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Goodbye Aberration: Physicist Solves 2,000-Year-Old Optical Problem

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Re: Goodbye Aberration: Physicist Solves 2,000-Year-Old Optical Problem

#31

Post by michelpp »

joeberon wrote: post #21

Slightly related: One thing I've learnt in Physics is that there are still a huge number of practical and fundamental problems to be solved. You might expect everything easy will already be done by now but that's just not true. Hence we still manage to write so many papers! In fact many Physicists have too many papers they want to write and not enough time to write them. This was a huge surprise for me coming in to m…

I agree with this big time. One of my favorite Feynman quotes is that science is an "expanding frontier of ignorance". There is always somewhere to go and something on the other side, that may change everything and invalidate deeply held convictions forever, all it takes is the guts to, again quoting Feynman, "be willing to stick your neck out".

Re: Goodbye Aberration: Physicist Solves 2,000-Year-Old Optical Problem

#32

Post by zaroth »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #24

"It is unclear whether he finished eating the Nutella bread." This article is alright.

Trying to figure out what voice you’re writing that in.

I hope you mean alright alright, and not just _alright_ because I loved that line!

Re: Goodbye Aberration: Physicist Solves 2,000-Year-Old Optical Problem

#33

Post by ttul »

zaroth wrote: post #29
mykowebhn wrote: post #25

> After months of working on solving the problem, Rafael González recalls, “I remember one morning I was making myself a slice of bread with Nutella, when suddenly, I said out loud: Mothers! It is there!” > He then ran to his computer and started programming the idea. When he executed the solution and saw that it worked, he says he jumped all over the place. It is unclear whether he finished eating the Nutella bread.…

Gave me shivers reading it. Beautiful example of the incredible mystery of the human mind. Poof! And the solution materialized. Of course, all the groundwork had been laid. All the neurons primed. Just incredible. And that formula. Damn.

That was my thought. Why is it so damn complex? You’d think the solution would be simpler.

Re: Goodbye Aberration: Physicist Solves 2,000-Year-Old Optical Problem

#34

Post by TheRealPomax »

jey wrote: post #9

Fulltext: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328536020_General_f...

And to anyone who is averse to reading dense, long papers: it's only 4 pages long, and a quarter is pictures. It's heavy on the maths, because of course it has to be, but there isn't a single integral in the entire thing. It's remarkably accessible to anyone who took an introductory calculus course.

Re: Goodbye Aberration: Physicist Solves 2,000-Year-Old Optical Problem

#35

Post by TheRealPomax »

zaroth wrote: post #32
TheRealPomax wrote: post #24

"It is unclear whether he finished eating the Nutella bread." This article is alright.

Trying to figure out what voice you’re writing that in. I hope you mean alright alright, and not just _alright_ because I loved that line!

It is a most excellent line.

Re: Goodbye Aberration: Physicist Solves 2,000-Year-Old Optical Problem

#38

Post by oh_sigh »

magicalhippo wrote: post #15
anonymfus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's useful if distance to your object changes predictably enough, like in astronomy, satellite imaging and many other kinds of space missions.

Well in astronomy you usually want your telescope to be able to observe different targets. So it depends on the details of how the correction surface has to change when the image-object distance. If it's just a mild deformation and offset, then yeah I guess technology similar to adaptive mirrors could work well.

Distances are usually treated as infinity, at least in astrophotography. I'd be surprised if this secondary lens was able to distinguish between light coming from 1ly and 1000ly

Re: Goodbye Aberration: Physicist Solves 2,000-Year-Old Optical Problem

#39

Post by skybrian »

michelpp wrote: post #31
joeberon wrote: post #21

Slightly related: One thing I've learnt in Physics is that there are still a huge number of practical and fundamental problems to be solved. You might expect everything easy will already be done by now but that's just not true. Hence we still manage to write so many papers! In fact many Physicists have too many papers they want to write and not enough time to write them. This was a huge surprise for me coming in to m…

I agree with this big time. One of my favorite Feynman quotes is that science is an "expanding frontier of ignorance". There is always somewhere to go and something on the other side, that may change everything and invalidate deeply held convictions forever, all it takes is the guts to, again quoting Feynman, "be willing to stick your neck out".

Oh, I'm sure there are lots of things to discover, but I think this underestimates what it takes to actually know enough to find the frontier and decide on a good problem to solve.
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