Idle Diffractions

Yet Again – Something “New” from Google: Search Images

I started noticing a few weeks ago that when you enter a search, a link shows up with images related to the topic of your search.  I was busy at the time and didn’t really stop to realize how significant this is.  So today, it really took effect.  In preparing to attempt to explain Polarization to a class of students, I happened to type in the fundamental way to look at polarization, the “Poincare Sphere”.  Now typically I would have also gone to Google scholar at this point to see what original Poincare material is on-line, but, I am on vacation today (skiing in Powder Basin, Utah – very nice, 18” of new snow, sunny day, 30 degrees, are you jealous yet??).  Anyway, below is the collection of images that appears in the 4th or so link.  Is this great, or what?

I also learned a few things (I probably should have said relearned, but, I can’t remember).  There are 8 descriptors for a polarized E&M field; average intensity, average phase (these two also applied to an unpolarized field) and diattenuation and retardance with each of the latter two have three characteristics; magnitude, orientation, and ellipticity.  I always struggled with concept of more than 3-dimensions, but, here it is, an 8-dimensional space.  I also picked up that these map to the 16 Mueller matrix values, with the added concept of depolarization.  The depolarization created by a material occupy 9 of the Mueller spaces, the diattenuation and retardance get 6, and intensity gets the remaining slot. 

While the preceding paragraph is courtesy of Jim McGuire, Ph.D., the Director of Optical Engineering at ORA, and someone with a Ph.D. in polarization, even more can be found by visiting ww.axometrics.com, a company formed by his advisor, Prof. Russell Chipman of the University of Arizona. 

I’m sure I’ll come back to polarization, but, like I said, it is a vacation day (or evening at this point), so some other time.

One of the Most Significant Collections of Scientists in History?

I am fortunate to know, and live a few miles from, Prof. Emil Wolf, known for many things, but perhaps most popular as the author of Principles of Optics, with Max Born, 1959 (they have a first edition at the U of R., my version, bought when I entered optics, in Arizona, in 1976, is the 5th edition). He was recently honored for giving one paper in each of the last 50 years – how amazing is that?  We (my wife Prof. Jannick Rolland and I) try to go over, with the kids (Yvan 16, and Roman 14), at least once a month, to collect some of his stories.  The other night, he brought out, as he often does, something from his “collection”.  This night, he offered that we could take it home and try to create a copy (without opening the frame – as you will see this reveals some interesting features of slim digital cameras).  Shown below is a photo given to him by Max Born from a conference in 1927. 

Beyond being a fascinating collection of scientists, it illustrates nicely that these slim digital cameras have some serious barrel distortion. 

Although you could expand the photo, I’ll make it easier.  Most prominent is Albert, in the front row, just right of center, unmistakable.  What about the others?  I knew many, in fact most of them.  I had a few minutes (it’s Saturday morning and I’m sitting by the fire), so I thought I’d Google (Scholar) those that I knew little about.  This, of course, became immediately much too interesting.  The first one, in the lower left corner is “I. Langmeir”, for whom I knew nothing, other than recognizing the name.  Google Scholar does not reveal him on the first page.  Straight Google points to Wikipedia, who spelled his name as “Langmuir” and labels him as an atomist.

Irving Langmuir
Following World War I, Langmuir contributed to atomic theory and the understanding of atomic structure by defining the modern concept of valence shells and ...
Biography - Patents - See also - References
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Langmuir - Cached - Similar

Even more fun, is the next link is to CERN, and, amazingly, this photo (with better quality).  Links to follow imply he traveled often with Madame Curie, who appears two seats to the right of him.

http://doc.cern.ch//archive/electronic/cern/others/PHO/pauli-archive-pho//016.jpg

Next, to the right we find, Max Planck, known best for Planck’s constant,

Max Planck
Max Planck (April 23, 1858 – October 4, 1947) was a German physicist. He is considered to be the founder of the quantum theory, and thus one of the most ...
Biography - Religious view - Honors and awards - Publications
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck - Cached - Similar

There was also the following link on the lead page, that was interesting and relates to describing his Nobel prize. 

He is followed by Madame Curie, best known for contributions to understanding radioactivity.
n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck%23Honours_and_awards&ei=3NxRS-SlEIiWtgeP_qytDA&sa=X&oi=oneline_sitelinks&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=3&ved=0CAsQ0gIoAg&usg=AFQjCNFK6GLcRm3AvCw7tyA9uqUXYrRJNQ
Marie Curie
Madame Curie was decorated with the French Legion of Honor. In Poland, she had received honorary doctorates from the Lwów Polytechnic (1912), ...
Early life - Sorbonne - New elements - Nobel Prizes
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie - Cached - Similar

It is interesting to note the rest of the Google page lists biographies written on her, including one by her daughter – has anyone read this one?

Next comes H.A. Lorentz, who I recall as related to my E&M classes and some plots with someone else I cannot recall.  Again, we can resort to Wikipedia, to find:

Hendrik Lorentz
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (18 July 1853 – 4 February 1928) was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the ...
Biography - Legacy - See also - References
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Lorentz - Cached - Similar

The rest of the Google page is overtaken by links to one John H. Lorentz.

Lowry Hill - Biographies - John H. Lorentz
John H. Lorentz. Director of Alternative Investments. At age nine, John Lorentz completely dismantled his bicycle (much to his mother's horror) only to ...
www.lowryhill.com/biographies/ops_j_lorentz/ - Cached - Similar

I’m not going there, although I am curious to see what comes after “… only to …”

You can solve this inconvenience by noting the photo says “H. A. Lorentz” and going with that you get an interesting cover page in Google.  He received the Nobel Prize in 1902 and was selected for Project Gutenberg.  His books, some written about Einstein’s theories and some written with Einstein (and Minkowski) are available even now from Amazon. 

Next comes our hero, Albert…

Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire on 14 March 1879. His father was Hermann Einstein, a salesman and ...
Early life and education - Marriages and children - Patent office
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein - Cached

also on the Google cover page we find this fun image,

I may have to do something with this.

To his right, P. Langevin, again, a name to me, where we find,

Paul Langevin
Paul Langevin (23 January 1872 – 19 December 1946) was a prominent French physicist who developed Langevin dynamics and the Langevin equation. ...
Life - See also - References - Sources
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Langevin - Cached - Similar

 

One useful quote from the Google cover page is “Paul Langevin was the first person to write the 'Newton's equation' for a Brownian particle. ...”

Also on the cover page, we find he was Madame Curie’s “companion”, which at one point he defended by offering to duel, with real pistols – someone let me know what happened next?

Continuing right, we have next E. Guye, I had not idea who we have here, Google says, basically, he was at the 1927 conference – he does not rank a listing Wikipedia, yet.  As a result, his Google cover page lists a number of different links to the 1927 conference, and an earlier one in 1911.  His name is linked with DeBroglie and Lorentz-Einstein experiments.

Towards the bottom of the page is a great blog link – “the Lousy Linguist"
http://thelousylinguist.blogspot.com/2008/06/when-conferences-meant-something.html

Here you find the quote:

One of my all time favorite pictures, this comes from what may have been the most valuable academic conference in history, the Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons held in Brussels, Belgium 1927. Rarely has a single conference involved such critical debate about a new theory (I'm no physicist, of course).

From Wikipedia's page: "Perhaps the most famous conference was the October 1927 Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons, where the world's most notable physicists met to discuss the newly formulated quantum theory.

How fun is that?  The title of the article is “When Conferences Meant Something”, how appropriate.

OK, two to go (in this row),  next we find another unknown to me, C.T.R. Wilson,

Charles Thomson Rees Wilson
C. T. R. Wilson. The 1927 Solvay conference. Born, Charles Thomson Rees Wilson 14 February 1869(1869-02-14) Midlothian, Scotland ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Thomson_Rees_Wilson - Cached - Similar

Reading down the Google cover page for “C. T. R. Wilson” I realize I do know Wilson, he discovered, or invented, the cloud Chamber.  There are a number of great looking links on the page, should you be so inclined.

Finally, for today, we have another unknown to me, D.W. Richardson,

Owen Willans Richardson
Sir Owen Willans Richardson, FRS (26 April 1879 - 15 February 1959) was a British physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1928 for his work on ...
Biography - Honours - References - Bibliography
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Willans_Richardson - Cached - Similar

Yet another Nobel Prize winner.  This is the only case I was forced to click through to fill in the … above.  It reads “…for his work on thermionic emission, which lead (sic) to Richardson’s Law.” 

"If then the negative radiation is due to the corpuscles coming out of the metal, the saturation current s should obey the law  ."[3]

This also made available the photo below, again from this clearly monumental conference.

 

Niels Bohr and Richardson (right) at the 1927 Solvay conference

Born	26 April 1879 Dewsbury, Yorkshire, England
Died	15 February 1959 (aged 79) Alton, Hampshire, England
Nationality	United Kingdom
Fields	Physics
Institutions	University of Cambridge Princeton University King's College London
Alma mater	University of Cambridge
Doctoral advisor	J. J. Thomson
Doctoral students	Arthur Compton Clinton Davisson
Known for	Richardson's Law
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1928) Hughes Medal (1920)

Sir Owen Willans Richardson, FRS (26 April 1879 - 15 February 1959) was a British physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Since I seem to have exceeded the blog guidelines, 2 pages and 1 figure, and the fire has died down, I’ll save the remaining two rows, and those missing from the photo, listed at the bottom for blogs to follow.  Feel free to respond with more tidbits.

Some Really Old Photons...

... were recently collected by the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope.  John Wood, one of my favorite scientists at NASA, from my days on the Hubble Repair team, sometimes send over some new results that he finds significant.  Since I wandered into optics to develop instruments for astronomers, after getting my initial degrees in Physics and accidently in Astrophysics, I’ve always tried to keep up, a little.  As you may recall, after a lot of politics, the Hubble was granted a new mission and some new instruments were installed.  They immediately went forward to repeat taking the now famous Hubble Deep Field shots, those with the longest possible exposure and in doing so, with the new equipment, resulted in collecting AND DETECTING some of the oldest photons ever, some 13 billion years old, shown below.

This comes to us from

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1001/11hubble/

which, of course, you should click on, if you have just 1 more minute. 

This got me trying to figure out how to relate to a 13 billion year old photon.  I didn’t get too far, but, try this.  I have had the misfortune to fly, so far, some 1.5 million miles on United, starting in 1992.  Since it is easy to relate to a mile, now I can somewhat relate to 1.5 million of them.  In a typical year, I fly some 100,000 miles.  Now, in round numbers, it is 25,000 miles around the earth, so, I fly about 4 times around it in equivalent miles in a year, at an average of 500 miles per hour, (not including airport time), thereby spending about 200 hours a year in an airplane.  Now light, on the other hand, inserted into a fiber, goes around the world 7 times, IN ONE SECOND, nice trick (where I’ve conveniently ignored the refractive index of the fiber).  So, light can go in somewhat less than a second, what it takes me 200 hours to accomplish. So, now I can almost relate to what light can do in one second.  A few other round numbers to play with, there are very nearly, pi*10^7 seconds in a year.  (pi=3.14).  So, light can go around the earth about 7pi*10^7  (~210,000,000) times in a year.  Now we’re getting close to one billion.  So, in 5 years, light can go around the earth 1 billion times.  So, here is an irrelevant statistic.  If light would travel around the world (it doesn’t since the it prefers a straight line, but, these days we could put it into a fiber), then, a pulse launched when I was born, would have now circled the earth over 10 billion times.  But, now 13 billion light years is another matter.  Since the 10 billion circlings of the earth only represent 1/7th of a second per circle, versus the distance travel by light in a year.  How to relate to that?  Well, the distance to the sun is slightly less than 100,000,000 miles (93 million actually).  Light that arrives here at earth is about, 10 minutes old.  (568 seconds).  In a day then, light can go to the sun and back, about 125 times.  So, finally, in a year, light can go to the sun and back about 125*365 times, or about 45,000 times.  At this point, I don’t think that helps me relate, but, almost. 

As an aside, Doug Goodman, being Doug, has a bag of poppy seeds, carefully measured out, to contain 1,000,000 seeds – should you every try to visualize 1,000,000 of something.  Then, you only need to visualize 13,000 of those (it is about the size of a sandwich baggie) to get to 13 billion.  Good luck.

Another Exciting New Telescope is Operational in Space WISE

In case you missed it, as many have been saying, there is a new, significant telescope now operational in space.  The “first light” photos have been posted at

http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/gallery_first_light.html

and one is shown here.

To get some background on the telescope, there was an article in the LA Times earlier in December (that I missed, but Frank Moreno of ORA passed along.  That link is

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-wise10-2009dec10,0,5846611.story

Both sites are worth the 5-minutes. 

ORA’s own Mark Kahan was heavily involved with this program.  One of his recent roles, which is a somewhat obscure, but essential, corner of science is to ensure that all the necessary conditions are met to be sure the protective cover on the telescope actually does come off.  A problem encountered in an earlier test of an important space asset.  I’ll see if I can get him to write something on this, some time soon.  In the interim, enjoy the photos of space.

And now back to business?

Although I tend to concentrate on events in science, this came by this morning, from a coworker at ORA who retired some years back, Barry Broome.  This website, assembled by the magazine Slate, gives a very nice, very detailed, and reportedly unaltered, report that compiles the growth of unemployment for each county in the US by month since 2006.  While the results are discouraging, and I’m sure there are more than a few ways to interpret them, what is impressive is that the data can now be compiled so quickly and displayed so effectively. 

http://www.slate.com/id/2216238

It is very instructive to active the “play” button and see the map evolve.  If you have 2 minutes, check it out. 

Note if you launch from here, I found you have to click a few times to activate it.  I tried copying in a static map to increase your curiosity, but, I’m afraid you’ll actually have to click on the link.