Scientists find new role for the swastika

Believe it or not!

The significance of this work will probably be lost on neo-Nazis. They're not too keen on things like books and science.

Just a month after a call for a European-wide ban of the swastika, scientists have found that the symbol has new applications in optical communications and could have a role in quantum cryptography.

Dr Darren Bagnall from the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton has found that he can arrange tens of thousands of gold swastikas on a square millimetre to form new optical metamaterials that act to artificially change the polarisation of light, effectively “twisting” light in accordance with the rotation of the swastikas. By changing the degree of twist in a predictable way the chiral metamaterials can provide an alternative way to code information that is being transmitted using light.

According to Dr Bagnall, it is the special arrangement and squareness of the swastika which makes it the ideal geometry for their experiments. He comments: "The swastika has a number of special features, it is entirely made up of vertical and horizontal straight lines and it is square but can still provide the feeling of left-handed or right-handed rotation known as chirality. It is this chirality which causes our swastikas to twist light."

Dr Bagnall and his team are continuing to experiment with a wide range of other chiral geometries such as, spirals, triskella and some fractals and are very excited about the potential for use of these chiral metamaterials in technology.

Read the whole thing at Innovations Report.

Yeah, it's a German website. Why do you ask?

--p!

Is it a coincidence that the Nazi swastikas chiral is pointed right.

Well, either way. Light can be "bent" to the right or to the left. The swastika pattern turns light whichever way the swastikas "point". They also polarize the light when all the swastikas in the pattern have the same angle orientation.

Chirality is a big deal in organic chemistry. Chemicals that bend light to the right are marked with d-, from the Latin word dexter, or "right". Left-handed chirality is marked with l-, from levo, "left". (The Latin word sinister also means "left".) Most of the proteins we require are left-handed, and the carbohydrates tend to be right-handed.

--p!