Goodbye Aberration: Physicist Solves 2,000-Year-Old Optical Problem • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by toomuchtodo » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:29 PM UTC

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.

Isn’t that how most of us are solving complex problems? Building context and then walking away from the desk for a walk, or perhaps while we’re in the shower in the morning or at night, not focused on the problem but our brain working on it in the background until it is brought forward to our consciousness?

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

#52

Post by asark » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

thechao wrote: post #12

The paper is from Nov 2018, and is easy to find online. It’s a pretty amazing result; the examples they give in the paper are for some reasonable shaped primary surfaces and some really neat “exotic” stuff. The solution actually admits aberrant free solutions for any geometry that doesn’t include self-crossing rays. So, some of the ‘weird’ examples include a Bessel-function cross section, negative index of refraction…

> and lenses that focus at negative infinity.

Any reasonable chance of of implications for projective geometry?

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

#53

Post by dentemple » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:33 PM UTC

tambourine_man wrote: post #50

adrianmonk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good article if you enjoy jokes and references about photographers and how they behave. It's not a good article if you want a minimum of fluff and just want to understand what the discovery is and why it might be significant.

I usually enjoy jokes intermingled with info, those didn’t hit the right note for me, for some reason.

Not every person finds every joke to be funny.

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

#54

Post by skilled » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

hyperpallium wrote: post #42

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.…

This raises the perennial question of whether product placement is a legitimate source of funding for fundamental scientific research. After placing an ice-cube in my delicious glass of refreshing coca-cola brand carbonated beverage, I yelled Eureka! and jumped out of the bath. Is that really how it happened? Is it not inconsistent with the pursuit of truth?

What truth?

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

#55

Post by dylan604 » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

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!

I read it as "This article is 'alright alright alright'".

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

#56

Post by gus_massa » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

It's an interesting mathematical result, but note that gives a solution for the problem of the spherical aberration, but real lens have also chromatic aberration. I.E. the speed of light for each color inside the glass is slightly different, so the value n (refraction index) in the equation is different, so in the equation you get a different surface for each color. In the real lens you must pick one surface, so the effect is that one color is perfectly focused and the other colors are not focused and you get some rainbow-like effects.

The solution is to use combination of a few lens of different glasses, to compensate the differences. It's not easy to design these kind of system, because they must compensante also for other types of aberrations.

More details:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_aberration

https://kenrockwell.com/tech/lenstech.htm

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

#57

Post by avip » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #51

zaroth wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn’t that how most of us are solving complex problems? Building context and then walking away from the desk for a walk, or perhaps while we’re in the shower in the morning or at night, not focused on the problem but our brain working on it in the background until it is brought forward to our consciousness?

There are many similar stories. Famously Tesla's recollection of himself "inventing the inductive motor" while walking in some garden in Hungary, and the discovery of the Benzene ring.

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

#58

Post by soganess » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

hyperpallium wrote: post #42

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.…

This raises the perennial question of whether product placement is a legitimate source of funding for fundamental scientific research. After placing an ice-cube in my delicious glass of refreshing coca-cola brand carbonated beverage, I yelled Eureka! and jumped out of the bath. Is that really how it happened? Is it not inconsistent with the pursuit of truth?

It's really natural, on first mention, to refer to something using a member of the degenerate set of its most unique identifier, right? From that point on, to avoid repetition, mix in antecedents or generic names.

Brands exploit this mechanic in language so that any time a, thereto unknown, good has to be addressed, that identification become advertising. It shifts from being a unique identification of an object/item/thing to a conjuring of the ethos/identity that contextualizes that good as being different from all the others (un)like it.

I'm sure the dude was just having some hazelnut spread and that's how they recalls it but us, like them, are getting hacked. Now if you'll excuse me, the rey--, I mean tinfoil, is starting to get itchy, I need to switch it out.

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

#59

Post by visarga » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

Unrelated, but seems like optics use a different Arxiv format than ML papers, which are always double column.

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

#60

Post by pixelpoet » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

tambourine_man wrote: post #41

I’m questioning my sense of humor because everyone here seemed to have enjoyed the tone of the article, while I was quite put off by it.

I also didn't like it, the title calls him a physicist and in the article it says mathematician, they did an experiment with 500 samples and got how many 9s, the presumption that Newton was the greatest scientist (von Neumann?), the comparison between such theoretical luminaries and someone who did a numerical optimisation of someone else's theoretical work, ... it reminds me of A Beautiful Mind, where the real accomplishments are obscured (and here greatly exaggerated) purely to tell a story to lay-people. More attention to the facts please, less attention to the sandwich.