Blocked holes can enhance rather than stop light transmission

Princeton University ^ | November 22, 2011 | Steven Schultz

[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.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks decimon.

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[Track9]

It seems quantum mechanics will always show you the other side of the coin you are holding in your hand no matter how hard you squeeze it.

[xp38]

Ah ha....so they only think the holes are blocked!

[bert]

“the visable photons are transmuted to flowtons and thus transmitted” said the report

[TASMANIANRED]

So , you should be able to see better with your eyes closed.

[wideminded]

3. As gas dissipates in the vacuum of space, explain why the gas giants have not dissipated?

Their surface gravities are all either around the same magnitude the Earth's or larger but these planets are colder, so they don't dissipate for the same reason that the Earth's atmosphere doesn't dissipate: the thermal velocity of gas molecules at the surface is less than the gravitational escape velocity.