Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: yashrajkakkad on 11/08/2015 08:13:08
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I am supposed to shoot up a six-minute speech along with a presentation at a competition nearby. The topic is "Harnessing Light: Possibilities and Challenges"
Therefore, my question is what do you think are the possibilities and challenges of harnessing light? I am supposed to stick to the topic entirely, and that is what makes it difficult.
I would be glad if some knowledgeable person shares his/her knowledge and views!
Thank you! :-)
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You could harness Solar power for household power (challenge: storing it for the night).
Or for replacing rockets with a solar sail in the inner solar system.
You could harness light for communications - the so-called LiFi.
You could harness light via cameras to guide autonomous vehicles.
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I usually harness light to read books in the evening.
[:)]
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As I said in the other forum, I can't think of how the concept is even meaningful. What would it even mean to "harness light"?
evan_au - All you did was to describe how to store the "energy" from the light. That's a far cry from harnessing the light itself. However the person who asked the question might have that in mind. That's why I asked the question as I did.
In your case you didn't harness the light itself. Once the energy has been stored there's no way to distinguish where it came from and thus you can't say that it's stored light energy. If you store the energy in a battery then the energy is just chemical energy at that point.
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Then "harness" has not also the meaning "exploit" as I thought?
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Generating entangled photons for provably-secret communications?
Using entangled photons to transport data within a quantum computer?
Everyone's science-fiction dreams (in order of supposed impossibility):
- using light to see objects smaller than a wavelength
- using light to provide thrust in a spaceship
- teleportation (converting matter into light, then back into matter somewhere else).
- faster-than-light communication
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Fibre optic
communications - massive bandwidth, excessive collection of fatuous data
delivery of laser pulses to destroy malignant tissue - minimally invasive, difficult to determine endpoint
ring laser gyroscope - fantastic sensitivity, challenges outdated models of physics.
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spectroscopy
using light (broadly defined as any part of the electromagnetic spectrum) to give us detailed information about matter composition and structure, from the subatomic scale to arrangements of trillions of atoms).
Possibility:We could potentially identify any substance by emitting the correct form(s) of light onto a sample in the correct way and then measuring and interpreting the interaction of the light and the sample.
Challenge: What's the minimum amount of information you need to positively identify something? How can we use it to correctly identify substances that have never been observed (or even existed) before?
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The eyeball: excellent means of temporospatial location, useless when the lights go out, thus condemning humans to only live half a life and giving dogs and bats an unfair advantage.
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Generating entangled photons for provably-secret communications?
Using entangled photons to transport data within a quantum computer?
Each of those is impossible. Information cannot be transmitted using entangled particles.