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Light ties itself in knots - spontaneously
The Register ^ | 29th October 2012 23:59 GMT | Richard Chirgwin •

Posted on 10/30/2012 1:22:44 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach

It’s not only possible to get light to tie itself in knots: given the right conditions, it will do so spontaneously, according to a paper published last week in Nature.

El Reg has no possible hope of fully understanding this paper (published in full, an emerging trend we welcome), but one really interesting idea is right there in the abstract:

“We anticipate similar spontaneous knot topology to be a universal feature of waves whose phase front is twisted and nonlinearly modulated, including superfluids and trapped matter waves.” [Emphasis added]

In other words, this research has the potential to be replicated not only to create “knotted waves” of light, but of waves in more tangible stuff.

The superposition Spirograph: different modes of

the knotted soliton. Source: Nature

“Knotted light” is already feature of research into things like optical tweezers and quantum computing. However, according to ANU researcher Dr Anton Desyatnikov, previous demonstrations have been painstakingly hand-made using carefully-engineered lasers.

“[W]hat we’ve been working on are models in which the knots spontaneously form on their own”, he said. “Apart from their curiosity value, what’s really interesting and useful about these knots of darkness is that they show you what the power flow is doing.”

“Our models suggest that you have to get the key parameters of the light in a certain range before you can easily tie the light in knots but once you do, the knots are virtually guaranteed … we can’t predict exactly where they will form. Just that under these specific circumstances the optical vortices will spontaneously nucleate and tie themselves into little knots.” ®


TOPICS: Astronomy; Chit/Chat; Science
KEYWORDS: physics; stringtheory
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1 posted on 10/30/2012 1:22:50 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Very good ~ this is probably part of the secret of how double-helix water molecules formed in new stars pick up other elements to become DNA!

Those knotted hunks of star light spilling through those molecules would create energy flow patterns that would selectively filter out specific atoms adrift in the stream of water for inclusion in the matrix of the double-helix molecular forms.

So, thanks ~

2 posted on 10/30/2012 1:32:16 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Just when I was starting to think that I understood some of this stuff.

“I should have read that book by that wheelchair guy” Homer Simpson

3 posted on 10/30/2012 1:36:32 PM PDT by CrazyIvan (Obama's birth certificate was found stapled to Soros's receipt.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Bookmarked...


4 posted on 10/30/2012 1:37:06 PM PDT by babygene
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To: CrazyIvan
Oh yeah.

We did NOT cover this in culinary school.

Lissajous curves, yes. But this doesn't seem bounded by a rectangle. And the whole knotted light thing... Over my pay-grade.

/johnny

5 posted on 10/30/2012 1:54:20 PM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: muawiyah

You beat me to it....


6 posted on 10/30/2012 1:57:04 PM PDT by ImJustAnotherOkie (zerogottago)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Sheldon!


7 posted on 10/30/2012 2:00:46 PM PDT by ReneeLynn (Socialism is SO yesterday. Fascism, it's the new black. Mmm mmm mmm...)
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To: ImJustAnotherOkie

kinda sorta links to that stuff about the deep, light, living water ~ a coded and embedded document explaining it all perhaps ~ what a thing to intuit.


8 posted on 10/30/2012 2:04:06 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

I read the article until it took a non-linear track and tied itself into knots and my eyes defocused.


9 posted on 10/30/2012 2:11:06 PM PDT by Cold Heart
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To: muawiyah

farts are funny


10 posted on 10/30/2012 2:12:26 PM PDT by ImJustAnotherOkie (zerogottago)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

God’s power is infinite...I doubt we ever fully figure out how the universe if put together fully...think about it...we have not yet found the smallest particle nor do we know with certainty the whole of our reality...all physical is finite I am sure, but the conceptual is not...there is your proof for God...


11 posted on 10/30/2012 2:37:23 PM PDT by Wpin ("I Have Sworn Upon the Altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny...")
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To: ImJustAnotherOkie
Could be ~ but did you read the paper? Used to spend evenings into the wee hours talking about this stuff with a couple of topology majors.

Bothers me somebody could finally put this down on paper so it is so clear and obvious ~ even intuitively obvious ~ it explains the self-assembly method for light to create energy gradients on a small scale that could literally turn an atom ~ maybe even just an electron, or a proton ~

This is some break through stuff.

12 posted on 10/30/2012 3:28:31 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach; 6SJ7; AdmSmith; AFPhys; Arkinsaw; allmost; aristotleman; autumnraine; ...

Thanks Ernest.

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13 posted on 10/30/2012 4:26:24 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: Cold Heart

LOL.


14 posted on 10/30/2012 5:24:57 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach ((The Global Warming Hoax was a Criminal Act....where is Al Gore?))
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach; SunkenCiv; KevinDavis

over my head but it sounds important

lol


15 posted on 10/30/2012 5:26:22 PM PDT by GeronL (http://asspos.blogspot.com)
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To: Alamo-Girl; betty boop; TXnMA
And here, for our enjoyment, is a mathematical explanation of what the start of the universe (the manifestation of first point/moment, then the further expressions as temporal influence grabbed hold), generated as the fundamental characteristics of what God used to build our where/when. [Is the manifestation of life merely a phase shift, inevitable fromt he fundamental construction of our where/when? ... IMHO, only if we assign another dimension designation to 'life force' which could manifest connection with the forming where/whens. Such 'another' dimension could have been called into existence without dependence upon dimension space and dimension time, but intertwine with them due to some phase shift in continua generated from first principles in His Creative work. It is akin to the 'membrane interaction' posited by some string theorists, I think. On our '4D membrane' events cannot occur without time and things cannot exist without space, but there may be complex manifestations of spatio-temporal continua as membranes, which do not menifest int he same fashion as our reality in 'three of space and one of time'. Would a designation of S3T1 be a useful expression, so that S2T2 would also be a useful expression?]
16 posted on 10/31/2012 1:13:04 PM PDT by MHGinTN (Being deceived can be cured.)
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To: MHGinTN; Alamo-Girl; betty boop
I would suggest converting the superscript numbers to subscripts to avoid confusion. Traditionally, superscripts are used to denote powers, whereas subscripts denote multiples. Accordingly, your proposal for this created universe would be "S3T1". (Which, of course, tracks with the same convention in chemistry: "H2O"...)

For my own purposes, I sometimes "expand" your expression to "L,W,H, T" or "X,Y,Z, T"...

17 posted on 10/31/2012 1:50:29 PM PDT by TXnMA ("Allah": Satan's current alias...)
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To: TXnMA
But I am looking for a way to designate 'variable expressions' of dimension Time, to express dimension Space as point, linear, planar, volume (or length width height, your L,W,H, cited as it manifests rather than as pure geometric terms).

Would you agree that a photon is composed of a smidgeon of space, a snatch of time, and energy? ... I would express that as point (spatial component of a thing), a moment (temporal component of a thing) and energy.

Due to the nature of the photon which is limited to a linear/present continuum, the moving thing manifests a wave nature in the volume(spatial)/future(temporal) Universe, kind of like a photon casts a 'shadow' upon the '4D universe' because it is existing in motion in one of the expression states of dimension space and or dimension time.

Apply that notion of 'casting a shadow' upon our '4D' to the effect of 'something' casting its shadow manifesting 'gravity' in our '4D'. What might be the 'thing' causing this shadow? ... Perhaps, since all things have temporal component to it at the most fundamental level, perhaps it is the 'massing/collection' of temporal 'grains' (or moments in my cosmology) which generates a temporal effect we interpret as mass curving spacetime.

18 posted on 10/31/2012 4:10:30 PM PDT by MHGinTN (Being deceived can be cured.)
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To: TXnMA; MHGinTN; Alamo-Girl
I would suggest converting the superscript numbers to subscripts to avoid confusion. Traditionally, superscripts are used to denote powers, whereas subscripts denote multiples. Accordingly, your proposal for this created universe would be "S3T1".

I'm glad to see this, dear brother in Christ. I was just about to write the same thing, at least WRT superscript numbers. Where they are used in mathematics, they are generally understood to signify a raising of a power.

MHGinTN's highly interesting question:

Would a designation of S3T1 be a useful expression, so that S2T2 would also be a useful expression?

Question for my dear brother in Christ MHG: Did you intend to say "S2T2" here, "or S3T2?" I thought perhaps the former may be a typo. The latter to me suggests a "volumetric" extension of "ordinary" spacetime — i.e., S3T1, expanding to S3T2.

At the same time, TXinMA seems "also" to be correct: Subscripts denote quantity — in this case, 3 of space, and 1 (0r 2!) of time.

Thank you so very much, dear MHG, for your fascinating idea!

19 posted on 10/31/2012 4:55:41 PM PDT by betty boop (We are led to believe a lie when we see with, and not through the eye. — William Blake)
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To: betty boop
Yes, a typo. The expression S3T1 would be the realm of our sensory measuring (the assimilator/mind/live being being in a planar present orientation), with the single variable expression of dimension Time as 'linear' or past. T2 would be an expression of planar Time, or present. ['Present' occurances are inaccessible to us in our conscious state which is oriented to S3T1 for rational understanding of the universe of our sensory mechanism, because we must 'receive' data/information and then process the information to generate a mental or 'soul' mechanism 'projection' of reality in the present based upon what has already happened. I take the soul to be mind, emotion, and will. The spirit is not the soul but shrouded 'within' the soul.]
20 posted on 10/31/2012 9:36:23 PM PDT by MHGinTN (Being deceived can be cured.)
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