{"id":83,"date":"2007-10-22T17:30:32","date_gmt":"2007-10-22T22:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/?p=83"},"modified":"2007-10-22T17:30:32","modified_gmt":"2007-10-22T22:30:32","slug":"the-birth-and-death-of-spookytechnology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/?p=83","title":{"rendered":"The birth and death of spookytechnology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Quantum mechanics is seriously sexy . That&#8217;s what keeps the public coming back for more with the drool hangin from their spittle-flecked lips (repeat this often enough and it might actually come true).<\/p>\n<p>Without a sexy lingo to bamboozle and baffle, physics eggs ain&#8217;t got nothing to keep people&#8217;s attention &#8216;cept their rugged good looks and scintillatin&#8217; personalities.<\/p>\n<p>So labs hire hampers of postdocs whose sole task is to invent new words that&#8217;ll keep the public a-gazin&#8217; and a-gawpin at every shiny new pebble that is thrown their way.<\/p>\n<p>Yer probably didn&#8217;t realise it but all the latest buzzwords were invented in this way:  atomtronics, <a href=\"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/?p=75\">quamputing,<\/a>  brane theory and the ballsheet model of particle physics (OK, ah made that one up).<\/p>\n<p>Normally, these postdocs are thrown a stale crust to keep em happy but otherwise kept under strict lock and key.  But this week, one of em has escaped and posted a buzzword on the arXiv without permission.<\/p>\n<p>Charles &#8220;Manhat&#8221; Tahan is normally locked in the bowels of the Cavendish lab in Cambridge. Let loose, he is brayin&#8217; that physicists are a-stuttering and a-stumblin for want of a word to describe technology that depends on quantum effects that have no classical counterpart. We&#8217;re talkin things like entanglement, coherence and superposition&#8211;the so-called spooky properties of quantum physics.<\/p>\n<p>Manhat Tahan says the word we need is &#8220;spookytechnology&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Whadaya&#8217;ll think? Don&#8217;t send no shivers down my spine, I gotta tell yer.  Surely ya&#8217;ll can come up with something better for this kinda strange stuff. How about quantech or ungodly gear or maniacal machinery or EPR matter or subsubstance or whatever.<\/p>\n<p>And then maybe, just maybe, we can persuade Manhat Tahan to get back into the dungeon before he does some real damage.<\/p>\n<p>Ref:  <a href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/0710.2537\">arxiv.org\/abs\/0710.2537<\/a>: Spookytechnology and Society<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Quantum mechanics is seriously sexy . That&#8217;s what keeps the public coming back for more with the drool hangin from their spittle-flecked lips (repeat this often enough and it might actually come true). Without a sexy lingo to bamboozle and baffle, physics eggs ain&#8217;t got nothing to keep people&#8217;s attention &#8216;cept their rugged good looks [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buzzwords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}