Links for 2010-11-14

"Here's the problem: most plans to reduce the long-term deficit consist of three things: shiny baubles, smoke and mirrors, and actual deficit reduction measures. You want to minimize the former and emphasize the latter, and on that score I don't think Simpson-Bowles does very well."

"Once lasers were invented however, high intensities became available. One of the more important discoveries was second harmonic generation, which happens when light of frequency f is sent into a medium with nonlinear properties and light of frequency 2f is generated. Most green laser pointers work this way, frequency-doubling infrared light of 1064 nm wavelength into visible green light of 532 nm wavelength.

This second harmonic generation was first reported in Phys. Rev. Lett. 7, 118-119 (1961) by researchers at the University of Michigan with pulsed ruby laser light of around 3 kilowatts instantaneous power focused into a very tiny area. The paper they published is now unfortunately not just a famous paper in laser physics but a famous publishing screw-up in laser physics:"