Photons and electrons like to play together in atoms, but much less so in computers…
Like EUV lithography, people have been talking about optical computers for a long time, and that still hasn’t materialized.
Let’s review some of the differences between electronics and optics ! Continue reading
I don’t know how to do this on a small scale in a practical way, but I do know that computing machines are very large; they fill rooms. Why can’t we make them very small, make them of little wires, little elements – and by little, I mean little. For instance, the wires should be 10 or 100 atoms in diameter, and the circuits should be a few thousand angstroms across.
– Richard Feynman (1959)
Being a researcher, all my friends and family have very little idea of what I’m work on. The trouble is that when I try to explain, I need to resort to notions such as wavelength or transistor, only to discover that most people have no clue of what this is, expect to joke about being on the same… wavelength. But very small wavelength.
To put it straight : I look at small things.Yet, I was just awarded a prize for best research at the EUV lithography symposium in Washington, D.C., and it’s only fair of me to explain what I’m doing for a living!
The SHARP EUV microscope I’m working with
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I had the chance to help my friend Sylvie to get scanning electron microscope pictures of the MRI contrast agent she synthesizes, and we collected gorgeous data thanks to my colleague Farhad.
He told me that he had TONS of failed experiments that still yielded great pictures…
We should start a journal of the failed experiments… art+science mag !:)
SEM picture that looks like an aerial view of Dog Island (Anguilla)…
I guess there is some wabi-sabi in science…
Continue readingDear English-speaking readers :
I wrote a piece in French about upcoming consumer technologies
Je viens de publier un article sur les avancées technologiques à surveiller (sur silicon-valley.fr)
Bien que ces derniers temps la tendance dans la Silicon Valley était plutôt du coté des applications, des API et de réseau sociaux, nous avons très récemment eu droit a un regain de créativité en terme de hardware, et je vous propose ici de faire un petit tour de ce qui fait friser les neurones des ingénieurs du cru.
On s’intéressera essentiellement aux innovations qui sont susceptibles de déboucher sur des produits de consommation, laissant de coté pour le moment d’autres secteurs très actifs comme celui des énergies renouvelables et les biosciences.
Recent events in the scienfic community – I’m thinking of the detection of primordial B-mode signal in the CMB polarization by BICEP2 (probable), the discovery of Higgs Boson (Nobel-prized) and of the faster-than-light neutrinos (ruled out as an experimental error) – invite us to draw a line between what is reasonable science and what is not.
Saul Perlmutter talking about exotic theories in astrophysics
Hi peeps !
Dear English-speaking readers :
this post is about a French translation of Hamming’s
“The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics“
You can readily enjoy this text in English language!
C’est ainsi qu’il y a des odeurs que les chiens peuvent sentir et que nous ne pouvons sentir, des sons que les chiens peuvent entendre et que nous ne pouvons entendre, et encore des couleurs que nous nous ne pouvons voir et de saveurs dont nous ne pouvons nous délecter.Des lors pourquoi, compte tenu de la façon dont nos cerveaux sont câblés, la remarque “Peut-être y a-t-il des pensées que nous ne pouvons pas concevoir” vous surprendrait-elle ? L’évolution, jusqu’à présent, pourrait nous avoir empêché de penser suivant certaines directions ; il se pourrait qu’il y ait des pensées impensables.
Pas si efficaces, les mathématiques…. Démonstration en logique formelle de “1+1=2” par Russell.
Hi peeps,
Today, I had the chance to be there for a talk given by Steven Chu.
Two Nobel Prize winners in the same frame (Chu and Smoot), taken from an handheld smartphone.
And the lab director, Paul Alivisatos
As usual, I’ve asked him a for a drawing.
Since he did a lot of work on laser cooling, I asked him for a “cool atom” :
Steven Chu’s and Paul Alivisatos’s drawings
Since Paul Alivisatos was around, I also asked him for a contribution.
I thought a quantum dot would do the work !
I’ve discovered a new language for scientific computation : Julia.
A quaternion Julia fractal
Here’s a description :
Scientific computing has traditionally required the highest performance, yet domain experts have largely moved to slower dynamic languages for daily work. We believe there are many good reasons to prefer dynamic languages for these applications, and we do not expect their use to diminish. Fortunately, modern language design and compiler techniques make it possible to mostly eliminate the performance trade-off and provide a single environment productive enough for prototyping and efficient enough for deploying performance-intensive applications. The Julia programming language fills this role: it is a flexible dynamic language, appropriate for scientific and numerical computing, with performance comparable to traditional statically-typed languages.
Among other things, it is very computationally efficient (it beats Matlab and Python by a large margin) and the syntax is very close to Matlab, making the transition very easy. And it is free !
I’ll let you know if I find it to be a viable alternative to commercial solutions…Here are three algorithms that I found pretty funny, and that make you think, while I was trying to find elegant solutions to some problem I faced.
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Now that I have lived for over a year near the Silicon Valley, I have a better view of the local culture which is a strange mix of lefty utopian libertarian, lefty vegan liberals and all things that might seem contradictory in general, but not here.
Atlas Shrugged, in the liberal California
I want to address here what I’ve learned in these months, so that European newcomers can sharpen their learning curve !
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