Advanced Concepts Team

As discussed during lunch

Found this on Twitter ;-) This is also a test to see if Diigo titles get processed correctly as re-tweets...

Yes. Worked.

Java is hot again(?) - gotta dig up my old lecture notes.

A joint Harvard-MIT research program led by Harvard Professor of Physics Mikhail Lukin and MIT Professor of Physics Vladan Vuletic has created a new state of matter the two describe as extremely similar to the lightsabers seen in "Star Wars."

"Photonic molecules"? Intriguing..

Bitcoin utilizes a peer-to-peer network to issue anonymous payment transactions between different users. Dynamical effects have been found, of which some increase anonymity while others decrease it. Most importantly, several parameters of the Bitcoin transaction graph seem to have become stationary over the last 12-18 months. The implications are discussed.

In a feat never before observed, a newly discovered pulsar shifts back and forth between emitting X-rays and radio waves. The discovery represents a long-sought "middle" phase in the life of these powerful objects.

photos here. http://www.likecool.com/World_s_first_carbon_nanotube_computer--Tech--Gear.html

man infected with brewer's yeast brews beer and gets drunk whenever he injests carbohydrates. This surely presents an excellent opportunity to address long term manned space exploration psychological issues by infecting astronauts with yeast rather than investing in costly and bulky space-brewing equipment.

"Usually if you bend a ceramic by 1 percent, it will shatter," Schuh says. But these tiny filaments, with a diameter of just 1 micrometer - one millionth of a meter - can be bent by 7 to 8 percent repeatedly without any cracking, he says. Application areas would be microactuation as the ceramics can sustain the largest forces. Drug release?

The first "molecules" made from two photons have been created by physicists in the US. The breakthrough could allow both conventional and quantum computers to encode and process information using photons.

I wonder if the effect also works with much larger numbers of photons involved. By slowing down any initial (Rydberg) photons and letting the later photons catch up it might be possible to create a very sharp "shock" front of photons. This could produce in itself be an ultra-short pulse of light or maybe it could be used as the trigger for massive stimulated emission in a laser.

On a lighter note: Decades after NASA's Apollo missions, people are having some laughs over transcripts of astronauts' humorous conversations aboard the spacecraft. For all their technological sophistication, the Apollo command module had a relatively primitive system for managing human waste.

Indicators found in 3 billion year old rocks

It actually does make a very weird sound...

Wow, the two droplets that orbit each other are really cool - as is the explanation!