An introduction on laser physics

Mario Tonin0 Comments

So I want to start a series of posts that will focus mostly on lasers, what they are, how they work, what are the most important elements, etc… It can still evolve. Some prerequisites first: To fully understand what I will write, here, it definitely helps to be familiar with a few concepts and bases from electromagnetism and optics, obviously. I’ll try to explain these concepts along the way of course. Nevertheless, even if you don’t have the necessary background, keep reading. I’ll try to keep it simple and limit the mathematics to a minimum. It’s no surprise that lasers …

Continue Reading

The dangers of solar eruptions: the dreaded Carrington event

Mario Tonin0 Comments

I am a fan of disaster movies. I have grown in the 90’s and 00’s, at a time where Hollywood started a trend of summer blockbusters that usually involved alien invasion, or volcanoes and other gigantic threat that was supposed to threaten the existence of Humanity. We had it all: Independence Day, Volcano, Armageddon, Deep Impact, 12 monkeys, etc… Spectacular and frightening. Most of these movies are special, in the sense that they depict events that are very unlikely to happen during our lifetimes. I mean volcanoes are a real threat, there is the whole super-volcano threat in the Yellowstone …

Continue Reading

A new surprising sorting algorithm

Mario Tonin0 Comments

Just a small post today. I stumbled upon a paper [1] on ArXiv recently on a surprising sorting algorithm that was discovered pretty recently (in October 2021). Here is a quick implementation I wrote in Python: It’s not the most efficient algorithm obviously, as it will always do n2 comparisons. It is an O(n2) algorithm in the best case and worst case scenario. There are much more advanced algorithms out there that go down to O(n log n) in average, so much faster and more efficient. This algorithm is more like a curiosity, based on how simply the sorting is …

Continue Reading

How to direct lightning with a laser…

Mario Tonin0 Comments

Climate change is a mess. It’s hotter in some places, colder in other, and in general, severe weather is intensifying with longer droughts, heavier rainfalls and stronger storms. This problem, caused mostly by our method of generation of energy relying on burning fuel and releasing carbon dioxide in the air has a few solutions, among them: the wind turbine to harvest wind energy and generate clean electricity. But, here is a slight problem. A few days ago, I stumbled upon an article[1] explaining how wind turbines are actually at risk of severe damages when thunderstorms occur. The issue here is …

Continue Reading