Tag: quasiparticles

• The week in review (August 18-24)

  I’ve been remiss in blogging at Bowler Hat Science, largely because…well, I’ve been writing too much elsewhere. So, I’m going to try something different: instead of blogging each new article I write in a separate entry, I’ll write a single post summarizing everything in one go. How I learned to stop worrying and love tolerate…

  Matthew R. Francis

  August 24, 2013

  Ars Technica, Galileo’s Pendulum, Metablog, Nautilus, Slate, Writing for Other Sites

  black holes, cosmology, gamma ray burst, general relativity, multiverse, quasiparticles, warp drive

• When the reverse of reverse isn’t forward: weird symmetry in uranium compound

  Typically, reversing the direction of time twice is the same as never reversing it at all. Think of running an old-fashioned filmstrip backward, then forward (not an unusual experience for those of us um…of a certain generation): the film will look the same as though you never ran it backward. However, a particular uranium compound,…

  Matthew R. Francis

  January 30, 2013

  Ars Technica, Writing for Other Sites

  condensed matter physics, quasiparticles, symmetry, time reversal

• Holey metal, Batman!

  Metal tends to be opaque. However, if you perforate it with small holes in a certain pattern, it will still transmit some light—even if the holes are smaller than the wavelength of the light! This is known as extraordinary optical transmission (EOT), which has found uses in a number of devices since its discovery in…

  Matthew R. Francis

  December 19, 2012

  Ars Technica, Writing for Other Sites

  extraordinary optical transmission, optics, quasiparticles