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Friday, October 31, 2008

DNA Sequencing using Graphene


Artist's impression of a DNA molecule (helix) moving through a tiny slit in a graphene sheet (shown in blue). (Courtesy: Henk Postma).
Henk Postma at California State University Northridge has proposed a way of sequencing an entire DNA strand without the need for blasting or computer processing (arXiv:0810.3035v1 ).

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Entangled Degrees of Freedom

Lepton pairs have degrees of freedom which are entangled or not.


Image copyright © Anton Zeilinger, Institute of Experimental Physics, University of Vienna.
Photon pairs are entangled in the illustration above.



Entangled particles fly apart in opposite directions.




Attempts are made to entangle the various degrees of freedom of various types of laser beams.


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The language seems sort of funny when you think of particles as brades. It seems natural they should get entangled. Nevertheless, it is really a degree of freedom that gets entangled between two entities like laser beams, allotropes, atoms, etc.