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Gems from Science

Star Trek's "tractor" beam created in miniature by researchers

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Within the experimental system, light beam is converted into a pulling device, that gathers micro-objects just like when using a chain.

Issued by the Press Office, University of St Andrews
Friday 25 January 2013

A team of scientists from Scotland and the Czech Republic has created a real-life “tractor” beam, as featured in the Star Trek movies, which for the first time allows a beam of light to attract objects.

Although light manipulation techniques have existed since the 1970s, this is the first time a light beam has been used to draw objects towards the light source, albeit at a microscopic level.

Researchers from the University of St Andrews and the Institute of Scientific Instruments (ISI) in the Czech Republic have found a way to generate a special optical field that efficiently reverses radiation pressure of light.

The new technique could lead to more efficient medical testing, such as in the examination of blood samples.

In the US science fiction show, a tractor beam was a method of using a beam of light which could pull space-ships and other large objects towards the source of the light.

The team, led by Dr Tomas Cizmar, Research Fellow in the School of Medicine at the University of St Andrews, with Dr Oto Brzobohaty and Professor Pavel Zemanek, both of ISI, discovered a technique which will allow them to provide 'negative' force acting upon minuscule particles.

Normally when matter and light interact the solid object is pushed by the light and carried away in the stream of photons.

Such radiation force was first identified by Johanes Kepler when observing that tails of comets point away from the sun.

Over recent years researchers have realised that while this is the case for most of the optical fields, there is a space of parameters when this force reverses.

The scientists at St Andrews and ISI have now demonstrated the first experimental realisation of this concept together with a number of exciting applications for bio-medical photonics and other disciplines.

The exciting aspect is that the occurrence of negative force is very specific to the properties of the object, such as size and composition.

This in turn allows optical sorting of micro-objects in a simple and inexpensive device. Over the last decade optical fractionation has been identified as one of the most promising bio-medical applications of optical manipulation allowing, for example, sorting of macromolecules, organelles or cells.

Interestingly, the scientists identified certain conditions, in which objects held by the “tractor” beam force-field, re-arranged themselves to form a structure which made the beam even stronger.

Dr Cizmar said: “Because of the similarities between optical and acoustic particle manipulation we anticipate that this concept will provide inspiration for exciting future studies in areas outside the field of photonics.”

Dr Brzobohaty said: “These methods are opening new opportunities for fundamental phonics as well as applications for life-sciences.”

Professor Zemanek said: “The whole team have spent a number of years investigating various configurations of particles delivery by light. I am proud our results were recognised in this very competitive environment and I am looking forward to new experiments and applications. It is a very exciting time.”
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[YOUTUBE]xkrlJB87AL8[/YOUTUBE]
 
I want them to do a brainscan on me but then they upload the scans on the internet and it infects all the computers in the world with autism.
 
I recent saw an episode of celebrity wifeswap v. Daniel Baldwin/Germaine Jackson. During the show we learned that Baldwin has a son named Atticus who's afflicted with autism.

They call it Awesomism.
 
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http://io9.com/5927315/hubble-has-spotted-an-ancient-galaxy-that-shouldnt-exist

Hubble has spotted an ancient galaxy that shouldn't exist

This galaxy is so large, so fully-formed, astronomers say it shouldn't exist at all. It's called a "grand-design" spiral galaxy, and unlike most galaxies of its kind, this one is old. Like, really, really old. According to a new study conducted by researchers using NASA's Hubble Telescope, it dates back roughly 10.7-billion years — and that makes it the most ancient spiral galaxy we've ever discovered.

"The vast majority of old galaxies look like train wrecks," said UCLA astrophysicist Alice Shapley in a press release. "Our first thought was, why is this one so different, and so beautiful?"

Shapley is co-author of the paper describing the discovery, which is published in the latest issue of Nature. She and her colleagues had been using Hubble to investigate some of our Universe's most distant cosmic entities, but the discovery of BX442 — which is what they've dubbed the newfound galaxy — came as a huge surprise.

"The fact that this galaxy exists is astounding," said University of Toronto's David Law, lead author of the study. "Current wisdom holds that such ‘grand-design' spiral galaxies simply didn't exist at such an early time in the history of the universe."

The hallmark of a grand design galaxy is its well-formed spiral arms, but getting into this conformation takes time. When astronomers look at most galaxies as they appeared billions and billions of years ago, they look clumpy and irregular. A 10.7-billion-year-old entity, BX442 came into existence a mere 3-billion years after the Big Bang. That's not a lot of time on a cosmic time scale, and yet BX442 looks surprisingly put together. So much so, in fact, that astronomers didn't believe it at first, chalking their unusual observation up to the accidental alignment of two separate galaxies. But further investigations, conducted at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, revealed BX442 to be the real thing.

So how does a galaxy that shouldn't exist come to be? The researchers think the answer may have something to do with a companion dwarf galaxy looming near BX442 (in the image up top, it's the separate circular cluster in the upper right). Simulations conducted by University of Arizona researcher Charlotte Christenson indicate that gravitation interactions between the two, which she says appear to be in the process of colliding, may have helped BX442 take shape.

The reason Stephen Hawking bet against the Higgs Boson is the same reason BX442 is the best kind of discovery; not only does this galaxy set a new benchmark by way of its cosmic seniority, it's also super weird — weirder than what anyone thought was possible. In science, these are the finds that help us rework our understanding of nature, the discoveries that force us to step back from what we thought we knew, re-assess our preconceived notions, and bring forth a newer, more fully formed view of our Universe.
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I bet that's where Jesus and his army of sexbots live.
 
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