Some days you get science. Some days you get fiction. On a good day, the science is more fun than the fiction – especially for us non-scientists who can play with the ideas and not have to make them work. Today’s haul is a trifecta.
The first two entries were reported in last week’s Economist (which maintains a first-rate Science & Technology section):
Cloaking Devices
One is a project to slow down light until it stops. The researchers show how they could fill tapered optical fibers with light and just keep it there, like canned peaches.
The core of each fiber would be made of a material with a negative index of refraction. No, I don’t want to think about that either, but most materials have a positive refractive index – water, for example – which is why objects at the bottom of a swimming pool appear to be closer than they really are.
Negative-refractive materials have already been made — and made to work, at least in the infra-red end of the light spectrum. Eventually, they could be woven into an invisibility cloak, or a cloaking device to hide a space ship, as they like to do on Star Trek TNG.
That’s likely to take a while. The other breakthrough is nearly ready.
The Upside-Down Telescope
Researchers from Stony Brook University are building a telescope called Ice Cube at the South Pole. Its job is to detect neutrinos, the ghostly subatomic particles that stream in from the sun and from deep space and typically go right through the earth.
Here’s the neat part. The new telescope won’t be looking at the sky. It will look straight down. Since the neutrinos come through the earth – and nothing else does — looking down into the ground provides a clear view, uncluttered by any other radiation.
Why the South Pole? First, because the only time you can see a neutrino is the rare occasion when one strikes an atom in a molecule of water – in this case, ice, which is easier to observe – and makes a flash.
Second, one variety of neutrino is formed when cosmic rays collide with energetic particles in the upper atmosphere, which are concentrated around the North Pole. These neutrinos don’t always make it through the earth. Their energy level is such that they’re sometimes absorbed by masses of solid rock.
Know what that means?
The neutrino picture these will form will be like an X-Ray of the earth’s interior, profiling the rock concentrations that blocked the neutrinos from getting through.
Sincerest thanks to the idiot savants who dream this stuff up and are willing to live like penguins long enough to make it work. We should erect a giant brass monkey in their honor outside the Smithsonian.
Giraffic Park
Finally, this from Science News (Nov. 24). In Niger, paleontologists found the 80 million year old fossil of a dinosaur with 500 teeth, arranged in 50 rows across its jaw.
Nigerosaurus had a long, snaky neck, but instead of feeding from the treetops, it munched on ground vegetation, like a cow. How do they know? Because its inner ears pointed downward. The ears of tree feeders like giraffes point skyward.
Don’t look at me. That’s what they said.
So if you’re having trouble finding a good place to eat, just follow your ears.
Cross posted from
The Horse You Rode In On