Posted on 11/22/2011 11:39:36 AM PST by decimon
Conventional wisdom would say that blocking a hole would prevent light from going through it, but Princeton University engineers have discovered the opposite to be true. A research team has found that placing a metal cap over a small hole in a metal film does not stop the light at all, but rather enhances its transmission.
In an example of the extraordinary twists of physics that can occur at very small scales, electrical engineer Stephen Chou and colleagues made an array of tiny holes in a thin metal film, then blocked each hole with an opaque metal cap. When they shined light into the holes, they found that as much as 70 percent more light came through when the holes were blocked than when they were open.
"The common wisdom in optics is that if you have a metal film with very small holes and you plug the holes with metal, the light transmission is blocked completely," said Chou, the Joseph Elgin Professor of Engineering. "We were very surprised."
Chou said the result could have significant implications and uses. For one, he said, it might require scientists and engineers to rethink techniques they have been using when they want to block all light transmission. In very sensitive optical instruments, such as microscopes, telescopes, spectrometers and other optical detectors, for example, it is common to coat a metal film onto glass with the intention of blocking light. Dust particles, which are unavoidable in metal film deposition, inevitably create tiny holes in the metal film, but these holes have been assumed to be harmless because the dust particles become capped and surrounded by metal, which is thought to block the light completely.
(Excerpt) Read more at princeton.edu ...
Stop gap ping.
They are trying to get us to abandon our tin foil hats!
They are trying to get us to abandon our tin foil hats!
Brings new meaning to the term “it’s all done with mirrors”.
Oh noes its too late for you the government seems to have cloned you already!!!
;)
They can have my tin foil hat when they pry it out of my cold dead hands!
DARPA and NSF grantee.
You wear your tinfoil cap on your hands? How odd.
—You wear your tinfoil cap on your hands? How odd.—
No. OddER. ;-)
I wear a colander. I'll try blocking the holes to see if more light comes through.
Take the spaghetti out first.
Gee, and my wife thought it was crazy that when I was constipated she could shine a light into my left ear and the beam came out my right ear. That effect when away after I became “unplugged”.
with two holes you get interference patterns where half the light will cancel out
block one of them and you get the whole of the light coming through one hole, I have noticed this before too- it seems brighter
“”Light” continues to baffle scientists.
It’s both a wave and a particle (something can’t really be both).
It seems to be able to exceed its own max. speed limit.
And then there’s Quantum Mechanics - or maybe there isn’t.
What about “gravity” - what is it and what is its origin?
“Science” is certain there is no God, but really isn’t certain of much else.... “
I have an atheist brother-in-law. Another is agnostic. They are incessantly quoting “science” (i.e., popular sci-fi) to support their positions. The atheist has a doctorate in mathematics. I love asking him, “So, explain to me again why gravity is so weak?” Light should be simple for a species that has the whole universe figured out.
If you need new questions ask him these:
1. Explain why all planets do not rotate the same way, but some rotate the opposite?
2. Explain why Jupiter has moons that orbit in opposite directions?
3. As gas dissipates in the vacuum of space, explain why the gas giants have not dissipated?
4. Why do some planets have rings and others do not? After “billions of years”?
5. If cosmic evolution is true (big bang, out of smaller elements galaxies, stars and planets form out of these elements), that means from an explosion (disorder) came order (the universe) - yet this is the exact opposite of what we observe in the universe - namely the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, that states over time order degrades into disorder. How do you explain that the theory of cosmic evolution violates the 2nd Law of thermodynamics?
Hey Chou! If the light’s gettin’ through, the hole’s not blocked.
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