science - AI Weirdness (Page 2)

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By Janelle Shane On September 17, 2014 - 1 min read

This fractal pattern is actually a guide to shaping laser pulses. Each pixel in this image represents one possible laser pulse shape (the arrival time of the frequencies in a broadband laser pulse). The pixel’s color indicates how good that particular pulse shape should be at controlling a particular

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By Janelle Shane On September 14, 2014 - 1 min read

Nano Street Fight Electron microscope image submitted by grad student Rajat Sharma of UCSD, who looked unsuccessfully with another grad student for a Brad Pitt-esque central character, before giving up and declaring the fight a total mess. They were testing the etching conditions for making a series of tiny uniform

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By Janelle Shane On August 26, 2014 - 2 min read

Nanolasers with googly eyes! Because grad students. These are microscopic lasers, shown in various stages of completion. The innermost layer, looking like a slim grey column, is the semiconductor core, which actually does the light-amplifying. Next comes a layer of glass that coats the entire laser (the white puffy-looking laser)

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By Janelle Shane On August 12, 2014 - 1 min read

A nano-lollipop? This is a tiny glass ball on a tiny stick made of polymer, a partially-completed nano-sized chemical sensor made by then-grad-student Matthew Chen. It’s on its way to becoming a nano-torch [http://lewisandquark.tumblr.com/post/92218390187/this-is-a-nanotorch-which-is-an-ultra-sensitive] , which can detect minute concentrations of chemicals due to

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By Janelle Shane On July 18, 2014 - 1 min read

This is a nanotorch, which is an ultra-sensitive chemical detector, thanks to its ability to concentrate light. In the intense light fields at the torch’s top, a normally-weak light-based chemical fingerprinting technique (Raman spectroscopy) becomes millions of times stronger. More-sensitive Raman fingerprinting can allow us to detect trace contaminants

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By Janelle Shane On July 16, 2014 - 1 min read

When a nanolaser casts a shadow, the grad student gets 6 more weeks of fabrication. The pillar in the middle is one of the nanolasers our lab makes. It’s supposed to be a single column all by itself, roughly cylindrical with a bit of a funky coke bottle shape,

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By Janelle Shane On July 14, 2014 - 1 min read

Oops. When we’re making nano-devices, chaos is usually bad. I named this spot “The Barrens”. It’s supposed to be a single straight waveguide (basically, a pipe for light) stretching off into infinity. Instead, this spot got scratched partway through the fabrication process, leaving behind a chaotic landscape that

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By Janelle Shane On June 30, 2014 - 1 min read

The cliffs of insanity? Rising an awe-inspiring 1.5 microns above the wave-lashed sea (about 1/100 the thickness of a sheet of printer paper), these cliffs were formed when high-energy plasma ate away a layer of semiconductor. All that was left behind was this island, protected by a glassy

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By Janelle Shane On June 19, 2014 - 1 min read

Like a tiny shiny mountain, this nanolaser and the area around it is coated in a layer of blobby silver. The silver serves as a mirror that keeps the laser light bouncing around inside the laser’s light-amplifying interior, generating more and more copies of itself. A tiny percentage of

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By Janelle Shane On June 09, 2014 - 1 min read

A nanoscale landscape, peopled with little pillars. Each of these would fit easily inside a single cell. They were created out of semiconductor (the same sort that can be made into lasers), when a high-energy plasma ate away everything that wasn’t protected. Each little pillar has a cap on

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