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"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler", Albert Einstein
Browsing All Posts published on »June 22nd, 2011«
Quantum magic trick shows reality is what you make it
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 […]
Pressure exerted by sunbeams harnessed for energy
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 […]
Video: Pandora’s Cluster
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 […]
Physicists break record for extreme quantum state
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, […]
Proof That Stars Form When Clouds Collide
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 […]
Video: Cassini – Helene
June 22, 2011
Animation made using the raw images from Cassini’s flyby of Saturn’s moon, Helene on 18/6/2011
Magnetic properties of a single proton directly observed for the first time
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 […]
Can humans sense the Earth’s magnetism?
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 […]
June 22, 2011
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