Dammit, I keep misremembering my science history. If only there was some kind of large database of this kind of information that I could interface with remotely

but isn't half that challenge the construction of a diode? Once you have the diode, it's as simple as fluorescence, no? At least, in princple.

Heat was actually believed to be a substance, until the middle of the 19th century.

True, it is a fairly subtle concept. I am much more concerned about the lay confusion between temperature and heat than between light and heat. However, it should be fairly well reinforced that light does not interact with something unless it interacts: windows heat up less than asphalt in the presence of energetic radiation in the optical regime.

Seeing as the positive aspects (applications, reasons why this is a good thing, even the basics of the theory of photonics) are included in the first five sentences of TFA (which I will refrain from pasting here, out of respect), I'm not sure how my post could be assigned even that bare step above. If you are looking for a laypersons description of the optics theory behind the device design, I can assure you by it's very nature, such an explanation does not exist. If you are looking for a more metaphysical explanation of why faster computers are a truly POSITIVE thing (computer's degrade social fabric, you know) then I'm afraid I can't help you, but can tell you this is probably not the right venue to look for those answers.

Yes, but controlling how much light goes through a device is...um...super easy. Like caveman easy.

Actually, I'm not an expert on photonics, the analogue of voltage could be wavelength, in which case upconversion can provide the same function. There's a lot of fluff on the Purdue site but this is actually a fairly interesting device and the research isn't bad.

That would be Science for you. This is a scientific paper, not an AmSci survey piece. TFA was a piece of science journalism, so they probably haven't had time to fully compress the actual paper

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diode
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_gate

All those degrees in looking things up online finally paid off. You're welcome, citizen!

Yes, but we're talking about economics. What's best for a business is not necessarily what's best for the economy that business is part of, unless of course you are some kind of Austrian nutjob.

I had assumed it was clear that I was speaking about the economic soundness of this as a national industry. While indeed, if you are a retail giant, this may aid domestic, consumer driven economy. However, it does not make sense to turn your country into a Walmart, since cheap exports only help you if it helps you undercut your "competition" (I guess... Finland?). While it's very nice for Apple that they can make and sell so many iPads, I doubt it's much comfort to China. And given Apple's profit margin on their devices (which is f**king astronomical) I sincerely doubt a hike in electronics components is going to seriously affect volume as opposed to profits. No, the only people directly making money of this arrangement are the manufacturers themselves: their laborers and their countries are seeing precious little of the magic of high throughput

Infrared light is not heat. I don't know where people got this idea. It is light. When it is absorbed, it may cause certain molecules to gain heat energy, but it is still light. This is a device which absorbs or scatters when you shine light on one side of it, and transmits when you shine light on the other side of it. I assume when heat energy is generated within the device, it diffuses isotropically from the point of matter-light interaction throughout the material until a definite temperature is reached, as thermodynamics predicts. If you believe that materials with different absorption cross sections at different spatial orientations allow you to violate the second law of thermodynamics, then you hardly need to construct something so elaborate: a board painted two different colors on either side should suffice. Lasers themselves, whose cavities emit a lot more in one direction than in the other (and which generate a good deal of heat in their lasing medium in a largely homogeneous fashion, but let's not get bogged down in reality) should constitute a huge violation. You should let everyone in the physics community know, as this seems like a fairly large oversight in our model of reality /sarcasm

If you're going to go around with a name like physburn, please ensure you understand what you're talking about

I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that "98% accuracy" referred to a confidence interval, i.e. if you and another person are 98% percent identical in the buttocks region, someone else might be able to start you car, since if the car reads a 98% match, it will start.

More worrying is what happens when you lose weight. If you lose 10% of your body weight over a period of a few months, you're stuck.

Err, I assume you're saying this in a Machiavellian, free market pirate sort of way (i.e., worth it for the manufacturing contractors), since volume production is a really crooked way to make money. Workers operating on razor thin profit margins don't make any more in a volume based system unless they multiply their workload. It also does a piss poor job of ensuring the economic security of a region in the normal way: wages are spread so thinly that they can hardly be entered back into the economy except in the form of food purchases. Sure, the numbers work out, but the Walmart business model is only good for the Waltons: no one else.

He wasn't being contrary. He was originally making a point about how it would be risky to send a manned mission to mars banking on the presence of liquid water as a source of jet propellant. Somersault saw the words "risk my life" and thought "HA! You're not risking YOUR life, you pansy, chunkity assed nerd! The astronauts are, and they'll bet their life on any long shot, no matter how suicidal it might be: they strap rockets directly to their asses and say to hell with procedure, let's do this! Those boys are heroes! Semper fi! Aughghhhhh!" or something else similarly ripe for parody, and FTWinston responded with a fairly calm, if slightly broad and a little hot, rebuttal, reinforcing his initial point that, basic risk aside, we must take every precaution with the lives of astronauts before we send them on any mission, particularly one as ambitious as a manned Mars mission. Somersaults comment may have been idle, but was flippant in a way which degrades the dialogue.

What has actually happened, is that someone suggested the possibility of maybe having astronauts wear seatbelts, then everyone started acting like he punched a veteran.

It's "Sought," though I've probably just had that brainwashed into me by one of those 'Terran' papers.

Those quotations are justified in BOTH uses.

The confusion still persists. The word "amateur" is pretty universally accepted as describing a person who practices a pursuit as a hobby, rather than a profession. Is this word coined by the article? No. It would be like an article on Joe Biden beginning "The 'Vice-President' of the 'United States' Joe Biden etc."