TED Presentation, April 2009: Allosphere, data visualization

[rhody]

http://www.ted.com/talks/joann_kuchera_morin_tours_the_allosphere.html

I have been a long time viewer, fan of the Technology, Engineering, Design (TED) website, and would like to know if physicists who conduct serious experiments to verify existing theories either have used or were aware of the Allosphere, a three story metal sphere in an echo free chamber, a large dynamically varying digital microscope.

The most interesting parts of the talk, at 3:20, discuss a new bond for transparent solar cells, at 4:10, showing the superposition of an electron in a hydrogen atom in the lower 3 orbits, hearing and seeing the electron flow, the white dots showing probability waves, at 5:20, a single electron spin.

I am an engineer, not a serious physicist, but believe in first principals, from the "bottom up".
I genuinely appreciate the serious discussions/debates that take place here.
Any discussion this thread generates is appreciated.

I had to chuckle a bit before posting this when reviewing the closed topics list, I think this piece of technology does not qualify as being on the "fringe"...

 

[rhody]

I ran into this during a recent search of "Quark Flux" and thought it may be of interest:

http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/~dleinweb/VisualQCD/Nobel/

From the University of Adelaide, in Australia: by Derek B. Leinweber: illustrating

three-loop improved lattice gauge action and the five-loop improved lattice field strength tensor

four-dimensional structure of gluon-field configurations averaged over in describing the vacuum properties of QCD

suppression of the QCD vacuum from the region between a quark-antiquark pair illustrated by the colored spheres

QCD vacuum fluctuations are expelled from the interior region of a baryon like the proton

It would be interesting to ask if theoretical physicists who study/theorize on properties of what today is known to be the smallest non-separable constituents of protons, neutrons, groups of three confined quarks, if they use visualization when working with the theories and math required.

More specifically:

Do you use visualization in concert with your mathematical understanding of current theories and methods used predict properties (energies/masses) observed in collision experiments ? Do you see the mathematical repsentations in your mind in conjunction visualization(s), or with no visualization(s) at all, or a combination of both ?

The thought process in how you came to the prediction of properties just mentioned is of greater interest...

Thanks... 10/27 - 63