Most likely, the word photonics is not part of yourusual vocabulary, but the technologies developed in this field are increasignly used in the daily course of our lives.
If we pay attention to the definition of photonics given by dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster´ s:
“A branch of physics that deals with the properties and applications of photons especially as a medium for transmitting information”, perhaps this means nothing to you, unless you know research works such as those of the great pysicist Albert Einstein. Specifically, his explanation of the photoelectric effect discovered by Hertz in 1887 and for which, curiosities of life, Einstein received exactly 100 years ago (1921), the Nobel Prize and not for his famous theory of relativity.
Albert Einstein
Photonic is better understood if we use other definitions, such as the one described by the French scientist Pierre Aigrain in 1967:
“Photonics is the science of the harnessing of light. Photonics encompasses the generation of light, the detection of light, the management of light through guidance, manipulation, and amplification, and, most importantly, its utilization for the benefit of mankind.”
Therefore, light is the center of photonics, a physical phenomenon whose explanation has needed hundreds of years and great geniuses for its understanding, at least to a high degree. From the Greek schools with Aristotle and Euclid as outstanding exmples, numerous scientists, such as Al Haytham, Newton, Young, Maxwell or Einstein himself dedicated part of their lives to answering the question What is light?.
If we summarize some of the conclusions of these parents of photonics, we can say that light is defined by both a wave and a particle, which has been called the wave-particle duality of light. This duality was the source of fierce discussions like the one carried out between Huygens and Newton in the 17th century, Huygens defended the wave nature of light, while Newton only understood light as a set of luminous corpuscles. In the 19th century, it was Young with his famous double slit experiment and Maxwell with his treatise on electromagnetism who confirmed the wave nature of light, while in the early 20th century, Plank and Einstein demosntrated the need to quantify light in form of discrete packets of energy to be able to explain the radiation of a black body and the aforementioned photoelectric effect. In 1926, Gilbert Lewis called this “quantum” of energy a photon.
Wave-particle duality of light Source: https://www.youtube.com/c/inanutshell
On the other hand, light is not only the radiation that we can see with our eyes, namely, the visible spectrum, but it is also associated with infrared, ultraviolet, microwaves, radio waves, X-ray and gamma radiation, since these ones are of the same nature as demonstrated by Maxwell. In fact, the International Society of Photonics and Optics (SPIE) in its 2020 annual report states that photonics covers the entire range of the electromagnetic spectrum, from gamma rays to radio waves.
Electromagnetic spectrum
We could say, in a simplified way that:
“Light is made up of a set of particles, called photons, propagating in ther form of electromagnetic waves with a wide range of frequencies.”
Photons interact with matter at the subatomic level. If these particles have the right energy value, defined by the frequency of the wave, they will cause the electrons of the atoms to absorbb their energy and position themselves at higher energy levels. In the same way, these particles of light are released when electrons returns spontaneously or stimulated to lower or more stable energy levels.
The interaction of photons with the matter. Source: https://users.aber.ac.uk/ruw/teach/327/spec.php
Well, these phenomena that occur at the suabtomic level are tha basis for the velopment of devices such as LEDs or LASERs, without which we could not, among other uses, improve the energy efficiency of our homes or have better bandwidth in fiber optic communications. These are a small part of the applications of photonics, but it gives an idea of the magnitude of its importance since it is present in a myriad of application sectors.
So when you turn on the lights, hear the news on the radio or watch them on television, connect to the internet via fiber optics or via wireles with yout tablet or smartphone to watch your favorite series, activate your home alarm sensors, take pictures, heat your breakfast in the microwave and other countless daily actions, think about how photonics has changed our lives. It is not surprising that the 21st century was the century of the electron and that photonics is one of the key technologies for humanity to continue its development and overcome many of thec omplicated challenges that has to face today and in the future.
Since 2020 CARTIF is part ofPhotonHub Europe, a platform made up of more than 30 reference centers in photonics from 15 European countries in which more than 500 experts in photonics offer their support to companies (mainly SMEs) to help them to improve their productionprocesses and products through the use of photonics. With this objective, training, project development and technical and financial advisory actions have been organized until 2024.
In addition, to be aware of what is happening in the worl of photonics, we encourage you o be part of the community created in PhotoHub Europe. In this community you can be aware of the activities of the platform as well as news and events related to photonics.
There are two things that have nothing to do with each other but that in real, they have to: the perplexity of a roe deer in the foothills of the Torozos hills when she founds a fence surrounding a photovoltaic park and that the 64%1 of the Spanish people do not know if our electrical supply contract is from a free or a regulated market.
The roe deer ignores the fact that the place where he walks is going to be subjected to radical changes. Tens of thousands of hectares are going to be covered with photovoltaic panels and closed by fences. We will have to see how this will afect to biodiversity, what will become of the bustards and of the foxes that walks throguh those places and if roe deers will learn to see fences before they colide with them.
But we have to take in count that human activity will be affected. All those hectares will be excluded from agriculture, shepherding will be limited and the landscape will be radically transformed, what could affect to local business of the rural tourism. In exchange of this destruction, energy will be generated without emitting greenhouse gases, energy that also will be cheap and that will help to decrease the price resulting from the daily market matching. But the sun does not usually shine at night, at least in our latitude, and what could happen with the electricity price and with the electric system stabilisation from the time of sunset or the days without sun is something that we will have to talk about in other moment.
Spanish consumers may be just as unaware as the roe deer, because it seems that manyof us are not informed about the possibility of choosing between a regulated rate and non-regulated one, and surely we are far less conscious about the changes that decarbonization of the electric system brings.
This situation of unknowledge raises the fear that it is going to be hard to let people know that they have in their hands a powerful weapon for combating the problems that could appear as a consequence of the massive introduction of renewable energies.
It is the flexibility or capacity of consuming electricity at different times than initially desired without having a loss of comfort or utility. To complicate things further, the household consumers could take better advantage of their own flexibility if they offer it on a joint basis. And this offer should be made in energy local markets, still non-existent, but already in development.
To imagine that a consumer that does not know if he has a free rate or a regulated one may become involved in the energy local market seems harder to achieve than a herd of roe deers jumping the fences of a photovoltaic park.
Several things are required for demand flexibility to be useful. On the one hand, it is necessary that all flexible electricity-consuming assets, such as air conditioning, should be able to accept external signals that allow regulating its operation automatically. Also, it is necessary that control systems that generates these signals are available and acting in an aggregated manner on a significative number of air conditioning systems, to mention a flexible load. In addition, it is necessary to define business models that will allow users to be remunerated for their flexibility. And finally, rules and regulations must be developed to define new market agents, such as the recently created independent aggregators, and to regulate the consumer participation in the new local electricity markets.
But all of this is not going to be possible without a change of mind. Consumers have to realize that there are ways to actively participate in the electricity system that go beyond switching companies when the bill seems too high. One of these ways could be energy communities, which are already opening the door to collective self-consumption and will hopefully soon also open the door to flexible, consumer-centered demand-side management.
Perhaps these communities allow the consumer to adapt to the new electricity system in the same way that roe deers of Torozos hills will have to adapt to a new environment full of unfamiliar things.
On 2o July I could not stop myself from thinking about Jeff Bezos. He made a short journey to space, organizing his own private trip. There were plenty of headlines. And many different opinions on the subject.
Was the issue that was of concern to me if he was returned from space safe and sound?. Well, not exactly.
My concern was not in how much the space trip cost (or maybe yes), not in thinking if his decision had a coherent basis (or maybe yes) or in the high-impact maedia coverage (or maybe yes). The problem was that I couldn´ t get out of my mind the environmental impact of the trip, from a life cycle perspective.
After the trip, Jeff Bezos said its spaceflight revealed the fragility of Earth.
But was his trip a sustainable initiative for this fragiel Earth?
Jeff Bezos spaceflight. Source: France 24
Sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, shifting its focus towards the economic, social and environmental development.
To be able to say that the environmental part of the sustainability is being considered, it is needed to evaluate the impact and communicate the result through effective and transparent communication indicators, such as the carbon footprint. It estimates the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted during the production, processing and retailing of goods and/or services, considering their life cycle and using the global warming potential as the only indicator.
It seems that we are becoming aware of the importance of improving energy efficiency at home or using the pblic transport, but we continue to maintain many unsustainable practices in our day to day. For instance. I would ask you to think about the energy consumption required by your daily interactions on the internet. Then, multiply this number by 4,200 billion Internet users.
“Houston, we have a problem!”
Knowing which activities are the largest sources of GHG in our everyday lifes, we can change them towards more environmentally friendly actions, and thanks to the information shared by the International Energy Agency (IEA), I would like to tell you three steps to take a digital detox that will minimize your carbon footprint.
Cleaning: delete emails and online files that you no longer need. This action frees up space on the servers. And the social media accounts that you no longer use. The simple fact of existing and occupying space on the internet generates an environmental impact.
Unsubscribe from the newsletters you are not reading: whilst the carbon footprint of an email is not huge, cutting down on the number of unnecesary emails you receive is one important way to reduce the CO2 eq emitted by these emails. And in a matter of emissions, each email counts.
Choose carefully what videos you would like to play, maybe a pocast would be better.
Applying the equity principle to the environment, each person in the world has the right to us the same amount of environmental space, so if we commit ourselves to use efficiently our resources with minimal environmental impacts, the whole society will benefit.
Touché.
Because this implies that the responsability is shared by everyone. That is to say, it is not only from Jeff Bezos.
The technological offer at CARTIF is varied, we are not dedicated to space tourism but we do evaluate the sustainability and calculate environmental footprints.
Therefore waiting for Jeff Bezos call impatiently!!
It is said that those who forget their own history are condemned to repeat it. Cultural Heritage is part of that history, talks about our beliefs and experiences, it carries us where we came from and grants our identity. Knowing it helps us to understand the problems of the present and preserving it is essential to ensure the new generations can continue learning from it.
Historical building is the wider and most significant cultural heritage set transferredup-to-date, bringing together immovable assets (the buildings themselves) and movable assets (what these contain) of great interest. Therefore, if we want to conserve our heritage we must keep historical building in the finest possible condition. This way we will guarantee its physical integrity and ensure that it can continue to be used by residents and visitors.
Since 2012, conventional buildings in Spain have undergone a periodic inspection known as ITE (Technical Building Inspection), similar to the Vehicle Inspection Test but applied to buildings. This inspection evaluates the adequacy of the assets to the required conditions of safety, healthiness, adornment, habitability, accessibility, use and services, and it applies to buildings older than 50 years with preferably residential use.
So, if buildings from 50 years ago are being inspected, shouldn´ t those built 500 years ago also to be inspected?
The reality is that, as it is raised right now, the conventional inspection is not applicable to historical assets. First, because of the regulation framework, which makes it mandatory in municipalities with a population higher than 25,000 inhabitants, a case that does not represent the built heritage, mostly found in rural areas with a significantly lower population. Secondly, beacause heritage buildings are very rarely used for residential purposes (even in urban areas), and, if so, it tends to occur in fully rehabilitated or newly-built annexed areas, adapted to the uses and customs of the 21 st century. But, above all, the application of the conventional inspection to historical buildings is not feasible because it is obvious that conventional and historical buildings present great construction, materials and use differences, consequently, it must be a specific inspection to verify how they are, just fitting the uniqueness and sensitivity that cultural heritage demands.
This is the origin of the ITEHIS project, which studies the applicability of innovative technologies to the technical inspection of historic buildings older than 100 years, provided with a specific use and subject to be classifiable into one of the major architectural groups: civil, military, religious or industrial. In other words, ITEHIS aims to adapt the already existing buildings inspection to the exceptional features and endless architectural, constructive, functional and aesthetic variations that can be found in historical buildings, also considering the movable assets they contain (organs, altarpieces, stalls, collections,etc.). This is also tight to the broad context od the digitization of Heritage, bringing together all the aspects inspected through HBIM (Heritage-BIM), which we already talked about in a specific post called “The BIM approach: fitting to Heritage?”. Once the inspection is concluded, a report will be delivered, providing improvement measures rating the historical building from 1 to 5. This will allow not only to evaluate its condition, but also to objectively prioritize the resources needed to its conservation. Furthermore, ITEHIS will help to lay the foundations of a specific regulation to guarantee the sustainability of historical buildings through the Spanish Standardization Committee.
ITEHIS, project financed with FEDER funds through the Instituto de Competitividad Empresarial (ICE), is another example of collaboration between a technology centre such as CARTIF and companies committed to Heritage snd the territory they are settled (TRYCSA, ALTEISA and ACITORES), which intend to contribute to those proper conservation through new, more effective ways, so that we can continue knowing, using, enjoying and, ultimately, learning from it.
A lot of the new hype arounf the Artificial Intelligence (AI) is directly related with the potentiality for imitate or overcome the capabilities of the human brain (in terms of data volume managed and process speed) using computers. The neuroscientist Henry Markram in 2009 announced a project that pretend to simulate the human brain in a super-computer with different objectives such as “understanding perception or reality and maybe even undertanding physic reality as well”.
The so-called “technological singularity” established how the AI and robotics will surpass us humans. There are different predictions about when will occur this “apocalypse”. Elon Musk figured it out this singularity in 2025, the Russian millionaire Dmitri Itskov in 2045, to cite some examples. The continuous advance of microprocessors capabilities also feeds, wrongly, the hype of the AI. If someone compares only the numebr of neurons (around 86,000 million) with the number of transistors of the last M1 chip from Apple (16,000 millions) may be tempted to ensure that the “computation capacity” of the human being is easily overcome. I know, comparisons are hateful, and in this case, very daring.
Until very recently I was already among the expectant of such predictions, but with a reasonable scepticism degree. All this changed for me in the crudest of the confinement of 2020. I was wandering around YouTube in search of interesting videos related to AI and I came to a very curious one that gives the title to this post, and that attracted my curosity: 1consciousness is not a computation. In this video, a more than kucid Sir Roger Penrose, physicist, mathematician and philosopher, is interviewed by the vlogger Lex Fridman, expert in AI and autonomous driving.
I have to say that, even the scientific level of what is exposed in the video is very high, the lucidity, detail and kindness shown by Penrose, caught me and got me to be attentive throughout the whole interview. Specially, there is a part that sticks me on the chair, and makes me rewind several times to try to understand as much details as possible. The interview starts directly with this devastating thesis: “I´ m trying to say that whatever consciousness is, it´ s not a computation…it´ s not a physical process which can be described by computation”.
During the interview, Penrose explains how his curiosity about neurophysiology led him to explore the basic principles of the physic, cosmology, mathematics and philosophy in his book in 1989 “The Emperor´ s New Mind” to propose that human thinks could never be emulated by a machine, against the “mainstream” thesis of those times about how computers using artificial intelligence could soon make everything a human can do.
Which leads him to assure so bluntly the impossibility of emulating human consciousness by using a computer? It is not supposed that joining several chips of our computers one could overcome the number of neurons of our brain and its capacity of computation (if you allow me this crude comparison)? Just like life isn´ t a set of cells grouoed in organs, the “emulation” of the brain capacities is not a question of grouping a high number of transistors and their electrical impulses. We all remember the explanations of how neurons transport information throughout electrical impulses. In his analysis of the brain physiology, Penrose, even at the final of his book could not get to explain completely how it was possible that the nervous signals could transmit by electrical impulses consistently across the brain. Something did not fit or was missing in his theory. But it seems that, to a reader of his book, the anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, was to the only one that figured it out. “I think you have missed something, don´ t you know what microtubules are?”- said to Penrose. “Is what you need to amke your theory work”. Microtubules could be the answer to the Penrose search about a no computable source in the human consciousness, from a physiological point of view.
But what the hell are microtubules? May molecular biologists forgives me, but it seems that they are molecular structures of tubular shape that we can found in different cells of our body, from red blood cells to neurons. These structures that “inhbait” the interconnections of our grey cells, have the property of conserving their state in a very effective way (quantum type state, but we will leave this for another post) and allow us to somehow return to being the same as we were after a loss of consciousness, for example, after and anaesthesia. We could say that microtubules are the basic storage unit (quantum) of our brain. Some scientifics call them “the neuron brain“.
Another reason for being able to aspire to emulate the brain has been to be able to replicate the number of connections that exist in our neurons. It´´ s a pretty big number actually. It is estimated that each neuron has an average of 1,000 connections. With 86,000 million of neurons this would give us about 86 trillion of connections or so. Even though the numbers give vertigo, for some experts they seems achievable with the current calculation capacity in operations per second (FLOP) of the processors. Going back to Apple´ s M1, this processor declares to be able to carry out 2.6 TFLOP, 2.6 billion operations per second (10 to the 12th). Again, a number apparently “near” to our connections if we join a lot of chips working at the same time. With the dazzling emergence of chatGPT, the debate continues. Its capabilities seem human-alike and its more than 175 billion parameters generate an illusion of understanding. But it seems that consciousness is something more than connections or parameters of a mathematical model, right?
If we focus only on the quantitative question and we return to microtubules that inhbait our neurons, how much of them can we have? Neurobiology said that inhabit our neurones, how much of them can we have? Neurobiology said that more than 1,000 microtubulesper each one of our 86,000 million of neurons, that is, 86,000,000,000,000 micortubules (86 billion, similar to the neural connections) that “stores quantum information” in which some scientifics affirm, our consciousness live. We can say that actually our brain is a quantum computer, don´ t you think? Wow, sorry to fall back into a computational analogy. Let´´ s go back to the technology to conclude this post. IBM, promises a quantum computer of 1,000 qubits for 2023. Quite inferior to the 86 billion microtubules of our head. In my humble opinion, and comparing only quantitative aspects of actual and future computation capacities, the so called “technological singularity” as a promise of overcoming our human capacities only with actual computer technology and artificial intelligence i still very far away or seems almost unattainable. I don´ t know about you, but I still see a little bit far away the technological singularity, don´ t you think?
1 Human beings’ ability to recognize and relate to the surrounding reality
When we hear energy efficiency, we always think in improving productive process in facories where we work, in the means of transport we use to move… but never in daily chores in our home. Actions as common as choosing an appliance or the cooking way, establish the degree of our awareness with energy efficiency at homes.
Reflecting on this aspect, these common activities are associated with energy consumption, and therefore, any action aimed at making them more efficient will affect the consumption of our houses. In addition, this concept takes on special relevance in the current context of a growing escalation in the prices of the energy we consume, which is proposed to last over time.
Some measures imply an economic investment, which in many cases presupposes a negative attitude, although we need a reflection on them or a good awareness campaign about it. For example, there are few homes with an incandescent bulb, and the use of bulbs with LED technology is already very common. In the same way, progress in being made in the introduction of more efficient electrical appliance in our homes. These are classified with a letter (A,A+ …) which indicates the consumption of the equipment. Although those that consumes less tend to have higher cost, it must be considered that over time this investment is compensated with a lower cost of electricity.
But not all these soluions that improve our energy efficiency necesssarily imply an economic cost. Thus, for example, we can save energy by acting on:
The control of the heating and cooling temperature setpoints, maintaining adequate comfort values, and although, currently, we are more aware, surely, we all know homes where tenants usually find themselves in winter with summer clothes because they prefer to select a higher temperature setpoint than necessary.
The way we air out our homes. It is not necessary to do it for a long period of time, as is very common to see, and to carry it out at the appropriate times of the day (example: in winter, when the outside temperature is higher or in summer, in the early hours). This measure, complemented by a proper use of the blinds,opening them in sunny hours in winter and closing them in those periods in summer, allows a considerable reduction in air conditioning consumption to be achieved. It is true that with the current pandemic situation and the COVID19 measures to increase the ventilation of closed places, it is difficult to apply efficiency.
When cooking, trying to take advantage of residual heat from glass-ceramic hobs by “turning of the fire” a few minutes before finishing cooking or planning our menus and taking advantages of the ignition of ovens to bake several dishes.
Turning off lights in areas where you do not stay, or disconnecting standby equipment that is not going to be used for a long periods of time or at night.
Wash properly, using the economic programs of both washing machines and dishwashers, and preferably do it at full load, which not only saves energy but also water, a good in many cases scarce.
These and other small measures are a good starting point to save energy in our homes. We have to think that not being efficient does not only mean a higher energy expenditure or an increase in our electricity and gas bill, but it also means a damage to our society and the environment that surrounds us.
At CARTIF, we investigate in many areas of energy efficiency in buildings, developing multiple projects in this field, and we consider that the energy awareness and training of the end users of buildings, even in measures as simple as those indicated, is an important aspect and it has repercussions in progress and social benefit for all.
