Japanese scientists invent floating 'firefly' light | Hacker News Reader

Japanese scientists invent floating 'firefly' light

reuters.com

108 pointsinterconnector33 comments

I don't get it. Maybe I'm missing something, but how is this in any way novel?

You can get a cheapish acoustic levitation kit from Tindie[1], and inductive power transmission is hardly a rare technology these days, so where's the innovation? It seems to me all they've done is made a tiny LED with a tiny coil attached to it, right?

And how the hell do they expect to achieve any of the ridiculously speculative things they talk about in the article anyway? Fleets of these things flying around drawing messages in the sky isn't particularly useful if you need to position a massive bank of ultrasonic speakers and a power coil underneath them.

It all smacks of the Hendo Hoverboard[2] bullshit which bad "science" "journalists" breathlessly obsessed over a few years ago, which was similarly just a rebadging of existing technology that was utterly impractical in any context except marketing, coupled with thoroughly nonsensical claims of future utility (levitating buildings during earthquakes, for instance.)

[1] https://www.tindie.com/products/Makerfabs/acoustic-levitator...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMZ2cyNxPwg

It is cool but the goals they have are total bs and they know that themselves because noone who unserstands how this works would believe that stuff

"New study links widespread ultrasonic 'firefly' devices with disappearing insect populations and [other unintended ecological disaster]." - Headline from 2042

"Hated in the Nation" was written in 2016.

"Japanese scientists invent robot girlfriends for lonely insects" -- the real cause of the insect population decline.

Although I haven't looked into the exact mechanism here, I think people who find this interesting may also be interested in optical tweezers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_tweezers

The mechanism here is more like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_tweezers.

Reminds me of Navi from The Legend of Zelda, in a way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navi_(The_Legend_of_Zelda)

This was my thought to.

"and be built to float about, helping us in our everyday lives"

This guy has grown up on Ocarina of Time and thought "I'm going to make that happen".

I'm confused. The article implies that it can hover around independently, but in the gallery, it's only seen levitating inside a fat loop of copper wire connected to a stationary structure.

It requires 285 audio speakers working at 40Khz to fly so it's going to be a stationary display like a potted plant with a light that moves.

Reminds me of Localizers from A Deepness in the Sky. That was a great book

Finding out that it was actually a prequel bummed me out so much.

was A Fire Upon the Deep not good?

Fire Upon the Deep was good, but was sad to find out what happened to Pham Nuwen. Makes the ending to the prequel rather bittersweet.

Loved both books though :) Sorry if I gave the wrong impression.

A Fire Upon the Deep is good. It might not be what you want out of a follow up story set in this universe. It has a heavy focus on a low technology world deep in the slow zone.

I didn't like the Tines stuff. I'd have rather read more about the Qeng Ho.

That's exciting even if we are still far from a real product. There is a place for a new way of manipulating light and giving that to artists. For me, it can le be linked to the demo that Intel is going with drones and light, but on another scale...

But there is nothing new here. Artists are free today to levitate things above ultrasonic speakers. Google ultrasonic levitation. Just dont expect any local cats to be happy about your next street art installation.

There is a place for something smaller and more flexible, it's not clear from the article it this method can scale, however.

"Japanese scientists invent floating 'firefly' light" followed by "Japanese engineering researchers say..." I'd guess it doesn't involve any new science and is purely an engineering project.

Five to ten years, eh?

https://www.xkcd.com/678/

This is a very relevant comic for quantum computing. Mainstream seems to think useful QC is 10 years away. It's cute.

Imagine how people in nuclear fusion research feel! 50 years for 50 years... and in 50 years? 50 more years.

How does one read alttext on mobile devices?

Long press the image on Android browsers I used

If you had really perfect sound/airflow control you could maybe get what looks like a movie hologram I guess, if you really miniaturize each light

I assume they are pumping enough power to a single point to ionise the air and produce light.

Would that much ultrasonic power be enough to burn human skin?

It's an LED on a tiny PCB with an inductive loop around it. One of the images in the gallery has a picture of it.

The ultrasonic puffs of air keep it suspended.

The first image is a composite, the actual light is not microscopic.

I think it's a long-exposure shot, with the LED moving around in space and blinking in a specific way to generate a floating R

I think you're right.

I expected something more like Groot's free-flying fireflies:

https://youtu.be/SdZvguUeiB0?t=18s

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