share.google/wrhbEFiiJZhr6wS…
Enjoy this paper on optical singularities that showcases the impact of flat optics on structuring not only light but also the dark, well beyond the capabilities of conventional optics! Kudos to Daniel and Christina who did the heavy lifting!
The formula on the board is actually wrong : the electron charge squared should appear at the numerator and the product of hbar and c in the denominator; only in this way one gets a dimensionless number = 1/137. This was actually a Fermi prank for a PR photo-op!
Physicist Wolfgang Pauli once joked that his first question to the Devil would be, “Why 1/137?” He was talking about a number called the fine-structure constant. If this number were even slightly different, the universe as we know it would not exist.
The fine-structure constant (written as α) tells us how strong the electromagnetic force is. This force controls how particles like electrons interact with light (photons).
Unlike quantities such as speed or mass, this number does not depend on units like meters or kilograms. No matter what system of measurement you use, its value stays the same, about 1/137.036.
This number is very important for how atoms and matter behave. If α were a bit larger, the repulsion between protons would increase. This would make it harder for atomic nuclei to form. As a result, stars would not be able to produce heavier elements like carbon and oxygen, which are needed for life.
If α were a bit smaller, electrons would not stay tightly bound to atoms. Atoms would become too large and unstable. Chemical bonds would break easily, and complex molecules like proteins and DNA could not form.
Scientists still do not know why this constant has its exact value. It appears to be set in a way that allows atoms, stars, and life to exist.
Discovery of a heavier proton !! Nature never ceases to amaze even at the fundamental level! share.google/GHPZiN9fHTDLl8d…
Science July26 Quantum photonics promises scalable, secure tech, but current systems are bulky. Congrats Kerolos Yousef for engineering a metasurface that entangles photons using graph-designed metaatoms, paving the way for RT chip-scale quantum computing! share.google/YfsTJ2jtZdL0t6u…
Most mind blowing science!
The jellyfish that never dies bbcearth.com/news/the-jellyf…
Federico Capasso retweeted
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
– Niels Bohr
sent by NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, which is currently located approximately 1.5 times the distance between Earth and the sun. yahoo.com/tech/space-laser-t…
What a great inspiring story of how a girl made an important contribution to science with a major discovery! The powerful drive of curiosity and passion kindled by a passionate dad! nytimes.com/2024/04/17/scien…
Now I am spelling bee champ! nytimes.com/badges/games/v1/…
Here’s the paper on our 10 cm metalens with which we imaged the total solar eclipse yesterday. The image quality of the nebula, sun and moon exceeds that achieved with more complex telescope optics. pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021…
First image of solar eclipse with a metalens telescope! Taken by my student Arman Amirzhan at a site near Irasburg, Vermont (44°49'50.5"N
72°14'23.8"W) on 4/8/2024. The 10 cm glass metalens was fabricated by my postdoc Joon-Suh Park. Note the flare from the corona near hour 2.
Solitons on demand! We demonstrate solitons that are stable in a ring laser and form spontaneously with tuning laser bias, eliminating the need for an external optical pump. Congrats to a great international team! nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
Nikola Tesla: The genius Who could see 100 years ahead!
Replying to @PhysInHistory
When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be a huge brain. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance.
Nikola Tesla's prediction in 1926
(Tesla died on January 7, 1943)
When drawing water, the sprinkler alters its direction of rotation, leading to a more erratic and slower movement. This behavior is due to the specifics of how fluid moves through the sprinkler's structure. Fluid mechanics is a most complex science! physics.aps.org/articles/v17…
Federico Capasso retweeted
Replying to @PhysInHistory
This is entirely true. Any neural system, any brain, is constantly seeking truth for survival and can find completely unique ways to discover new truths. No two people who can communicate with other people in natural language can escape the gift of their unique knowledge and intelligence. This is the inevitable consequence of the fundamental symmetry of neural computation which is completely absent in von Neuman computing architectures. Truly, we all are constantly find new valuable truths just by interacting socially in the world. This is not my observation. It stems from natural science over 400 years old.
medium.com/liecatcher/100-bi…
Exciting AI advance! NY Times quotes lead author Dr. Trinh: “We’re not making incremental improvement,” he said. “We’re making a big jump, a big breakthrough in terms of the result.”
“Just don’t overhype it,” he said. nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
The Mid-infrared has lagged behind in Integrated Photonics: but here we demonstrate the integration of Mid-IR ring resonators and directional couplers, incorporating a quantum cascade active region in the waveguide core nature.com/articles/s41467-0…
A big leap in space for our metalenses! Congratulations to Joon-Suh Park for leading the charge! pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021… seas.harvard.edu/news/2024/0…
The authors “advocate for the value of learning and surprise, and for an irreverence for boundaries of all kind — between disciplines, science and technology”
This was the Bell Labs culture and became the guiding light for my own research!
nature.com/articles/s42254-0…









