astro picture for the day

Image Credit & Copyright: Sigurður Stefnisson

Astro picture for the day?  well, it is a surface phenomenon of a planet!  One of the great intellectual things of the twentieth century was that geology turned into planetology.

------------------------------------extra goodie for the day---------------------------------------------------

An actually working casimir affect micro-machine(can be extended to nano realm with all the latest nano-engineering advances of the past two or three decades since Casimir forces were confirmed experimentally I do believe around 1981). 

Smalley once severelly criticized the nano-community that nano-machines were impossible because of 'sticky fingers.'  He was meaning just ordinary chemical attractions.  Soon, people pointed out that the casimir force also might present a bit of problem.  Well, now, that problem looks to be solved to some degree. 

As always it should be exciting to see if there's rapid progress; the same manufacturing technologies that made this can integrate the patterns of this casimir force machine into various micro and nano machines that they've been making since the 1980s.

Note; when/if they start making micro/nano machines out of this breakthrough(the article sounded more than optimistic), they will be true quantum machines exploiting the casimir force; the casimir force has to do with simply putting two plates together in a 'vacuum.'  Only, according to quantum electrodynamics(Paul Dirac's generalization of the quantum mechanics created by Niels Bohr, Heisenberg and Shroedinger; it combines special relativity and not general and Shroedinger's quantum mechanics generalization of Niels Boh's quantum mechanics; yep, generalizations of generalizations; how far we've come!  We've now bagged a most remarkable quantum partilce- the Higgs!  Remember that!?LoL!), the vacuum is a sea of partilces coming in and out of existence within Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.  So, if you put to plates in a vacuum, you should limit the possible wavelengths in between them compared to the possibilities to the farthest reaches of the universe!  So, the plates should feel an inward force; they do!