science art - AI Weirdness

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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 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 May 11, 2014 - 1 min read

It looks like it could be an image of desert badlands - except for that strangely translucent wall. In fact, this scene is much, much smaller. An ant could step over the wall without ever noticing its existence. This image was taken through an electron microscope, of a microscopic landscape

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By Janelle Shane On May 10, 2014 - 1 min read

Resembling arrays of flaming islands, these formations are actually microscopic, etched out of semiconductor. This semiconductor material is what we use to make microscopic lasers - we start with a vast, featureless sheet of semiconductor and cover certain areas with a protective layer of glassy photoresist. Then we blast the

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

Sometimes the view under an electron microscope can be positively scary. I’ll be scrolling along at low magnification, checking out some nanoscale features, when all of a sudden a colossus will loom huge above the nanolandscape. Sometimes I actually jump. Usually it’s a tiny microscopic speck of dust,

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By Janelle Shane On March 19, 2014 - 2 min read

Light in a circular cavity makes a variety of standing wave patterns, some of which look like flowers, wagon wheels, or even tie-fighter spaceships. These images are from my simulations of the light in the cavities of nanolasers - each pattern is called a mode, and the smaller the laser,

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By Janelle Shane On February 08, 2014 - 1 min read

A rare view of the entire cross-section of one of my samples, which seems to loom like a massive iceberg over choppy seas. This sample is a thin layer of semiconductor (a material we use for making lasers, among other things), bonded to a much thicker chunk of glass. The

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

A mini-monument, made of semiconductor laser material. It looks to me a bit like Devil’s Tower. It’s much, much smaller, though. Scaling this little nano-tower (600nm high) to the height of Devil’s Tower (386m high) would be like scaling up an average-sized human (~1.7m) to about

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By Janelle Shane On December 15, 2013 - 1 min read

There aren’t any dyes or pigments in this photo - all this color is due to the wave nature of light. Thin transparent films produce rainbows, when light waves bouncing off the top and the bottom of the film interfere with each other on the way back. It’s

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By Janelle Shane On December 04, 2013 - 1 min read

Thin transparent films produce rainbows - an effect due to the wave nature of light (the same effect that gives soap bubbles their rainbow colors). Here, the thin film might be photoresist or dried residue from some sort of solvent, like acetone. I’ll probably never know, since this wasn’

Tag: science art

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