101–110 of 201 posts
If only. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_laser
I guess the little scifi reader in me was hoping someone reserved that term for some kind of coherent gravity wave emitter though ;-)
can they do microwave? if you do the exact right color you can make certain things melt very precisely.
An application that came to mind is tunneling (through rock and earth). You could absolutely tune the wavelength to whatever material your drilling through absorbs best, to help ease and speed. Would need a good amount of energy but I could see that utilized in some fashion in the next 10-20 years
Everyone talking about magenta and brown, but you can see an illusory color right now even without lasers! https://dynomight.net/colors/ behold, some kind of hyper-turquoise
The whole idea of colour and light frequency is fascinating. These are just frequencies of light, but the subjective experience of them is so much more. And the whole thing of my perception of "red" or what I call "red" could be very different to someone else's subjective perception. But we would both call it red and associate it with the same thing, fire, love, heat, danger etc.
While our precise perception of red may not match, the interplay between colors is such that people perceived them to go together, or clash, etc, in a somewhat consistent fashion.
This means that, over the general population the perception of color is very similar from person to person. Ignoring genetic defects.
can they do microwave? if you do the exact right color you can make certain things melt very precisely.
An application that came to mind is tunneling (through rock and earth). You could absolutely tune the wavelength to whatever material your drilling through absorbs best, to help ease and speed. Would need a good amount of energy but I could see that utilized in some fashion in the next 10-20 years
So like if you can get just the right frequency you could cause a skin protein molecule to fall apart, which might be nicer than scalpels.
Maybe you could weld it too. A "protoplaser" like in startrek.
since the light range is so high, technically speaking as the technology improves does that mean we could end up sending petabytes a second over a single fiber optic core?
Visible light is a bit less than a petahertz, so no.
Everyone talking about magenta and brown, but you can see an illusory color right now even without lasers! https://dynomight.net/colors/ behold, some kind of hyper-turquoise
Here's my favorite color factoid: There is no such thing as monochromatic pink. You have to make it by combining the two ends of the visible spectrum: somethung reddish and something violet-ish. So that means there is no pink in a rainbow, strictly speaking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The whole idea of colour and light frequency is fascinating. These are just frequencies of light, but the subjective experience of them is so much more. And the whole thing of my perception of "red" or what I call "red" could be very different to someone else's subjective perception. But we would both call it red and associate it with the same thing, fire, love, heat, danger etc.
I think it's important to remember that we're not perceiving some fundamental aspect of light. We're perceiving how the photosensitive portions of our retina convert light to stimulus, and how our brains construct a meaningful image from that stimulus in our mind. Like film photography doesn't happen in the lens or the world. It happens in that photosensitive chemical reaction, and the decision of the photographer.
is the only part i.e., we perceive what brain predicts no more no less. Optical illusions demonstrate it well.
Sometimes that prediction (our perception) correlates with the light reaching the retina. But it is a mistake to think that we can perceive it directly. For example, we do not see the black hole in our field of vision where there are no receptors (due to our eyes construction).
Another example that makes the point clearer: there are no "wetness" receptors at all but we perceive wetness just fine.
I too would like a microwave or gamma laser
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think so. Just becoming fluent in multiple languages can result in the perception of more distinct colors. And those fluent in languages that have additional distinct color names can differentiate subtle differences in the shades of colors that non-speakers cannot even differentiate. Color is less about seeing what is actually out there and more about how our brain interprets colors to create "meaning".
> And those fluent in languages that have additional distinct color names can differentiate subtle differences in the shades of colors that non-speakers cannot even differentiate. The ability to label more colors is not the ability to perceive more colors. The ability of your cone cells to recognize a difference in color between two samples is unaffected by language.
It's amazing how much time we spend on autopilot.