iWork

Also as part of my fancy schmancy new job, I get to work ... a lot. Like, say, from 9am - 10pm yesterday. Of course this is paltry labor compared to the lucky souls who work in investment banking, but it's a change of pace for me. And it leaves less time for blogging. Or anything other than sleeping.

That said, check out this craziness about a super-powerful gamma laser:

An exotic molecule built from electrons and antimatter is being touted as a route to powerful gamma-ray lasers.

An electron can hook up with its antiparticle, the positron, to form a hydrogen-like atom called positronium (Ps). It survives for less than 150 nanoseconds before it is annihilated in a puff of gamma radiation. It was known that two positronium atoms should be able to bind together to form a molecule, called Ps₂, and now David Cassidy and Allen Mills from the University of California, Riverside, have made that happen. First, they trapped positrons in a thin film of porous silica. Those positrons captured electrons to form positronium atoms, and the pattern of decay rates signalled that some of these atoms had teamed up to form Ps₂ (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature06094).

If positronium atoms could be forced to merge into a kind of "super-atom" condensate, it would decay in bursts of identical gamma rays, which could lead to gamma-ray lasers a million times more powerful than standard lasers. "It's like comparing a chemical explosion with a nuclear explosion," Cassidy says.

From issue 2621 of New Scientist magazine, 18 September 2007, page 23

Sweet. Maybe when I'm done with this job, I can work for a company making gamma laser cannons mounted on gravitomagnetic platforms. And I'll get to ride my unicorn to work every morning.