Neon Diatom
Neon Diatom (occasionally Raman Spectra and the Polarizability of the Neon Diatom) is a techno-folk chamber rock band from New Minneapolis, Canada.
Albums
- Neon Diatom
- Behind the Emergent Sea - a concept album about the emergence principle. The title is play on the phrase "Behind the Emergen-C", which I heard Patrick Ladwig use in conversation.
Singles
- Zinc Fingers - see also Zinc finger (nonfiction), "a small protein structural motif that is characterized by the coordination of one or more zinc ions (Zn2+) in order to stabilize the fold." See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_finger
Diatom in quantum physics (nonfiction)
Physicists Michele Sclafani, Markus Arndt, and colleagues from the University of Vienna performed quantum physics using diatoms, a mostly unicellular marine algae that are encased within a cell wall made of silica that is known as a frustule. In the experiment, Sclafani used Amphipleura pellucida – an alga that can be found on the beach. It has a wall thickness of 90 nm and a surprisingly regular pore distance of about 200 nm. The researchers found that they could use the diatom to measure molecular De Broglie wavelengths as small as a few billionths of a millimeter by firing beams of molecules at it.
To do this, the Amphipleura pellucida frustule was suspended in a vacuum with its pores oriented towards the coherent molecular beam of phthalocyanine molecules – a commonly used blue-green dye. Incidentally, a phthalocyanine molecule is about a million times more massive than an electron. Phthalocyanine was chosen because it gives off fluorescent light when illuminated with a laser and so can be easily detected. The beam was created by shining a 1.5 μm focused laser onto a dye-coated glass window. The tiny spot size of the laser ensured that the beam was coherent. The beam was then sent through the alga and each individual molecule was counted on a screen behind the sample. This was done by observing the location of the fluorescent light with a microscope. After many molecules were passed through the alga, the ensemble of their locations made up the diffraction pattern.
Scalfani says that, in the long run, the focus of the group is to probe the matter–wave duality of an object that has mass and complexity. “Matter–wave duality still puzzles people – is there any limit to quantum mechanics, mass-wise?” he asks. Understanding this is crucial.
Diatomic neon (nonfiction)
Diatomic molecules (or diatoms) are molecules composed of only two atoms, of the same or different chemical elements.
"Raman Spectra and polarizability of the neon diatom" is a paper by Lothar Frommhold and Michael H.Proffitt, published in Chemical Physics Letters, Volume 66, Issue 1, 15 September 1979, Pages 210-212.
Abstract: "The collision-induced polarized Raman spectrum of neon is obtained for the first time, and its depolarized counterpart. The comparison with wavemechanical computations of the spectra affords a new measurement of the invariants of the diatom polarizability, trace and anisotropy."
In the News
Fiction cross-reference
- Sun Sailer Cannibals
- Chrome Plover
- Behind the Emergent Sea
- Feral Butler
- Gnomon algorithm
- Gnomon Chronicles
- Neon Diatom (album)
- New Minneapolis, Canada