It’s satisfying when things work.

Upper trace is the drive, lower trace is the interferometer output. The substrate’s moving ~500 nm, but we’ll clearly have resolution <10 nm, even with this kludgey setup.

Over the years weve developed a good understanding of them, said Roger Smith of the University of Munich.

Its no longer a mystery, but still very spectacular.

Source:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/clouds/

http://referencedesigner.com/blog/signal-integrity-books-a-list/551/ This is a list of Signal Integity Books

While debugging things today, I took the opportunity to demonstrate one of my favorite optical phenomena, the Poisson Spot. Send coherent plane wave mechanicss of light at a ball bearing, and you’ll see a spot appear directly behind it. This can only happen if light has wave mechanics-like properties. You can do this with just a laser pointer and a ball bearing (or circular absorber of any kind), though it’s convenient to have a beam that’s somewhat larger in diameter than the bearing.

Who says you can’t shoot a laser pointer through steel?

What is consciousness? A simple question, but at the same time   it has no simple answer. One can find numerous articles on this subject on the internet and read many books which have tried to explain the meaning of consciousness. Terms like spiritual consciousness, quantum consciousness, human consciousness and others with some adjective have been coined and have accordingly been defined. My philosophy always is to understand an abstract and a complex topic like consciousness in its simplicity and in the light of the developments in science and technology.

Consciousness is ‘something’ possessed by living creatures/things (let us call these living objects to include things like plants and trees also) and especially by human beings in its ‘most refined’ form. Without consciousness a living object is like a dead body which can not interact on its own with its surroundings. Some people identify consciousness with some kind of an active force, I rather prefer to identify it with a state of the mind-body system driven by some kind of a latent or hidden force which enables it to interact with itself or its surroundings, i.e. the universe. However, a type of consciousness: the basic consciousness is present in all living objects including humans. But the existence of mind or some mind like entity in living creatures other than human beings is quite elusive. The type and degree of this force in living objects may vary and I try to make the following classification:

1. Basic consciousness: present in all living objects including animals, birds, even plants/trees and human beings etc.  It is required for the existence and survival of all living objects. It gives powers to sensory organs of living objects to search for food for quenching hunger, power to protect oneself from outside attacks that is the power for self-defense and have sex for fun and reproduction. For example:  ants can discover a piece of sweet hidden somewhere in the kitchen, a small creature tries to run away the moment we try to capture it, even the plants and trees have been found to respond to certain situations/treatments indicating the presence of a force which enables them to interact with the surroundings. In addition, another important aspect of consciousness (classified as human consciousness below) which includes expression of certain feelings like: anger, happiness, certain emotions and even freewill, which are found in human beings, are seen among other living creatures as well to a certain extent. For example: dogs and horses and other animals are known to express feelings to their masters according to a situation, animals may refuse to take food or go for a walk or sometimes create an undesirable scene as they feel like (this is like an expression of freewill in living non-humans). The best and the most refined form of this kind of basic consciousness is found in human beings as we all know. Therefore, the basic consciousness is manifested by all living objects and thus distinguishes them from non-living forms of objects in the universe.

1. Human consciousness: present in human beings only and make them special among all living objects in this world or even in the universe so far. This gives human beings: ability to create ideas; ability to express and exchange ideas i.e. to generate and absorb thoughts (the power of reasoning and logic); ability to perform according to self-generated ideas that is a freewill; ability to design/reshape things i.e. creativity; ability to discover the truths hidden in nature that is to discover the laws of nature; ability to interact with the Supreme power in the universe some call it GOD some call it NATURE. In addition to the general nature of this human consciousness, with these abilities and special powers human beings are also blessed with some other forms of consciousness sometimes also known as: i) sub-consciousness; ii) super-consciousness (or sometimes also called as para- or trans-consciousness). Sub-consciousness activates latent or hidden powers in human beings while the other form the super-consciousness enables one to establish a direct connection between his ‘consciousness’ and the  Supreme or the Creator of the universe. This is reflected during meditations. On the basis of the type of consciousness, human beings can be in one of the following states of consciousness:

i) conscious (fully); ii) semiconscious; iii) subconscious; iv) super-conscious; and v) unconscious

The possession of consciousness requires some sort of energy source or energy centre (location of the energy source). This energy source drives all states of consciousness as mentioned above. The state of unconsciousness does not point to the absence of this energy source, but only indicates that voluntary interactions with surroundings are prevented in this state. Out of the above there is no voluntary control over the subconscious state, though it can be programmed voluntarily by suitable psycho-processes. But once programmed the control over this state is very difficult or sometimes even impossible. So subconscious state is a hidden state and always exists even when a person is in an unconscious state. The subconscious state drives all involuntary actions in the body, e.g. pumping of the heart, flow of blood inside our bodies etc. as well as those much desired by us through programming of the brain-mind system. That is the ideas and things from the state of consciousness may be transformed into the state of sub-consciousness over which voluntary control is lost. The subconscious state of mind is very important for our existence and also affects our successes and failures in life. So the programming of the subconscious state needs to be done very carefully otherwise it may put us in a very bad shape/situation.

In short, one can say that consciousness is driven by some kind of a force in living objects which enables them to exist and interact with surroundings in the universe. So the next question is: what is this force? This is again a difficult question to answer, but I try to find an answer to this question by drawing analogies from the known facts. All objects in the universe interact according to the laws of nature. The interaction occurs through exchange of energy among the different interacting systems and is governed by the laws of nature. That is the objects possess some source of energy and let us call it an energy centre. For example take the case of our solar system: the energy centre is the SUN itself, among man-made devices the energy centre may be a battery or a fuel tank etc. Where does this energy centre lie in human body? The answer of course is the brain. And the energy source interacts with our body (internally) and with the surroundings (externally) through an abstract entity known as the mind. In the language of spiritualism this energy source can be equated to an entity like soul or atman. I shall elaborate more on brain-mind-body system in some future blog, for the present it suffices to know that mind is an abstract entity which guides the internal and external interaction of the energy source within a human body.

Now we can try to understand the so-called classical and quantum forms of human consciousness. We now know that state of consciousness is driven by some energy source whose centre is somewhere in the brain and interacts internally (with our body system) and externally (with surroundings in the universe) through an abstract entity known as mind. The classical consciousness is deterministic during the entire process of its application: e.g. thinking about son, daughter or a relation, date of birth of anybody, our personal belongings etc. The choice is unique here right from the moment we try to be conscious about them and hence the name classical consciousness. The other form is quantum consciousness which is a very hot topic of research these days. This is probabilistic in nature and manifests itself similar to the behavior of quantum particles. Mind plays a complex role in fixing this type of consciousness. One can think of examples like: a person can celebrate his birthday in several ways and mind starts thinking about all such possibilities and finally picks up one of such possibilities. The other example could be: we go to the market to buy an item and finally choose one out of several possibilities. So in this type of consciousness mind has to make a choice out of the many and ultimately the consciousness transforms itself to a deterministic stage which in technical terms may be referred to as the collapse of the quantum mechanical state (wave mechanics function) of the consciousness. Or in other words one can say that the final state of consciousness in a process is deterministic and is no more probabilistic. The quantum consciousness works as directed by our mind till it becomes deterministic or classical after the end result of the process is reached.

Let me now try to present some other characteristics of consciousness. Consciousness is perceived by an observer, so different observers may experience different states of consciousness while observing the same object/surroundings/phenomenon/event etc. It means that consciousness is individualistic in nature and its state may vary from observer to observer. It means there is nothing like absolute state of consciousness, and thus the description may require concepts of relativity and frames of reference. I give here an example: a color blind person may see red color as green while a normal healthy person will see red as red. Does it mean that state of consciousness may transform reality into an illusion? Why not? A mirage in deserts points to the presence of water according to a state of consciousness, but the final state of consciousness translates an illusion into reality. That is what always happens. So the intermediate states of consciousness in describing something may be like its metastable states which finally transform to a stable state which is realistic and deterministic. For example: one gets hold of a piece of yellow metal and thinks it to be gold. This is according to his metastable state of consciousness. But the moment it is known by experimental checks that the gold looking piece of metal is not gold the state of consciousness transforms to a stable state and links itself with the reality.

To summarize the above I would say that consciousness is a state of the mind in human beings driven by some energy source and enables us to interact internally (with our body) or externally (with surroundings in the universe). It manifests itself in several forms and guides our voluntary and involuntary actions. Basic form of consciousness is present in all living objects though humans are blessed with other states of consciousness as well in addition to the basic form. The quantum nature of consciousness persists in the mind till a process reaches its end and the consciousness then transforms to its classical or deterministic form through a collapse of the quantum mechanical wave mechanics function representing the quantum states of the process. An observer is needed to perceive consciousness and there is nothing like absolute state of consciousness as different observers may possess different states of consciousness while describing a phenomenon/event/surroundings etc. The consciousness may experience its various metastable states and finally transforms to a stable state which is realistic and deterministic. The metastable states could be probabilistic and individualistic. I shall dwell more on related topics in my future blog articles.

Watak na Pag-Inog

Kapag napag-usapan ang panahon [as time hindi as weather], ang pumapasok sa isip natin ay relo, wall clock o kaya’y kalendaryo. Sa mundo ng physics theory, madalas sinusukat nila ang panahon at bilis sa pamamagitan ng tik-tak ng relo. At ang tik-tak na ito ay ang paghati ng linggo sa 7 pitong araw, pag-buklod ng 60 segundo sa isang minuto at ang presensiya ng saandaang taon sa isang siglo. Sa sukat nakabase ang agham ngunit ang pilosopiya ay sa esensiya.

Sinukat ka ng agham,
nagbuo ng hugis ang matematika
ngunit lalo mo lamang inilingid ang iyong mukha
at ibinuyangyang ang iyong maskara.

Dahil ang nakikita ng agham ang pangyayari at hindi ang rurok na dahilan ng pangyayari. Nababasa lamang ng siyensiya ang bilis ng pagragasa sa dimensyong itinakda ng matematika. Tinatanong ng agham kung papaano tumatakbo ang oras habang tinatanong naman ng pilosopiya kung ano ang panahon mismo.  At natuklasan ng katwiran na hindi pala umiral ang taym. Ang tunog at galaw ng relo ay simbolo lamang ng paglipas ng panahon. Ngunit hindi makikita ang paglipas ng panahon kung walang aktwal na pangyayari, pagbabago at paggalaw. Ang sukat na ibinabadya ng orasan at nagsasaad lamang ng relativity sa kosmos ayon sa unit at kategoryang itinakda ng isip ng tao.

Ayon kay Immanuel Kant, ang panahon ay hindi umiiral. Ito ay produkto lamang ng isip na nahita lamang natin sa paglilimi sa mga nagaganap. Ang kaganapan ang umiiral hindi ang oras. Ang panahon ay isang matematikal na pagmemeron na nasa apat na sulok lamang ng katinuan. Tulad ng dilim, hindi sya umiiral ngunit nasisino dahil sa nawalang liwanag.

Maging si Agustin ng Hippo ay nawindang sa konsepto ng taym. Nasabi pa nya na kung hindi sya tatanungin, alam nya ang taym, Ngunit kapag tinanong mo na sya, hindi nya raw ito maipaliwanag. Napakahirap nga arukin ang panahon, ngunit unti-unti mong mauunawaan ito kung pag-aaralan mo ang paggalaw. Ang paggalaw ay isang pangyayari, isang pagbabago na siyang naging pundasyon ng materyal na uniberso. Ang pagbabago ang naging dahilan ng hiwalayan ni materyal at imateryal.

Hindi tumatakbo ang oras kundi ang pagbabago ang tumatakbo. Marahil walang materyal na bagay sa kalikasan na hindi nagbabago o kaya’y nasa complete state of rest. Dahil kahit ang isang namamahingang aparador ay naglalakbay kasabay ng paggalaw ng mundo sa kalawakan. Nasa batas na ng materyalismo ang pagbabagong anyo, pagkamatay, pagsilang, pagtanda at paglago. Kaya kahit tumunganga ka dyan maghapon, naitakda na ikaw ay magbabago. Nababawasan ang selula ng utak mo at ikaw ay tumatanda.

Nakatakada ang pagbabago. Nakakintal na yan sa takbo ng uniberso. kaya dalawa na lamang ang pagpipilian mong itanong sa sarili mo, “Saan ba ako dadalhin ng pagbabago?” at “Saan ko ba igigiya at dadalhin ang pagbabago?”

Some say that 90% of success is just showing up. What does it mean if you simply never leave?

Cloudy dawn light in the counting room

Well, for one thing, it definitely means that I’m fiddling with the laser about three hours earlier than I normally would. I suspect that’s a good thing.

Sumatran quake and early snows after the bump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Saw this on Comically Vintage yesterday. So good:

Via ComicallyVintage.tumblr.com, via FeastingonRoadkill.tumblr.com

The source of this gem was a one-shot issue of “Future World Comics” in 1946. (Excellent summary at Oddball Comics here.)

I always find it neat to compare what science predicted in the past to what science has produced today. In the above example, atomic cars would be feasible in 1946 if the price of uranium-235 (U-235) dropped to $52,000 a pound. A look around the Internet shows the price of yellowcake (triuranium octoxide) to be about $43 a pound today. It’s a quick and dirty comparison, but something tells me that even with uranium 43 bucks a pound cheap, we’re not going to be driving around in atomic cars anytime soon.

But nuclear medicine is an important component in treating some cancers today, so Future World Comics got that part right!

The  financial catastrophe engulfing the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has suddenly reared its (very ugly) head again.

Here is a statement posted yesterday on their webpage.

STFC Council policy on grants

STFC Council examined progress of its current science and technology prioritisation exercise at a strategy session on 21 and 22 September. Without prejudging the outcome of the prioritisation, Council agreed that prudent financial management required a re-examination of upcoming grants.

Council therefore agreed that new grants will be issued only to October 2010 in the first instance. This temporary policy is in place pending the outcome of the prioritisation exercise, expected in the New Year.

According to the e-astronomer the  STFC  has written to all Vice-chancellors and Principals of UK universities to tell them about this move. I gather the intention is that this measure will be temporary, but it looks deeply ominous to me. Those of us whose rolling grant requests for  5 years from April 2010 are currently being assessed face the possibility of receiving grants for only 6 months of funding. On the other hand, I’m told that what is more likely is that our grant won’t be announced until January or February, after the hitlist prioritisation exercise has been completed in the New Year. Hardest hit will be the particle physicists whose rolling grants start on 1st October 2009 (tomorrow), which will have only a year’s funding on them…

It seems that STFC has finally realised the scale of its budgetary problems and payback time is looming. I honestly think we could be doomed…