Category: Uncategorized

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE focuses on moiré effects in imperfect materials leading to emergent properties, where each part of this sentence is spectacular in its own right. This includes moiré effects created recently by the discovery of the ‘magic angle’. These curious and beautiful optical effects have many applications. https://lnkd.in/eZSgkAEN View in LinkedIn

The closest I can get to visually illustrate emergence. At a distance, towards the perspective vanishing point, does a new pattern emerge. View in LinkedIn

BIRTH OF STARS. “Herbig-Haro jet. Here, we see a Herbig-Haro jet, which spurts out of some newborn stars. After a star forms, there is usually a disk of gas and dust left around it. Complex interactions between this disk and the star’s magnetic field mean that some of the gas ends up being thrown out at incredibly high speeds. The shock wave of the gas ripping through the interstellar medium creates this brightly glowing jet, as seen here.” https://lnkd.in/gu7xi9dj View in LinkedIn

DINOS WERE BUT YESTERDAY. “The human view that the age of dinosaurs was remote in time is an illusion that results from our short life. When dinosaurs first appeared, our solar system was already well over 4 billion years old, and 95 percent of the history of our planet had already passed.” (The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, by Gregory S. Paul, a truly wonderful book). https://lnkd.in/eSugwUxm View in LinkedIn

HARD TO MEASURE. “Nuclear antimatter production in CR collisions and/or from DM sources is extremely suppressed for nuclear species above anti-3He. Efforts to search for nuclear antimatter in CR have been developed during the last 15 years: no observation of anti-4He or heavier antinuclei in the CR flux has been published down to the level of 10(−7).” (CR = cosmic ray; DM = dark matter). https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10686-021-09708-w.pdf View in LinkedIn

ANTI-STARS. “In fact, antinuclei can be regarded as direct indicators for survival of primordial antimatter and for the possible existence of anti-nucleosynthesis processes at work in the core of anti-stars.” https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10686-021-09708-w.pdf View in LinkedIn

RICH HUNTING. “Graphene is a name given to the thinnest material manufacturable on record, which is made of a monolayer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice. The discovery of graphene has led to the award of at least two Nobel Prizes in Physics within a short timespan.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1557/s43577-021-00135-y View in LinkedIn

WINDOW ON EARLY UNIVERSE. “The detection of complex forms of antinuclei such as anti-4He or heavier species would cause a profound impact on our understanding of the early Universe.” https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10686-021-09708-w.pdf View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first of two weekends on the virtues of imperfections and strange emergent optical properties caused by interference patterns from waves of light reinforcing or cancelling each other like ripples in a pond. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1557/s43577-021-00135-y View in LinkedIn

DIFFICULT PERFECTION. “In reality, it remains a challenge to obtain large-scale, perfect graphene. Unintentional ad-atom doping, point defects, dislocations, and grain boundaries exist in graphene.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1557/s43577-021-00135-y View in LinkedIn