Direct from NASA — meet our Magnetosphere! Ever see that movie with Nick Cage called Knowing? Earth's magnetosphere is the main premise of that movie, and its failure is the cause of the world's destruction. It's not really that good when you realize that the aliens came to save the planet, which really turns the [...]
Read More CME, coronal mass ejection, magnetosphereI wrote an article about a paper I read in the journal Science a few weeks ago – the article was about Rotary Photon Drag Enhanced by A Slow Light Medium. I got two handfuls of emails about the article, so I got in contact with one of the original paper's editors, Sonja Franke-Arnold. When [...]
Read More anisotropic, calcite, Crazy Friday Science, Graham Gibson, index of refraction, isotropic, Laser, Miles J. Padgett, photons, research, Robert W. Boyd, ruby, science, sodium chloride, Sonja Franke-ArnoldI always thought that ray diagrams from old books about optics and reflectors were so fractally beautiful, which is why this post relates for me. What I mean is below, from an old text that I still use to explain reflectors: This is a story about a guy who had to overcome some pretty stupid [...]
Read More beauty, Crazy Friday Science, fractals, Jason Padgett, mathematics, savant