“ Photonic crystals” is the name that was given to periodic arrangements of materials with different refractive indexes. This name derives from the analogy between the behavior of photons in these materials and the one of electrons in the periodic structure formed by atoms in an actual crystal. The technological side of the analogy suggests […]
Humans can build and use the most sophisticated tools. One of the reasons is the configuration of our hands, which enable us to hold items in a very convenient way. But further than that, we can actually grab items because of the friction coefficient that exists between the skin of our hands and the surface […]
Olfaction is one of the most important senses. It protects us from eating spoiled food, it helps animals to detect their relatives, it makes the perfume business quite successful and, in general, it connects us to the volatile chemicals surrounding us. These chemicals, usually called “odorants”, can be detected even if they are in a […]
Quantum field theory has been the paradigm of modern physics since it was formulated in the first half of the last century. It is based on the idea that everything in physics corresponds to the interaction of some fundamental fields that permeate all space and the excitations of which represent the particles we see in […]
The wave nature of light expresses itself in the propagation all over space, showing an intrinsic limitation to be localized beyond the so-called diffraction limit which is of the order of half the wavelength of the photons propagating. However when interacting with matter, light often gets reflected, diffracted, scattered or absorbed depending on the interactions […]
A translucent material allows light to pass through, but if we try to look an object behind such a material, the image will appear blurred or distorted. Think, for example, of the semitransparent glasses commonly used as showers screens. The reason why the image deforms when passing through the glass is the scattering of light […]
Thermodynamics is one of the oldest and more fruitful fields of science. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, is less than one hundred years old, but it is also useful and well accepted. They can look very different. Thermodynamics treats with macroscopic systems, composed by an Avogadro number (6.023×1023) of atoms or molecules, and quantum […]
Quantum mechanics is one of the most fruitful and accepted physical theories. Nevertheless, its foundations and philosophical implications are still a vivid topic of debate. Because of that reason, during the conference “Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality,” held in July 2011 and organized by Anton Zeilinger, a set of experts were polled. A […]
We are almost sure: we have discovered the Higgs boson. Or at least, that is the most reasonable comment to do after the usual Winter Report given by the scientists that work on the two main experiments placed at the ring of the Large Hadron Collider (CERN, Switzerland), named CMS and ATLAS, the last December […]
Quantum mechanics and biology are very different fields. The first one studies things that are very small, like atoms, molecules or particles. Biology, on the other hand, deals with complex and big systems, the living beings. Of course, that does not mean that there is no connection at all. Big, complex systems are composed always […]