Looks like we might be able to look into it, if we can get some students onboard.
" If they can design a software to measure the data collected before and
after MRI image? Also, in the group that I used to
work we were doing some studies with MS. Ultrasound apparently has potential
therapeutic effect in MS disease."
Iâll be away and unable to respond to email until April 6. Please be patient - Iâll get back to you then!
warm wishes,
Cynthia
Another cool technology, DNA Origami. Basically, you âfoldâ DNA to create micro structures.
Wikipedia article (which doesnât quite do it justice).
I believe the big problem they have currently is the same problem MEMS had in the 80s. You can make these cool things, now what. Can you functionalize them for use outside of a lab setting?
Here are some stuff they have done.
They used it to make crazy things, like the alphabet.
Icosahedron
Neil deGrasse Tyson says that a major disconnect in the public perception of scale is how small the atomic world is.
"There are more molecules of water a glass of water than there are glasses of water in the ocean."
That gives me a pretty good concept of how far off I am in my comprehension!
Well, that would be a lot of pollution. We already have a problem with plastic.
What is it about the distance between the nucleus of an atom and the outermost âshellâ of a higher atomic number element if you think orbitals? Bigger in proportion than the Sun to Pluto?
Back-of-the-envelope estimate would have the electron shell in a hydrogen atom about at the orbit of Neptune. The outermost shell in Uranium would be about 3.5x that distance. I think.
Yes. The universe is mostly emptiness between the parts of an atom. There is no there there.
About 20 years ago ( the wild West era of the Web) there was a janitor at an ivy league school that became convinced the solar system was really a plutonium atom. He posted on all the alt.astro newsgroups hysterical rants about his âdiscoveryâ and even had his name changed to Ludwig Plutonium. He was a hoot!
I was once asked to give a motivational speech to a bunch of third grade students. They had been studying the nucleus and how both the neutron and proton components of the nucleus were themselves composed of a combination of three particles called quarks. I blew them away by describing how it might be possible to shrink matter, in terms of what they had already learned. I gave each student a glowstick to make my talk even more memorable. I can elaborate if someone is curious.
Read an interesting article that compares the distance from one nucleus to the next as on average, by scale, closely aligned with the 4 light-year separation between stars.
I am always ready to learn about my universe.
Found a cool article. It is amazing to me all of the advancements that are happening.
Thanks everyone for sharing some of the cool new things that are coming out.
The latest issue of National Geographic has a great article, " The next Humanâ. It covers implants that extend our senses just as a telescope extends our sight.
A guy who couldnât see color had an experimental implant that allows him not only to see the visible spectrum, but to see down into the infrared (think night vision and thermography) and near ultraviolet (he sees flowers like a bee does).
A great read regarding how technology is changing us from the perspective of evolution. âCars are our feet, calculators are our minds and Google is our memory.â
It is so slow from the perspective of our lifespans, almost imperceptible, but is ongoing.
"We may not know yet where we are going, but weâve already left where weâve been."
Iâm glad I can be part of helping to provide âour feetâ
Ok, hereâs a thought experiment on how to conceptually âshrink matterâ. If we look at the volume of a new atom, what is most of it made of? Thatâs right, empty space, but why? There are negatively charged electrans orbiting a positively charged nucleus. Without the positive charge exerting a constant pull on the electrons, they would fly away. If somehow one could suddenly make the nucleus more positive, what would happen to the orbits of the electrons? They would all collapse toward the nucleus and the volume of the atom would shrink dramatically. I wonât bore you with the equations to calculate how much. Now we must look what makes up that nucleus, neutrons and protons. Hereâs a short video that gives important starting concepts.
To summarize: a neutron is made up of 3 quarks, (1 up quark (u) and 2 down (d) quarks). It has a charge of 2/3 + (-1/3) + (-1/3) = 0 , thus neutral. A proton is made of 3 quarks, 2 u and 1 d, for a charge of 2/3 + 2/3 + (-1/3) = +1. Any combination of 3 quarks is called a baryon or the common hadron. The allowable hadron charges are +2, +1, 0, -1, -2, with the negative charges arriving from antimatter quarks where charges are opposite. An isolated neutron decays to make a proton, an electron, and anow electron antineutrino, or in quark notation udd â uud + e- + e-antineutrino. Notice that one of the down quarks has become an up quark plus a negatively electron and electron antineutrino. This reaction and itâs reverse are known reactions, beta decay and electron capture. One cannot simply increase the charge on the nucleus by adding more protons; it would either decay to get rid of the excess charge or become a different element. Notice, however that if a neutron (udd) can become a proton (uud), why couldnât the last down quark become an up quark to make a uuu (duplon is my name) with a charge of 2/3 + 2/3 + 2/3 = +2. What if all of the protons could temporarily become duplons? What would the electrons orbits do? How much would the atomâs volume shrink? What if such a duplon had a half life and interacted with other heavier quarks or some other particle to fall apart and revert back? All of the known observable universe is made up of the 2 least massive quarks, the up and the down. The four much heavier quarks, the strange, charmed, top, and bottom, interact but donât stick around in an observable form. If is the possibility of these dark unobservable forms of matter that physicists refer to as possible dark matter. Quarks have recently been observed to combine in groups of 5 to become a pentaquark, that decays away to become baryons, opening up another possibility to how a duplon might arise. How? From Wikipedia:
âA pentaquark is a subatomic particle consisting of four quarks and one antiquark bound together.â
Ok, why not (up + up + up + up + anti up = 2/3 + 2/3 +2/3 + 2/3 + (-2/3 ) = +2, an effective duplon with a short lifetime.
I bet that will glaze over a few eyes.
I do believe that in beta decay itâs an electron antineutrino that get produced, not a tau neutrino.
Also itâs the charge of the nucleus that determines the element. So your duplon H would just be another name for He. So, nutinâ would get smaller. Youâd just mess up the universe.
In this article they talk about the discovery of mathematics that allows time travel, if you possess the right exotic matter.
Then late in this article they describe the discovery of an exotic material that violates T symmetry, or time reversal symmetry.
You are correct about the electron antineutrino and I will change that above.