Passive Optical Diode Created At Purdue University

Infrared light is not heat. I don't know where people got this idea. It is light. When it is absorbed, it may cause certain molecules to gain heat energy, but it is still light. This is a device which absorbs or scatters when you shine light on one side of it, and transmits when you shine light on the other side of it. I assume when heat energy is generated within the device, it diffuses isotropically from the point of matter-light interaction throughout the material until a definite temperature is reached, as thermodynamics predicts. If you believe that materials with different absorption cross sections at different spatial orientations allow you to violate the second law of thermodynamics, then you hardly need to construct something so elaborate: a board painted two different colors on either side should suffice. Lasers themselves, whose cavities emit a lot more in one direction than in the other (and which generate a good deal of heat in their lasing medium in a largely homogeneous fashion, but let's not get bogged down in reality) should constitute a huge violation. You should let everyone in the physics community know, as this seems like a fairly large oversight in our model of reality/sarcasm

If you're going to go around with a name like physburn, please ensure you understand what you're talking about

Source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/12/28/0249256/passive-optical-diode-created-at-purdue-university?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkuser&utm_medium=feed

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