Scientists working on interesting anti-ferromagnetic materials need a justification for doing so under the crazy grant system we operate, more like.
The downside of antiferromagnetic data storage, or skyrmion storage, or any of the other various ideas recently, is that reading the data is very difficult even if it is present, to the point of making a real world device pretty much practically impossible. I know, I also worked on this sort of thing before leaving academia!
(Me I say yes! But I learned, I usually do not represent a majority)
Also: only country that ever invoked article 5 was actually the US. In that sense the opposite is true ("lots of countries have subsidized US defense"). The US "subsidy" came from the strong conviction that "US would act if we needed it", but that conviction is quickly evaporating.
With the foreign countries holding the most US debt being Japan, China, UK, Luxembourg and Canada.
I would also point out that you could view US bases in places like Japan or Chagos Islands as 'subsidising' local defence or it could be viewed as simple occupation.
There’s of course some benefit here but it’s largely intangible. It extends the United States’ sphere of influence and diminishes Russia’s.
I’m not saying it’s altruistic because we’re definitely acting in our own self interest and there is perceived benefit to doing these things but the consequence is still that we are spending more money on defense than we need to and other countries get to spend far less than they should be.
Perhaps you've confused the economic advantage of a militaristic state with a connection between military science and progress.
I’m not sure why you’re having such a reaction to a pretty mundane observation that military funding on technology gets further and faster than the civilians can. Heck go look at how far military is in the math behind cryptography consistently comparing discoveries civilians make and when we learn the military had that tech once it’s declassified decades later.
Because it is just plain wrong. And it glorifies military spending and war. Just because the military complex has so much money that their spare change dwarfs many other sources of research funding doesn't mean it is money that couldn't have been used much more efficiently if it was spent wisely from the start.
And about the plain wrong part:
> You have WW2 to thank for nuclear technology,
The fundamental research was done before the war by the international scientific community, and in particular people from Germany and Italy. The hard part done during the Manhattan project was to develop the industrial processes to produce enough fissile material to make the bombs, but making the bombs from that was fairly trivial.
> lasers
Were first created in 1961.
> the space race.
It has been argued that the reason we stopped going to the moon and beyond is that the rush during the Cold War made it too expensive to continue. A more paced development would have been sustainable and would have gone much further.
> Even QM takes on military funding to take it from niche curiosity to applied research and real world impact.
Why do you think so?
In the end, imagine a world where even a fraction of all the money spent on military was spent on research directly instead.
And yet time and time again, funding follows the military. I don't disagree it's an economics problem. I'm just highlighting that historically large groups of people generally aren't fans of "lets spend money on science" but are more OK with it being laundered through the military under the guise of defense. I'm passing no moral judgement nor glorifying. I'm simply representing how people as groups have behaved historically. It's irrelevant where/when the fundamental research was done. Applied science is a critical component in the flywheel for research as it enables new instruments, equipment, and more understanding of the problems with theoretical research when models and reality disagree. Modern fundamental research in astrophysics today would not be possible without the applied research that was carried on the backs of military spending (this includes lasers, various secret algorithms that were eventually declassified, etc).
> Were first created in 1961.
Early research into lasers was primarily academic and civilian, but once demonstrated the military poured a lot of money into them during the Cold War which advanced materials sciences that was required for making better & better lasers.
> the rush during the Cold War made it too expensive to continue
It was always too expensive to continue. The only reason the space program was ever funded was for military purposes. It was completely borne out of V2 rocket research the Nazi's started & the US just kept funding the same Nazi scientists to keep working in the US after the war as a counter to the USSR. And even today's space race was made possible due to privately acquired artifacts piggy backing on the corpse of the civilian run / military funded space program. No military investment and I think you more likely end up with NO space program whatsoever.
> Why do you think so?
The Manhattan project had many of the founders of QM on the payroll and QM was completely essential for the atomic bomb to work. Radar development required R&D into QM. QM magnetometers are being funded by the Navy today & there's all sorts of exotic QM applications the military is funding that we're not privy to I'm sure.
> In the end, imagine a world where even a fraction of all the money spent on military was spent on research directly instead.
You're imagining a counterfactual that has no example of it necessarily existing. Indeed, we see a consistent push to cut everything but the military from one US political party while the other side funds the military and tries to fund other things as well. Prior to the 20th century, scientific research was in academia and some private funding of commercial applications. The pace of innovation though is incomparable. So the question is probably closer to "do you want huge amounts of R&D tied to military spending" or "slower rate of progress". Whatever criticisms and failures you level against the US and its military (and there are many), I'm of the opinion that on net it still yielded a positive change to the world order during the 20th century.
"Physics in the Interest of Society Lecture 2019: John Parmentola"
I don't see "distance" mentioned on the article, but I did see a temperature (118 K = -155 C)(which make it (currently) impossible to use outside a lab). The breakthrough is here though, and now someone must already be at work to see if this can be operated in battlefield/real-life conditions.
I remember on TBBT when they made a gyroscope-thingie-invention but it was 'THIS' big, and the army officer was pressing them to remake it 'that' small so it can be fitted on missiles (or whatever). Isn't this how it typically happens?
For example, "hyphenated silicon" (semiconductor doping) involved in how rock trolls think, and the catch-all explanation of "because quantum."
I feel like this massive caveat was buried half way through the article. This is why I dislike university press. I mean, the wizardry is impressive, but it isn't gonna revolutionize anything anytime soon if it requires a vacuum and liquid Krypton-ish temperatures.
Reminds me of CCD. Back in the day CCD only worked effectively at liquid nitrogen temperatures; a couple of decades of development and you could have one in a pocket camera.
Maybe that's what you meant.
https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_...
I can see a future where the space between earth and mars is a constellation of massive caching servers.
Or the sun's light could drive the rotation using magnetic force.
If anything, we might reassess our current usage…
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8189590/
https://web.stanford.edu/group/solomon/research.html
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266652202...
Wild life photographers probably have some tips.
"Distinguishing surface and bulk electromagnetism via their dynamics in an intrinsic magnetic topological insulator" (2024) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn5696
> MnBi2Te4
ScholarlyArticle: "Terahertz field-induced metastable magnetization near criticality in FePS3" (2024) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08226-x
"Room temperature chirality switching and detection in a helimagnetic MnAu2 thin film" (2024) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-46326-4 .. https://scitechdaily.com/memory-breakthrough-helical-magnets... .. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41921153
https://www.energy.gov/science/np/articles/making-matter-col...
Scientists find strong evidence for the long-predicted Breit-Wheeler effect—generating matter and antimatter from collisions of real photons.
keep in mind that ALL materials are photo reactive in one way or another, and that the realistic number of possible materials, is infinite* All materials are conductive in some way or condition, think : superconductors . Molecular strength engineering materials are something else waiting in the wings of material sciences. Main point is that, this is still early days with the full effects of bench top vs building size equipment used in research, to show.
* hugely, massive, wow big make you dizzy, number
“using a terahertz laser”
#doubt