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The author of Skulls in the Stars is a professor of physics, specializing in optical science, at UNC Charlotte. The blog covers topics in physics and optics, the history of science, classic pulp fantasy and horror fiction, and the surprising intersections between these areas. -
Category Archives: Optics
Optical coherence tomography and the art world
In recent years, scientific tools have been increasingly applied to the study of artwork, for numerous reasons: determination of authenticity, determination of provenance, analysis for restoration, or even for finding ‘hidden’ art buried behind or underneath existing masterworks. Some time … Continue reading
Posted in Optics
2 Comments
“Interference between different photons never occurs:” Not! (1963)
Note: This post is my contribution to the third edition of The Giant’s Shoulders, a carnival of blog posts on classic science papers. One of the most famous statements concerning quantum mechanics, as it relates to the light particles known … Continue reading
Posted in History of science, Optics, Physics
26 Comments
Optics basics: Coherence
In previous optics basics posts, the interference of waves has played a major role. When two or more monochromatic (single-color) waves are combined, they form a pattern of light and dark regions, in which the combined light fields have constructively … Continue reading
Posted in Optics, Optics basics
71 Comments
New ‘cloaking’ results? Not really, but interesting anyway
About a week ago, I reported on another ‘teaser’ in the media about ‘optical cloaks’, hypothetical devices which would in principle make objects contained in their core completely invisible. Such devices have gotten a lot of attention, both scientifically and … Continue reading
Posted in Invisibility, Optics, Physics
8 Comments
The cloaking craze: A look at the original papers
As I noted a couple of days ago, apparently there has been another significant experimental breakthrough in the development of dielectric cloaking devices. Researchers at UC Berkeley were responsible, though it is a little unclear what exactly the breakthrough is. … Continue reading
Posted in Invisibility, Optics, Physics
15 Comments
Freezing images in an atomic vapor!
I thought I’d step out of my comfort zone and specific field of expertise for once and do a post on some interesting quantum optics. In a June issue of Physical Review Letters, an Israeli research group experimentally demonstrated the … Continue reading
Posted in Optics, Physics
5 Comments
Camera-free Radiohead video! (updated)
(Update: I fixed the discussion on LIDAR speed detection, thanks to edweird’s observations in the comments.) This is pretty neat. Via Crooks & Liars, we have Radiohead’s new music video (embedded below the fold), for House of Cards, which uses … Continue reading
Posted in Entertainment, Optics
7 Comments
In depth: depth of focus and depth of field
Update: The original website with its digitally-altered ‘miniworld’ pics seems to have been taken down. I’ve constructed a few of my own ‘miniworld’ pics to give the reader an idea of what I’m talking about: From now on, I save … Continue reading
Posted in Optics
10 Comments
What a drag: Arago’s Experiment (1810)
Note: This post is my contribution to the first-ever edition of The Giant’s Shoulders, a new blog event compiling posts concerning classic science papers. I’ve been meaning to get back to my series of posts on relativity, but things have … Continue reading
Posted in History of science, Optics, Physics, Relativity
20 Comments
Invisibility Physics: Schott’s radiationless orbits
Conventional wisdom, even to this day, dictates that accelerating charges necessarily give off electromagnetic radiation. This is seen, for instance, in large-scale particle accelerators (synchrotrons), such as the Tevatron at Fermilab and the soon-to-be-operational LHC at CERN: the charged particles … Continue reading
Posted in Invisibility, Optics, Physics
4 Comments
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