Radiating doubt

Faith, Hope and Doubt

Non-radiating and radiating configurations driven by left- handed metamaterials

It is shown that a pair of identical emitters (e.g. wire dipole antennas) in the focal points of a disc, made of left-handed metamaterial (a “perfect” lens), form a non-radiating electromagnetic configuration. The emitters are fed with voltages of equal magnitude and πout-of-phase. Detailed finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) modeling shows that there are non-propagating electromagnetic fields...

1 Beyond reasonable doubt

T he Internet is a wonderful research tool. With the click of a mouse, you can beam yourself into what seems an infinite number of important lectures by eminent thinkers around the world. Just such an opportunity awaits if you search for Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at the University of California, berkeley. The results of such a search include a video of Professor Muller castigating...

Electrodynamics of Radiating Charges

The theory of electrodynamics of radiating charges is reviewed with special emphasis on the role of the Schott energy for the conservation of energy for a charge and its electromagnetic field. It is made clear that the existence of radiation from a charge is not invariant against a transformation between two reference frames that has an accelerated motion relative to each other. The questions w...

Designing for Doubt

Vast quantities of data are collected about us and our world: credit card transactions, movements and traffic flows, social networks, disease outbreaks, bird migrations, and flowers blossoming. These datasets span a wide range of public and private information and contexts. However, it is the emergence of a host of mobile phone based citizen sensing platforms that is poised to become the domina...