4 ms·
The nanolight revolution is coming
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- novaleaf 11y agoYou don't want to be injecting this into creatures you want living very long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadmium_poisoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadmium_poisoning If this really is a revolution, it makes me wonder if it will lead to environmental/social impacts like leaded gasoline.
- nether 11y agoaddressed in the article.
- novaleaf 11y agoi missed that part, thanks
- will_walker 11y agoNot only that, but the smell is horrific.
- novaleaf 11y agodidn't know that about cadmium! lead has a nice sweet smell which helped contribute to it's use in human history....
- wew_lad 11y agoP-dots are made from organic polymers instead of the inorganic toxic sludge in Q-dots
- JulianMorrison 11y agoFirst time ever that a science article contains glowy multicoloured bottles that are actually pertinent.
- taneq 11y agoAww, I was hoping 'nanolight' referred to sub-microlight human-carrying aircraft...
- inlineint 11y ago> Now, however, other types of nanolight are on the rise. Some have a rare ability to absorb lots of low-energy photons and combine the energy into a handful of high-energy photons Doesn't it violate the second law of thermodynamics?
- slazaro 11y agoNot if original_number_of_photons * original_energy_per_photon >= final_number_of_photons * final_energy_per_photon The quote explicitly says that there's a lot of the original photons and a few of the resulting photons, so the increase of energy per photon would be compensated, right?
- inlineint 11y agoThe expression can't be an equality, otherwise it is possible to use such particles to transmit heat from a radiating black body with lower temperature to a radiating black body with higher temperature using a filter from these particles.
- wew_lad 11y agoAdding two 1 eV photons in a two-photon upconverter does not give you a single 2 eV photon. Some of the energy of the upconverted photons is lost as heat, so thermodynamically it's okay.
- inlineint 11y agoYes, you are right. Each of these nanoparticles should also radiate heat radiation or heat the environment near it in other way, but it is not clear from the citation.
- stan_rogers 11y agoNo, because you're not gaining anything. Lots of energy goes in (in the form of lots and lots of photons having not so much energy each) and lots comes out (in the form of many fewer photons, each with a larger amount of energy), but you don't get more total energy out than in. It's not conceptually different from, say, trickle charging a LiPO battery for a week from dollar-store AAAs, then using it for a few glorious seconds flying a drone that couldn't have even lifted the AAAs. You're still using the energy from the AAAs, and suffering losses, but you're still doing something you couldn't have done with the AAAs alone. The mechanism is different - very, very different - but the idea's the same.