Space Glass

Thanks to human ingenuity and zero gravity, we reap important benefits from science in space. Consider smart phones with built-in navigation systems and cameras.


Such transformational technologies seem to blend into the rhythm of our everyday lives overnight. But they emerged from years of discoveries and developments of materials that can withstand harsh environments outside our atmosphere. 

They evolve from decades of laying foundations in basic science to understand how atoms behave in different materials under different conditions.     READ MORE...

Living in Tennessee

This morning, FOX News had a segment on the hundreds of people that were leaving Democratic-controlled states and moving to Tennessee, specifically NASHVILLE.  But, the state of Tennessee is not just about Nashville...

• When I think of Nashville, I think of the home of Country Music...
• When I think of Memphis, I think of the home of Elvis Presley...
• When I think of Bristol, I think of the home of NASCAR....
• When I think of Knoxville, I think of the home of Oak Ridge National Laboratories...
• When I think of Chattanooga, I think of  Glenn Miller's Chattanooga Choo Choo and the revitalized riverfront, similar to the riverfront in San Antonio, Texas...

Tennessee is also the home of Jack Daniels whiskey and has the nickname of "Volunteers" that dates back to the Alamo and Davy Crockett...

And, what is not mentioned often is the Great Smoky Mountains which is the NUMBER ONE TOURIST ATTRACTION in the entire US of A...   imagine that?

Tennessee has a HUGE system of LAKES thanks to the TVA and the public works projects of the 1920s that put people to work because of the Great Depression.  And, where I am currently living, I have access to two lakes on either side of me, Cherokee and Douglas...  I can get to either lake in about 10-15 minutes.

About 40-60 minutes (depending upon traffic) away from my location, there is:

• Pidgeon Forge
• Dollywood
• Gatlinburg

Each of these tourist attractions went from just being opened in the summer months (circa 1990s) to being open 12 months a year (circa 2000s)...

Oak Ridge National Laboratories just outside of Knoxville, receives 80% of the Department of Energy's budget each year to work on a variety of projects for the Federal Government...  Currently, ORNL works on protecting nuclear materials to secure the peaceful use of energy production, medical applications, and scientific discovery around the world...

I moved over to TN in 1990 and 32 years later not only am I still here but I have no desire to live anywhere else...  I wear a t-shirt from April through December...  that's 8 months out of the year...  not bad.

Do yourself a favor...  come to TN for a visit...  stay a week or two, maybe three...  spend your money, but don't stay!!!

Taking a Giant Leap

ORNL’s Joseph Lukens runs experiments in an optics lab. Credit: Jason Richards/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Scientists' increasing mastery of quantum mechanics is heralding a new age of innovation. Technologies that harness the power of nature's most minute scale show enormous potential across the scientific spectrum, from computers exponentially more powerful than today's leading systems, sensors capable of detecting elusive dark matter, and a virtually unhackable quantum internet.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Freedom Photonics and Purdue University have made strides toward a fully quantum internet by designing and demonstrating the first ever Bell state analyzer for frequency bin coding.

Their findings were published in Optica.

Before information can be sent over a quantum network, it must first be encoded into a quantum state. This information is contained in qubits, or the quantum version of classical computing "bits" used to store information, that become entangled, meaning they reside in a state in which they cannot be described independently of one another.

Entanglement between two qubits is considered maximized when the qubits are said to be in "Bell states."

Measuring these Bell states is critical to performing many of the protocols necessary to perform quantum communication and distribute entanglement across a quantum network. And while these measurements have been done for many years, the team's method represents the first Bell state analyzer developed specifically for frequency bin coding, a quantum communications method that harnesses single photons residing in two different frequencies simultaneously.  READ MORE...