One of the main strides in the field of physics is to unite the nature of space proposed by Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity with the one proposed by quantum theory. Readings collected by a telescope in Earth’s orbit are now making this effort even harder. The INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) is a… [Read more…]
June 30, 2011
A team of astronomers has discovered the most distant quasar to date — a development that could help further our understanding of the universe when it was still in its infancy following the Big Bang. This brilliant and rare beacon, powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun,… [Read more…]
June 30, 2011
On June 10, 2011, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft angled its orbit 65° to the west, allowing the LRO Camera NACs to capture a dramatic sunrise view of Tycho crater. A very popular target with amateur astronomers, Tycho is located at 43.37°S, 348.68°E, and is about 51 miles (82 km) in diameter. The summit of… [Read more…]
June 29, 2011
We present the results of an experimental investigation of the acoustics and fluid dynamics of Tibetan singing bowls. Their acoustic behavior is rationalized in terms of the related dynamics of standing bells and wine glasses. Striking or rubbing a fluid-filled bowl excites wall vibrations, and concomitant waves at the fluid surface. Acoustic excitation of the… [Read more…]
June 29, 2011
What’s your favourite number and why? A mathematics writer wants to know the answer. Yes, really Why are you interested in favourite numbers? I give popular talks about mathematics and I’m often asked about my favourite number. I don’t have an emotional reaction to numbers and so don’t have a favourite. So at first I… [Read more…]
June 29, 2011
Unexplained “filaments” of radio-wave emission close to our galaxy’s centre may hold proof of the existence of dark matter, researchers have said. Dark matter is believed to make up most of the mass of our Universe, but it has yet to be definitively spotted. A report now suggests the filaments’ emission arises from dark matter… [Read more…]
June 28, 2011
Interview by Zinta Lundborg June 28 (Bloomberg) — Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg was in New York to talk about the future of big science. Making new discoveries is expensive. The Large Hadron Collider built by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, lies in a circular tunnel 17 miles in circumference under the Franco-Swiss… [Read more…]
June 28, 2011
On June 22, 2011, the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf set a new world record for magnetic fields with 91.4 teslas. To reach this record, Sergei Zherlitsyn and his colleagues at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory Dresden (HLD) developed a coil weighing about 200 kilograms in which electric current create the giant magnetic field – for a period… [Read more…]
June 28, 2011
Amateur historians say famed astronomer may have censored a foreign rival. Amateur historians and astronomers are buzzing with intrigue over allegations that the legendary US astronomer Edwin Hubble, after whom NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is named, may have actively censored the work of a competitor to advance his own career. Professional historians are demanding further… [Read more…]
June 28, 2011
The mathematical constant pi is under threat from a group of detractors who will be marking “Tau Day” on Tuesday. Tau Day revellers suggest a constant called tau should take its place: twice as large as pi, or about 6.28 – hence the 28 June celebration. Tau proponents say that for many problems in maths,… [Read more…]
June 28, 2011
On the evening of July 3 at 11:05:30 p.m. EDT — at a distance of 280 millon miles into space that poses no threat to Earth – 52 Europa will pass in front of star TYC 0292-00339-1 in the constellation Virgo. The asteroid will eclipse the star’s light for 17.9 seconds in a process known as occultation. Here… [Read more…]
June 28, 2011
Using a vast array of radio telescopes, astronomers in North America are the first to make a direct measurement of the distance to Cygnus X-1, allowing them to conclude that the mass of its dark star is so great it can only be a black hole. They have also discovered that the black hole spins… [Read more…]
June 28, 2011
The effects of fractal dimensions could one day be observed if Casimir measurements can be made sensitive enough, according to theoretical physicist Back in the 1920s, Theodor Kaluza and Oskar Klein developed an idea that unified Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism with Einstein’s theory of relativity. That was an impressive feat but it had one small… [Read more…]
June 28, 2011
A top Russian astronomer say he expects humans to encounter extraterrestrial civilisations within the next two decades Russian scientists expect humanity to encounter alien civilisations within the next two decades, a top Russian astronomer said on Monday. “The genesis of life is as inevitable as the formation of atoms … Life exists on other planets… [Read more…]
June 27, 2011
In 2004 NASA’s Genesis space mission made an unplanned crash landing, damaging its precious cargo of solar-wind particles. Now, after years of painstaking work, two independent groups of scientists have managed to measure the relative abundances of nitrogen and oxygen isotopes in the solar wind. Their studies reveal that the isotopic compositions on Earth are… [Read more…]
June 27, 2011
Astronomers’ research on celestial bodies may have an impact on the human body. Ohio State University astronomers are working with medical physicists and radiation oncologists to develop a potential new radiation treatment – one that is intended to be tougher on tumors, but gentler on healthy tissue. In studying how chemical elements emit and absorb… [Read more…]
June 27, 2011
David Kaiser’s How the Hippies Saved Physics is a reminder of the unexpected influence a bunch of freewheeling 1970s physicists had on fundamental theories IT’S certainly a provocative title, but for the life of me I could not recall an era to which How the Hippies Saved Physicsmight have applied. Things made more sense, though,… [Read more…]
June 27, 2011
It’s one of the closest galaxies to Earth, but the Carina Dwarf Galaxy is so dim and diffuse that astronomers only discovered it in the 1970s. A companion galaxy of the Milky Way, this ball of stars shares features with both globular star clusters and much larger galaxies. Astronomers believe that dwarf spheroidal galaxies like… [Read more…]
June 26, 2011
AGILE (Astro-rivelatore Gamma a Immagini LEggero): Fermi: HETE 2 (High Energy Transient Explorer):
June 25, 2011
P. Cea, L. Cosmai We further elaborate on the triviality and spontaneous symmetry breaking scenario where the Higgs boson without self-interaction coexists with spontaneous symmetry breaking. The trivial Higgs boson is rather heavy with mass m_H = 754 +/- 20 (stat) +/- 20 (syst) GeV and total width \Gamma(H) \simeq 320 GeV. We briefly discuss… [Read more…]
June 25, 2011
Officials at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, have just released a new video, depicting how the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity will reach and explore the Red Planet. The video shows the orbital maneuvers that the MSL and its related components will perform when they reach Earth orbit, and how the vehicle… [Read more…]
June 25, 2011
Globular Clusters have a story to tell. These dense clumps of thousands of stars are relics of the early history of our galaxy, preserving information of the galaxy’s properties from their formation. Knowing this, astronomers have used globular clusters for nearly 30 years to probe how our galaxy has evolved. New observations from Hubble, add… [Read more…]
June 25, 2011
Abstract: A mechanism for creating an enantioenrichment in the amino acids, the building blocks of the proteins, that involves global selection of one handedness by interactions between the amino acids and neutrinos from core-collapse supernovae is described. The chiral selection involves the dependence of the interaction cross sections on the orientations of the spins of… [Read more…]
June 24, 2011
Introduction Whether he’s teaching class, socializing at a cocktail party or talking to visitors at the planetarium where he works, Charles Liu knows that sooner or later he’s going to get asked at least one of three questions: • Is there a God? • Are there aliens? • What would happen if I fell into… [Read more…]
June 24, 2011
Nanoparticles disguised as red blood cells could be used to deliver anti-cancer drugs directly to a tumour. So say researchers at the University of California at San Diego, whose new technique is unique in its approach to harnessing nanoparticles…..
June 24, 2011
Asteroid 2011 MD imaged by Peter Birtwhistle (Galaxy Picture Library)- www.skymania.com A newly discovered (on 22nd June 2011) asteroid called “ASTEROID 2011 MD” will pass by earth at a distance of 17700 km on 27th June,2011 at 13.56 UTC (6.56 IST).Size of asteroid is expected to be 9 to 45 meters.There is no danger to earth.… [Read more…]
June 24, 2011
Argon is a rare hermit among the many reactive and bond-forming elements Argon is element number 18 and has the atomic symbol Ar – renamed in 1959 from its original atomic symbol, which was simply A. As you can see in the image above, argon gas produces a lovely bluish-purple colour when excited with electricity. Argon is the… [Read more…]
June 24, 2011
This animation visualizes the maneuvers required to move the ARTEMIS spacecraft from their kidney-shaped paths on each side of the moon to orbiting the moon. It took one and a half years, over 90 orbit maneuvers, many gravitational boosts and surprisingly little fuel to move the two spacecraft. The spacecraft have been through orbits never… [Read more…]
June 23, 2011
WASHINGTON — Analysis of samples returned by NASA’s Genesis mission indicates our sun and its inner planets may have formed differently than scientists previously thought. The data revealed slight differences in the types of oxygen and nitrogen present on the sun and planets. The elements are among the most abundant in our solar system. Although… [Read more…]
June 23, 2011
Physicists in the US, India and China have calculated that quarks and gluons can break free from their confinement inside protons and neutrons at a temperature of around two trillion degrees Kelvin – the temperature of the universe a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. The researchers arrived at this figure by combining… [Read more…]
June 23, 2011
PASADENA, Calif. – NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has discovered the best evidence yet for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft’s direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon. Data from Cassini’s cosmic dust analyzer show the grains expelled… [Read more…]
June 23, 2011
New image reveals vast nebula around famous supergiant star Using the VISIR instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have imaged a complex and bright nebula around the supergiant star Betelgeuse in greater detail than ever before. This structure, which resembles flames emanating from the star, is formed as the behemoth sheds its material… [Read more…]
June 22, 2011
Conjurers frequently appear to make balls jump between upturned cups. In quantum systems, where the properties of an object, including its location, can vary depending on how you observe them, such feats should be possible without sleight of hand. Now this startling characteristic has been demonstrated experimentally, using a single photon that exists in three… [Read more…]
June 22, 2011
Green Futures: Innovative design draws on the pressure light exerts as a driving force The force is with us, even if it is very small indeed. Scientists have long been aware that radiation of any kind exerts pressure, and light is no exception. In the 1920s, the Soviet rocket-designer Friedrich Zander suggested that a spaceship… [Read more…]
June 22, 2011
The astronomy podcast exploring the cosmic frontier Galaxy clusters contain literally trillions of stars, and when these massive structures collide all manner of strange effects occur. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope and a number of other top quality detectors, astronomers have been studying the colliding galaxy cluster Abell 2744, nicknamed Pandora’s Cluster because of the… [Read more…]
June 22, 2011
Physicists in China have broken their own record for the number of photons entangled in a “Schrödinger’s cat state”. They have managed to entangle eight photons in the state, beating the previous record of six, which they set in 2007. The Schrödinger’s cat state plays an important role in several quantum-computing and metrology protocols. However,… [Read more…]
June 22, 2011
The discovery of stars being born in the maelstrom generated when giant gas clouds collide is good evidence for an old theory The birth of stars is one of wonders of the cosmos but it is also a puzzle. Astronomers have a rough idea of how it happens. Stars clearly form inside huge clouds of… [Read more…]
June 22, 2011
Animation made using the raw images from Cassini’s flyby of Saturn’s moon, Helene on 18/6/2011
June 22, 2011
German researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM), together with their colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg and the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, have observed spin quantum-jumps with a single trapped proton for the first time. The fact that… [Read more…]
June 22, 2011
For migratory birds and sea turtles, the ability to sense the Earth’s magnetic field is crucial to navigating the long-distance voyages these animals undertake during migration. Humans, however, are widely assumed not to have an innate magnetic sense. Research published in Nature Communications this week by faculty at the University of Massachusetts Medical School shows that a… [Read more…]
June 21, 2011
Chromoscope - View the Universe in the different wavelengths: Click here Chromoscope is an accessible, easy tool that anyone can use to explore and understand the sky at multiple wavelengths…..
June 21, 2011
Late in the evening on June 20 the sun emitted a long lasting C7.7 class flare that peaked around 11:25p.m. EDT. A C-class flare is a relatively small flare. The flare was associated with a coronal mass ejection that bloomed off the sun at 11:09p.m. EDT (0412 UT). The movie shown above was captured by… [Read more…]
June 21, 2011
M. R. Norman During the past few decades, several new classes of superconductors have been discovered. Most of these do not appear to be related to traditional superconductors. As a consequence, it is felt by many that for these materials, superconductivity arises from a different source than the electron-ion interactions that are at the heart… [Read more…]
June 21, 2011
A COSMIC jet 2 billion light years away is carrying the highest electric current ever seen: 1018 amps, equivalent to a trillion bolts of lightning. Philipp Kronberg of the University of Toronto in Canada and colleagues measured the alignment of radio waves around a galaxy called 3C303, which has a giant jet of matter shooting from its… [Read more…]
June 21, 2011
Space is festooned with vast “hyperclusters” of galaxies, a new cosmic map suggests. It could mean that gravity or dark energy – or perhaps something completely unknown – is behaving very strangely indeed. We know that the universe was smooth just after its birth. Measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the light emitted… [Read more…]
June 21, 2011
If dark matter fills the universe, astronomers should see the gamma rays it produces. That evidence has so far failed to materialise Among the most dramatic events in the universe are the death of stars as they collapse into black holes and the collision of black holes themselves. These events are so violent that they… [Read more…]
June 21, 2011
Pupils generally enjoy carrying out experiments – but do teachers overuse them when they should in fact be teaching more theory, asks Alom Shaha Remember burning magnesium in school? Doing this for the first time as an 11-year-old who has just started secondary school is one of those magical experiences that all students should have. But… [Read more…]
June 21, 2011
One of the most interesting conundrums in astronomy is related to why stars don’t fly apart at high speeds while they form. Theoretically, when they first condense from molecular hydrogen, they should be spinning out of control, and yet they don’t. A new study analyzes the potential explanations. Experts have been trying to figure out… [Read more…]
June 21, 2011
In 1926, astronomer Edwin Hubble gave us our first basic galaxy classification scenario – the Hubble Sequence. Using photographic plates, Hubble derived a simplistic system based on three visually known structures: elipitical, spiral and lenticular. This sequence, when plotted out, gave the appearance of a common object and eventually became known as the “Hubble Tuning… [Read more…]
June 21, 2011
M.R.S. Hawkins The aim of this paper is to present the case that stellar mass primordial black holes make up the dark matter component of the Universe. A near critical density of compact bodies implies that most lines of sight will be gravitationally microlensed, and the paper focuses on looking for the predicted effects on… [Read more…]
June 20, 2011
This gorgeous, oddly shaped galaxy is nearly 50 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, Seen edge-on, this spiral galaxy is known for its flattened disk and central bulge of stars, cut by silhouetted dust lanes. A recent deep color image of NGC 4013 below revealed a looping tidal stream of stars extending over… [Read more…]
June 20, 2011
June 21st, 2011 is Summer Solstice – the longest day of the year. This is the time when the Sun is at its highest or most northerly point in the sky in the Northern Hemisphere and when we receive the most hours of daylight. If you live in the Southern Hemisphere it is the reverse,… [Read more…]
June 20, 2011
Magnetic storage media such as hard drives have revolutionized the handling of information: We are used to dealing with huge quantities of magnetically stored data while relying on highly sensitive electronic components. And hope to further increase data capacities through ever smaller components. Together with experts from Grenoble and Strasbourg, researchers of KIT’s Institute of… [Read more…]
June 20, 2011
ATV Johannes Kepler has been an important part of the International Space Station since February. Next week, it will complete its mission by undocking and burning up harmlessly in the atmosphere high over an uninhabited area of the Pacific Ocean. Serving the International Space Station is a valuable job but it will come to a… [Read more…]
June 20, 2011
How can an object that is visible to the naked eye be in two places at the same time? Can an object that is visible to the naked eye be in two places at the same time? Common sense and experience told us that the answer is “no” — until recently. In this presentation, physicist… [Read more…]
June 19, 2011
June 19, 2011
It is generally supposed that the time order in which discoveries are made should have no eventual influence on our beliefs. But it is very evident that they do, and perhaps nowhere more importantly than with the cosmic microwave background. The cosmic microwave background first showed itself observationally to astronomers in the late 1930s and… [Read more…]
June 19, 2011
In what sounds like a one of a kind murder mystery, a dying star has fallen into a black hole and been ripped apart. The event, which was observed on March 28, was originally thought to be a gamma ray burst from a collapsing star but researchers suspected something more sinister was at play. Their… [Read more…]
June 18, 2011
Quantum physics has proven that the world cannot be described by local realism. Therefore, Many Worlds Interpretations (MWI) are now in vogue. The problem with these interpretations is: they are widely misinterpreted as a sort of real, branching multiverse, like a real tree that exists by itself outside of time and space. Most lay people as well… [Read more…]
June 18, 2011
Topological defects (such as monopoles, vortex lines, or domain walls) mark locations where disparate choices of a broken symmetry vacuum elsewhere in the system lead to irreconcilable differences. They are energetically costly (the energy density in their core reaches that of the prior symmetric vacuum) but topologically stable (the whole manifold would have to be… [Read more…]
June 18, 2011
A newfound comet discovered by a telescope designed to hunt for dangerous asteroids will make its closest pass by Earth in 2013 and should be visible to the naked eye when it draws near, astronomers say. Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS 1 telescope detected the comet, which is called C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS), on the night of June 5 and 6,… [Read more…]
June 18, 2011
While in principle unbreakable, quantum cryptography is known to have weaknesses in practice. One shortcoming has now been graphically illustrated by physicists in Singapore and Norway, who have been able to copy a secret quantum key without revealing their presence to either sender or receiver. The researchers are now working to remove the loophole they… [Read more…]
June 18, 2011
Geneva, 17 June 2011. Today at around 10:50 CEST, the amount of data accumulated by LHC experiments ATLAS and CMS clicked over from 0.999 to 1 inverse femtobarn, signalling an important milestone in the experiments’ quest for new physics. The number signifies a quantity physicists call integrated luminosity, which is a measure of the total… [Read more…]
June 18, 2011
On March 28, NASA’s Swift’s Burst Alert Telescope discovered a series of powerful X-ray blasts coming from a source in the constellation Draco. Astronomers around the world studied the unusual explosion, which is now known as Sw 1644+57. More than two months later, and with high-energy X-rays still coming from the spot, astronomers are convinced… [Read more…]
June 17, 2011
The debate over the mechanism that causes superconductivity in a class of materials called the pnictides has been settled by a research team from Japan and China. Superconductivity was discovered in the pnictides only recently, and they belong to the class of so-called ‘high-temperature superconductors’. Despite their name, the temperature at which they function as… [Read more…]
June 17, 2011
A powerfully reactive element that is very beneficial as well as causing great harm Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2011/jun/17/1?CMP=twt_fd
June 17, 2011
Earlier this month, ESA’s Mars Express performed a special manoeuvre to observe an unusual alignment of Jupiter and the martian moon Phobos. The impressive images have now been processed into a movie of this rare event. At the moment when Mars Express, Phobos, and Jupiter aligned on 1 June 2011, there was a distance of 11 389… [Read more…]
June 17, 2011
Read more: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/media/NewsConference20110616.html
June 17, 2011
Einstein taught us that the speed of light was the traffic law of the universe—nothing could go faster. The development of media in which atomic gases can slow down or speed up the passage of light pulses initially caused a stir, at least until the difference between phase velocity and group velocity could be carefully… [Read more…]
June 17, 2011
Before discussing the conclusions of this paper released this week, I’ll start with a pub-quiz style question. How much of Earth’s atmosphere has not been made by living things? The answer is: less than 1%, which is mostly argon. The overwhelming majority is biogenic; the nitrogen is a product of denitrifying bacteria, the oxygen from plants,… [Read more…]
June 17, 2011
In the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics, the wavefunction contains the maximal knowledge that is available about the state of a system. It determines the probabilities that various results will be obtained when measurements are made on the dynamic variables of the system such as its position or momentum……
June 17, 2011
Huge mirrors that reflect the sun’s light back into space are one of a number of measures being considered to battle climate change…..
June 17, 2011
The reality of things is a serious matter. But not too serious, says Michael Krämer The Nobel-Prizewinning physicist and sometime bongo-player Richard Feynman famously said “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds”. I have actually always liked philosophy. As a physics undergraduate I regularly attended philosophy seminars and… [Read more…]
June 16, 2011
Resembling looming rain clouds on a stormy day, dark lanes of dust crisscross the giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A. Hubble’s panchromatic vision, stretching from ultraviolet through near-infrared wavelengths, reveals the vibrant glow of young, blue star clusters and a glimpse into regions normally obscured by the dust. The warped shape of Centaurus A’s disk of… [Read more…]
June 16, 2011
NASA Astronomers discovered an abundance of buckyballs -the largest known molecules in space, using the Spitzer Space Telescope to find the carbon spheres in the space between stars and around three dying stars. The Spitzer also detected buckyballs around a fourth dying star in a nearby galaxy in huge, unexpected quantities — the equivalent in… [Read more…]
June 16, 2011
Spacecraft finds unexpected calm at the boundary of Sun’s bubble. Seventeen and a half billion kilometres from Earth, mankind’s most distant probe seems to be on the edge of interstellar space. The Voyager 1 spacecraft is at the limit of the ‘heliosheath’, where particles streaming from the Sun clash with the gases of the galaxy.… [Read more…]
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June 30, 2011
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