Researchers studying photonic crystals say they have successfully created a form of pseudogravity that bends light just like real gravity. The new technique could have a dramatic effect on advanced communication technologies like 6G, as well as other applications in optics and materials science that could benefit from a no-contact method of manipulating light.

      • subignition
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        331 year ago

        Crystals With No Relation To Gravity Whatsoever Produce A Similar Effect To One Of The Things Gravity Does (They Bend Light) doesn’t roll off the tongue

        • @[email protected]
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          231 year ago

          I would gladly accept the extended headline in place of such an asinine misguidance.

          Thank you. I did say that out loud and it was very funny.

        • @AA5B
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          1 year ago

          Consider eyeglasses. I have very thick glasses that help me focus by using lenses with different refraction than surrounding air to bend the light. Do I use pseudo-gravity to see?

          Then most of the article is about really cool functionality described similar to some electronics basic operations that could potentially grow into logic gates or switches, which would be very cool, and still has nothing to do with gravity.

      • @BloodSlut
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        21 year ago

        And “without contact”?

        I dont know, but i think light has to pass through something for refraction to actually mean anything

        • @[email protected]
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          21 year ago

          Thank you BloodSlut, that’s a good point. It’s hard to nail down though because it’s the physical shape of crystal that’s bending the light but it is equally important to note that it does not contact…but isn’t that what refraction is?

          So even though the light is technically passing through the crystal, well, I guess that is still refraction isn’t it? It’s complex refraction because it’s being made to travel through the substrate in a particular way unlike the common way light passes through crystals.

          a facilitated, specialized refraction.

          But I guess since it bends light in the shape that light would bend around an object for to gravity they’re calling It pseudogravity, even though that’s sort of like calling a sea turtle a pseudoshark since they both move through water even though their movements are based on different properties.

          Or maybe like calling flailing your arms while drowning pseudoswimming, since the motions are similar but the reason for those motions occurring are totally different?

          Thanks for bringing up the no-contact thing.

    • @SalamendaciousOP
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      41 year ago

      Is it any more egregious than the Higgs boson being called the “god particle?”

          • @money_loo
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            1 year ago

            Lederman explains in the book why he gave the Higgs boson the nickname “The God Particle”:

            This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle. Why God Particle? Two reasons. One, the publisher wouldn’t let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. And two, there is a connection, of sorts, to another book, a much older one…

            MythBusters: Confirmed. Media of the time did indeed force the name.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Particle_(book)

            • @SalamendaciousOP
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              11 year ago

              Yes I read the Wikipedia article too. My point is that colorful, non-scientific language has been used to describe scientific principles.

  • @set_secret
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    01 year ago

    the real question here is will it provide us with gravity plates in our starships?