Nobel Laureate and Laser Inventor Charles Townes Passes 73
An anonymous reader writes Charles Hard Townes, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for invention of the laser and subsequently pioneered the use of lasers in astronomy, died early Tuesday in Oakland. He was 99. "Charlie was a cornerstone of the Space Sciences Laboratory for almost 50 years,” said Stuart Bale, director of the lab and a UC Berkeley professor of physics. “He trained a great number of excellent students in experimental astrophysics and pioneered a program to develop interferometry at short wavelengths. He was a truly inspiring man and a nice guy. We’ll miss him.”
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Speakers of 19th century English?
Death: "I've come for you."
Townes: "No thanks, I'll pass... Oh, wait!"
Death: "Muhehehehe!" [snatches him]
Re: Passes (Score:2)
(My condolences to the family.)
Re:Passes (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why I loathe the euphemisms for death. I realised this when the man I sailed for (for over a decade) died. It wasn't a massive surprise, but still a shock. To most of us it was the end of an era. What struck me was that most of the others talked about "him passing", whereas I simply said " he died", and I caught a couple of glances when I said it like that.
As another example - my sister was with friends (in a marina on a friend's boat - we like our sailing) and a guy walks down the companionway and said "X is gone". My sister stops talking (people come and go from marinas all the time), and then continues talking. The guy says " are you stupid or what - X has died ", making her feel like a shit.
People die, it happens, but dispense with the euphemisms - there's nothing to be gained from them.
Townes was Told that the Maser Was Impossible (Score:5, Informative)
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False equivalence much? The limitations (or lack thereof) imposed on technology by the physical universe have nothing to do with what scripting languages a browser can support. The former is hard science. The latter is fanboyism.
Re:Townes was Told that the Maser Was Impossible (Score:5, Interesting)
People erroneously imagine that Einstein was wrong about quantum mechanics. He wasn't. And in two central areas, the Copenhagen interpretation (it is a useful approximation but makes no sense as physics, decoherence does), and the laser, Bohr was wrong and Einstein was right.
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He also discovered electron tunneling, though he gave it as evidence of how nonsensical quantum mechanics was. He was correct on the derivation, but wrong on the interpretation.
Re:Townes was Told that the Maser Was Impossible (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, it IS nonsensical - I mean, by what means should an electron be able to go from point A to point B without acquiring the necessary energy to get over the energy barrier? Granted, the uncertainty principle means there's a chance it could "borrow" the energy temporarily, but that's a random event. What happened is we have a controllable way to tunnel electrons.
These days we use electron tunnelling every day - the NAND flash chip relies on the floating gate to hold electrons and influence the transistor's parameters which is how it stores bits. And to get those electrons to the gate, we merely bias the transistor in such a way that electrons magically disappear and reappear on the floating gate, without shooting the electrons through the insulation.
We don't get why or how they do it, but we can exploit it.
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People erroneously imagine that Einstein was wrong about quantum mechanics. He wasn't. And in two central areas, the Copenhagen interpretation (it is a useful approximation but makes no sense as physics, decoherence does), and the laser, Bohr was wrong and Einstein was right.
It's going too far to say that Bohr was wrong about the Copenhagen interpretation. [wikipedia.org] There are several competing interpretations of quantum mechanics. None of them have been definitively ruled out, with the exception of local versions of the hidden-variable theory [wikipedia.org], as a consequence of Alain Aspect's experiments that tested the Bell inequality.
Gordon Gould, 1st laser inventor? (Score:1)
In the end, Japanese manufacturers paid over a billion $ royalties on Gould's patents.
Re:The father of Star Wars (Score:4, Informative)
Surely you jest, but to go along with you, we must remember that H.G. Wells wrote about the Martian invaders using a "heat ray" [wikipedia.org] in 1898.
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Sci-fi had pew-pew-pew long before there were lasers. Ask Buck Rogers. Or Kimball Kinnison--he'll be happy to show you his DeLamaters.
Passes what? (Score:2, Interesting)
Wind? Seriously, what's wrong with the word "dies"?
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Re: Passes what? (Score:1)
It's not politically correct these days to use the word "died". Doing so may trigger somebody into remembering that the dead person is dead. That could lead to hurt feelings, and maybe even crying. Hurt feelings are NEVER acceptable! So everyone needs to change the words that they use so as to use terms that are more distanced from the real situation at hand.
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Wind? Seriously, what's wrong with the word "dies"?
He was eaten by wolves. He was delicious.
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Wind? Seriously, what's wrong with the word "dies"?
He was eaten by wolves. He was delicious.
So he'll pass in 24 hours or so.
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The best euphemism I've heard of is "achieved room temperature".
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Who said anything about dying? Obviously, the man is playing a round of bridge.
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I'm sorry that common English idioms frighten and confuse you.
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A genuinely nice man (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A genuinely nice man (Score:5, Interesting)
Over 50 years ago, they indeed had no practical use. For a some years a common quip about the laser was that it was "a solution in search of a problem." It wasn't until the 1970s that any widespread applications were invented (barcode scanners were the first one).
Re:A genuinely nice man (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of my favorite responses to people who question the money spent on projects like RHIC and LHC. "You're right, there is no known application for this stuff. But aren't you glad nobody listened to your old man when he said the same thing about the laser?"
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Yeah sure, but wait another 50 years and you won't be laughing at the sharks problem.
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The Apocryphal Story... (Score:5, Funny)
...goes that they wanted to name the invention Light Oscillation by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, but nobody would like a LOSER
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That's Town*send*.
He may pass.... (Score:2)
But his legacy will shine in(to) our eyes FOREVER.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
And a thousand sharks cried (Score:1)
'nuff said
Townes and Schawlow textbook (Score:3, Informative)
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When I pass, it is because I fart
Yeah. But the rest of us are dying.
When can we use the word "dies" again? (Score:2)
Very sorry to hear that anyone dies, but death is part of life after all and there should be no shame in saying the word "dies". It bothers me that nobody likes to use the word "dies" or "dead" anymore, in U.S. pop culture at least. To me at least it seems like ever since that cheesy Crossing over with John Edwards show, everybody started using the word "passed" instead of "died". I know it's a terrible time for people close to those who die, but "passed" just sounds like an insult to the dead. At least say
Passing (Score:2)
He may have passed his peers in the past when he proved them wrong, but yesterday he didn't pass anyone (except maybe in the ambulance or hearse) - he *died*.
Charles Townes' Nobel lecture (Score:3, Interesting)
Deathbed (Score:4, Funny)
What does his have to do with minorities (Score:1)
In today's enlightened age, we must put all stories in context of the growing gender divide, and the struggle of minorities to coexist with the massive white hegemony that exist in the America. (by America I mean only the USA; after all, Mexico, Suriname, and Chile are not and have never been part of America). The fact that you would even mention a story about Townes, an old white man, and not discuss how the stimulated emission of radiation has made it more difficult for the native Americans, and the Afr