5 most mind-blowing things you learned to do science

by umer | 3:26 PM in , |


5 most mind-blowing things you learned to do science
We hear about new miracles of science literally every day and has long used to it. We have very little could surprise. And yet ... sometimes what happens in laboratories very much like black magic. For example:
1. Penetrate into your imagination

 and write them Stranger who breaks into your dreams and watcheth the most intimate fantasies - sounds quite unscientific. Natural magic. Yes, we've all heard about the electrical signals that come from the brain, and that it is theoretically possible to capture and decode. But ... our dreams. A parallel world in which we fly on dragons and get Oscars. You can not connect to that our domestic broadcasting and watch cable TV. appears possible.Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, and found a way to really see what the brain sees. These are connected to the head of the experiment participants electrodes through which recorded brain activity and began to show them the trailers with YouTube - a huge number of trailers all sorts of different movies. They then downloaded to a computer these same trailers and set ourselves the task of machine: Compare millions of film frames with images obtained from devices that fix the activity of the brain and to link the various changes in brain activity with different images. Eventually, they began to leave the image "that sees the brain" - until, of course, is not very clear, but still impressive, of course, there there is still work to do, but the main thing - the idea was right. Mental images can actually be recorded on video. It remains only to perfect the writing process, and you can not bother to write posts, and spread the idea straight to YouTube. And for those who do not want to give up the habit to issue their thoughts in the form of text, a team of scientists from the Netherlands invented the system, Allows you to print just thinking about the letter you want - and the system works, even if the user is in a coma. they found - if a person in a "vegetative" state asked to imagine that he was, say, playing tennis, certain areas of the brain are activated. Next is to train the patient to associate different letters on the keyboard with certain images, and using the appropriate tools to determine the areas of the brain became active. That's all. You can write a novel.
2. Slow the speed of light to the speed of urban transport 
"Speed ​​of Light", as we know - is constant. This means that it does not change. Never. It is literally a speed limiter, acting in the universe. light from the flashlight will fly on the wall at a speed of 186,282 miles per second (or (3? 108 m / s approx. http://mixstuff.ru/), and according to the laws of physics, anything faster can not fly. And what if the light slowed down to, for example, 60 miles per hour What if a disaster? Even if not, it would be interesting to overtake a car on the light from within his own lights. amazing but scientists actually managed to slow down the speed of the light beam to the public transport. turns out that the statement that the "speed of light" - the fastest that exists in the universe is not quite true. So reach the opposite wall faster than light flashlight really can not do anything - because there is no light mass. But the trick is that the light, like everything else, is composed of particles, and these particles are theoretically possible to slow down or even stop altogether. And not just in theory. Danish physicist Lin Howe found a way to slow light down by passing it through a cloud of atoms sverhholodnyh sodium. This is about how a bullet pass through the water obstacle. As with everything to do next, Lin does not know. But someone something sure to come up.

3. Teleportatsiya information

It does not sound very impressive - in a sense, the information is transmitted and instantly. Mobile phones, the Internet, where much faster? It's not about that. When we talk on the phone, then send radio waves through the air, and they have to make their way from one place to another.So if you are in Russia, and call anywhere in Australia, there is a delay. And then, the waves can be blocked in various ways. question of learning how to transfer information from one place to another is not fast - instantly and without any intermediaries. It turns out that maybe sometimes.In 2009, scientists at the University of Maryland teleported data from one atom to another over a distance of one meter. And in 2012, the same as the Chinese have done - only to a distance of 60 miles (96.5 km.). Nothing to do with fast movement was not there. In general, the movement had nothing to do. The signal was just in a different place and that's it. This phenomenon is called "quantum entanglement." Two "related" to each atom can be separated and diluted in different directions for many miles, but (that's the whole thing) if one of them will occur some changes, it immediately affects the other. They do not convey information, they just "linked" by which a person can not yet comprehend the state.

4. Black Holes
metamaterials ( class of composite materials that can distort light and other waves). Rings arranged in concentric layers, and each layer is absorbed (or absorb) a specific wavelength of electromagnetic waves. shall not weary the reader with the technical details, just to say that the result was almost the same effect as when light passes through a black hole - it gets stuck once got inside. While the experiment was conducted only with microwave waves, but scientists hope to soon repeat the same experiment with visible light. And this is not just a scientific curiosity.This discovery may completely change the approach to the "collection" of solar energy. Bulky mirror will soon be yesterday - a small black hole can absorb sunlight as a vacuum cleaner.

5. The creation of matter out of nothing
One of the most fundamental rules of the universe states that "nothing will come of nothing" - if you're not a magician, of course. But there are scientists, which the word "impossible" is particularly inspiring. "While we have lasers, nothing is impossible" - believe them. In the late 90's, scientists have used the Stanford Accelerator Laboratory (this is the older sister of the Large Hadron Collider) to repeat one of the focuses of David Copperfield - to create something tangible out of nothing. Only without cheating. fact that the vacuum - this is not a complete void. This compound of matter and antimatter - particles and antiparticles. And although their density is incredible high, neither see nor hear nor touch them, we can not - all because of the fact that they are fully reduce each other to nothing. That is, the vacuum is actually full of energy, and its something to be transformed into matter. To do this, scientists made ​​a sort of "explosion in reverse" - that is, instead of converting mass into energy, they were irradiated with laser energy, while from She did not get the array. Lasers used for that super - power of only one of them reached a trillion watts. It's like 16 billion ordinary light bulbs. And in order to get a couple of electrons. Not much of course, but the step is the hardest.