was performing a routine experiment involving cathode rays, when he noticed that a piece of fluorescent cardboard was lighting up from across the room. A thick screen had been placed between his cathode emitter and the radiated cardboard, proving that particles of light were passing through solid objects. Amazed, Roentgen quickly found that brilliant images could be produced with this incredible radiation—the first of their kind being a skeletal image of his wife's hand.