Subscribe:
RSS feed
"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler", Albert Einstein
Browsing All Posts published on »September, 2011«
The Inflationary Wavefunction and its Initial Conditions
Daniel Carney, Willy Fischler, Sonia Paban, Navin Sivanandam We explore the effect of initial conditions on the inflationary wavefunction and their consequences for the observed spectrum of primordial fluctuations. In a class of models with a sudden transition into inflation we find that, for a reasonable set of assumptions about the reheat temperature and the […]
Space Telescopes Reveal Secrets of Turbulent Black Hole
September 29, 2011
A fleet of spacecraft including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered unprecedented details in the surroundings of a supermassive black hole. Observations reveal huge bullets of gas being driven away from the gravitational monster and a corona of very hot gas hovering above the disk of matter that is falling into the black hole. A […]
WISE Revises Numbers of Asteroids Near Earth
September 29, 2011
This chart shows how data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has led to revisions in the estimated population of near-Earth asteroids. The infrared-sensing telescope performed the most accurate survey to date of a slice of this population as part of project called NEOWISE. This allowed the science team to make new estimates […]
Tiangong 1 (天宫一号) launch animation
September 29, 2011
Tiangong 1 (English: Heavenly Palace) is a Chinese space laboratory, intended as a test-bed to develop the rendezvous and docking capabilities needed to support a larger, inhabited space station complex. The launch of Tiangong 1, aboard a Long March 2F rocket, is planned for late September 2011. It is part of the Tiangong space station […]
Making CERN’s best even better
September 29, 2011
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is finally up and running, but the lab is already planning an audacious upgrade using technology not yet invented, as Matthew Chalmers reports It is hard to imagine upgrading an instrument as big and complex as the SwFr6.5bn (€10bn) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN particle-physics lab near Geneva. The […]
China space station module awaits launch
September 29, 2011
Countdown begins to lift-off of Tiangong-1, the first step towards a permanent Chinese base in orbit China has started the countdown to launch a space station module, the Tiangong-1, that is the first step in establishing a permanent manned presence in orbit above the Earth. A Long March II 2F rocket is scheduled to take […]
Apollo 11 descends to the Google Moon
September 28, 2011
This is pretty neat: an Apollo enthusiast who goes by the handle GoneToPlaid has created a video comparing the Apollo 11 footage of its descent to the Moon with images from Google Moon: http://youtu.be/G9Nh5qWzqMY That’s very cool. You can see the same features in the Apollo 11 film footage and in the newer view from Google Moon, […]
Fermilab stops hunting Higgs, starts neutrino quest
September 28, 2011
ROGER DIXON gestures, bringing his hand alarmingly close to the big red button that has the power to shut down one of the world’s most powerful particle accelerators forever. “It’s already hooked up,” he says, in response to my nervous questions. We are standing in a room full of blinking displays and control panels at […]
Light from galaxy clusters confirm theory of relativity
September 28, 2011
All observations in astronomy are based on light emitted from stars and galaxies and, according to the general theory of relativity, the light will be affected by gravity. At the same time all interpretations in astronomy are based on the correctness of the theory of relatively, but it has never before been possible to test […]
Live Chat: Have Neutrinos Broken the Speed Limit of Light?
September 28, 2011
Nothing can go faster than light, right? Einstein said so. But last week a group of researchers in Italy announced that they’d measured the speed of thousands of neutrinos (tiny, almost massless particles that were fired at their detector from the CERN particle physics lab 730 kilometers away) and found they were traveling slightly faster […]
One-Third of Sun-Like Stars Have Earth-Like Planets In Habitable Zone
September 28, 2011
Astronomers have calculated the likelihood of finding Earth-like planets around other stars using the latest data from the Kepler mission. The Kepler orbiting observatory is specifically designed to find Earth-like planets around nearby stars. Earlier this year, the Kepler team released the mission’s first 136 days of data and it has turned out to be […]
Where are we in extra dimensions?
September 28, 2011
Basic scenarios of string theory Gordon has assured me that (almost) no non-expert has understood advanced basics of string phenomenology, despite dozens if not hundreds of blog entries about these topics that have been written on this blog during the years. So I would like to be a little bit (but not too much) more […]
Feast your Eyes on the Fried Egg Nebula
September 28, 2011
Astronomers have used ESO’s Very Large Telescope to image a colossal star that belongs to one of the rarest classes of stars in the Universe, the yellow hypergiants. The new picture is the best ever taken of a star in this class and shows for the first time a huge dusty double shell surrounding the […]
Venus Weather Not Boring After All….
September 27, 2011
….NASA/International Study Shows At first glance, a weather forecaster for Venus would have either a really easy or a really boring job, depending on your point of view. The climate on Venus is widely known to be unpleasant – at the surface, the planet roasts at more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit under a suffocating blanket […]
Final Update: NASA’s UARS Re-enters Earth’s Atmosphere
September 27, 2011
NASA’s decommissioned Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite fell back to Earth at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT) on Saturday, Sept. 24. The Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California has determined the satellite entered the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean at 14.1 degrees south latitude and 189.8 degrees east longitude. This location […]
A brief history of the brain
September 27, 2011
IT IS 30,000 years ago. A man enters a narrow cave in what is now the south of France. By the flickering light of a tallow lamp, he eases his way through to the furthest chamber. On one of the stone overhangs, he sketches in charcoal a picture of the head of a bison looming […]
Chemists devise means to use bacteria to encode secret messages
September 27, 2011
In the endless search to develop newer and cooler ways to send messages between people without other’s intercepting them, chemists from Tufts University working together have figured out a way to use a strain of bacteria to encode a message on a paper-like material that can then later be de-coded by the receiver. Manuel Palacios […]
Saving both super-luminal and SN1987A neutrinos?
September 27, 2011
Inconsistence of super-luminal Opera neutrino speed with SN1987A neutrinos burst and with flavor neutrino mixing Recent news from Cern Opera experiment seem to hint for a muon neutrino faster than light, maybe tachyon in nature. If all neutrino are just tachyon their arrival (at 17 MeV) will be even much faster than 17 GeV Opera […]
Spitzer Detects a Steaming Super-Earth Eclipsing Its Star
September 27, 2011
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has gathered surprising new details about a supersized and superheated version of Earth called 55 Cancri e. According to Spitzer data, the exoplanet is less dense than previously thought, a finding which profoundly changes the portrait of this exotic world. Instead of a dense rock scorched dry by its sun, 55 […]
Apparent Lorentz violation with superluminal Majorana neutrinos at OPERA?
September 27, 2011
F. Tamburini , Μ. Laveder From the data release of OPERA – CNGS experiment, and publicly announced on 23 Septem- ber 2011, we cast a phenomenological toy model based on a Majorana neutrino state carrying an imaginary mass term, already discussed by Majorana in 1932. This imaginary term can be a fictious term induced by […]
Dark matter
September 27, 2011
A review of the development of the concept of dark matter. The dark matter story passed through several stages from a minor observational puzzle to a major challenge for theory of elementary particles. Modern data suggest that dark matter is the dominant matter component in the Universe, and that it consists of some unknown non-baryonic […]
Space Velocities, Binary Evolution and Equivalence Principles
September 27, 2011
High-Precision Timing of 5 Millisecond Pulsars We present high-precision timing of five millisecond pulsars (MSPs) carried out for more than seven years; four pulsars are in binary systems and one is isolated. We are able to measure the pulsars’ proper motions and derive an estimate for their space velocities. The measured two-dimensional velocities are in […]
New views of an ancient asteroid
September 26, 2011
Using the Herschel Space Telescope, astronomers are set to obtain the first-ever images of asteroid 1999 RQ36 in far infrared light, a wavelength that the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will not be able to see once it approaches the charcoal-black chunk of rock floating in space. Peering through forest-fire smoke with the 61-inch telescope on Mt. Bigelow […]
Astronomers Discover New Standard Candle
September 26, 2011
A way to measure the distance of active galactic nuclei could change the way astronomers think about the Universe and how it is expanding One of the trickiest problems in astronomy is the measure of distance. In theory, distance should be simple to work out. If you know the intrinsic brightness of an object, a […]
Remains of satellite may never be found, NASA says
September 26, 2011
A six-ton NASA science satellite crashed to Earth on Saturday, leaving a mystery about where a ton of space debris may have landed. The U.S. space agency said it believes the debris ended up in the Pacific Ocean, but the precise time of the bus-sized satellite’s re-entry and the location of its debris field have […]
“The Undetectability Conjecture” — A Radical Theory for the ‘Great Silence’
September 26, 2011
The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations. As Enrico Fermi asked if the Universe is conducive to intelligent life, “Where is everybody? A new answer proposed by Adrian Kent of the University […]
Superluminal neutrinos from String Theory
September 25, 2011
1. Crete Center for Theoretical Physics A remarkable claim has been made by the OPERA experiment, that takes a neutrino beam from CERN and studies its interactions inside the Gran Sasso laboratory in central Italy. As described in their paper http://fr.arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897 submitted to the ArXiV, they have measured the velocity of the neutrinos and found […]
“Relativity without light”, the answer in the superluminal neutrinos;
September 25, 2011
Suppose that the result of the OPERA experiment is right and neutrinos travelling faster than light…. This is the end of Einstein’s theory of special relativity and the Lorentz transformations? Is it possible the special relativity without the second postulation; The answer is yes. Read for example: “Simple derivation of the special theory of relativity […]
Stephen Hawking for the OPERA experiment
September 24, 2011
A British physicist even promised to eat his boxer shorts on live television if it turned out to be correct. Scientists at CERN, the world’s largest physics lab near Geneva, stunned the world of science on Thursday night by announcing they had observed tiny particles known as neutrinos travelling slightly faster than light. The claim […]
Potential mistakes in the Opera research
September 24, 2011
Almost all theoretical oriented physicists including myself seem to feel almost certain that there is a mistake in the Opera paper and the claimed violation of the relativistic speed limit will go away. On the other hand, I think that many people who like technology etc. were impressed by the precision work that the Opera […]
The Phantom of OPERA
September 24, 2011
Those working in science are accustomed to receiving emails starting with “dear sir/madam, please look at the attached file where I’m proving einstein theory wrong”. This time it’s a tad more serious because the message comes from a genuine scientific collaboration… As everyone knows by now, the OPERA collaboration announced that muon neutrinos produced at […]
UARS falling
September 24, 2011
UARS Updates NASA’s UARS Re-enters Earth’s Atmosphere NASA’s decommissioned Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) fell back to Earth between 11:23 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 23 and 1:09 a.m. Sept. 24, 20 years and nine days after its launch on a 14-year mission that produced some of the first long-term records of chemicals in the atmosphere. […]
Some Comments on the Faster Than Light Neutrinos
September 23, 2011
Matt Strassler The OPERA experiment has now presented its results, suggesting that a high-energy neutrino beam has traveled 730 kilometers at a speed just a bit faster than the speed of light. It is clear the experiment was done very carefully. Many cross-checks were performed. No questions were asked for which the speaker did not […]
Conclusions from OPERA experiment
September 23, 2011
EP Seminar “New results from OPERA on neutrino properties“ by Dario Autiero (Institut de Physique Nucleaire de Lyon) Friday, September 23, 2011 from 16:00 to 18:00 (Europe/Zurich)
Living in the Galactic Danger Zone
September 23, 2011
Summary: Although stars closer to the galactic center are exposed to more radiation, new research finds that there are more chances to find habitable planets there than in the outer regions of our galaxy We know for certain that life exists in the Milky Way galaxy: that life is us. Scientists are continually looking to understand […]
Dimension-hop may allow neutrinos to cheat light speed
September 23, 2011
A CERN experiment claims to have caught neutrinos breaking the universe’s most fundamental speed limit. The ghostly subatomic particles seem to have zipped faster than light from the particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, to a detector in Italy. Fish that physics textbook back out of the wastebasket, though: the new result contradicts previous measurements […]
UARS Will Hit the South Pacific Today
September 23, 2011
Orbital scientists say that the falling Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) will not impact the ground over US territory. According to the latest predictions, it will splash in the South Pacific Ocean, a little to the north of New Guinea. Over the past few days, experts have been hard at work in analyzing the trajectory […]
Second big satellite set to resist re-entry burn-up
September 23, 2011
Even if NASA’s 6-tonne UARS satellite does not cause any injury or damage when it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere today, there is more space junk headed our way next month. A defunct German space telescope called ROSAT is set to hit the planet at the end of October – and it even is more likely […]
Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam
September 23, 2011
The OPERA neutrino experiment at the underground Gran Sasso Laboratory has measured the velocity of neutrinos from the CERN CNGS beam over a baseline of about 730 km with much higher accuracy than previous studies conducted with accelerator neutrinos. The measurement is based on high-statistics data taken by OPERA in the years 2009, 2010 and […]
Swedes makes world’s largest telescope bigger
September 22, 2011
On Monday, Sweden’s Minister for Education and Research, Jan Bjorklund, will open Onsala Space Observatory’s newest telescope. Part of Lofar, the world’s largest radio telescope, it is the biggest telescope built in Sweden in the last 35 years. Lofar will map radio signals which have travelled across the universe for billions of years. Scientists expect […]
Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light, According to One Experiment
September 22, 2011
Read also: A Six-Sigma Signal Of Superluminal Neutrinos From Opera! If it’s true, it will mark the biggest discovery in physics in the past half-century: Elusive, nearly massless subatomic particles called neutrinos appear to travel just faster than light, a team of physicists in Europe reports. If so, the observation would wreck Einstein’s theory of […]
Long-wavelength gravitational waves and cosmic acceleration
September 22, 2011
Strong long-scale gravitational waves can explain cosmic acceleration within the context of general relativity without resorting to the assumption of exotic forms of matter such as quintessence. The existence of these gravitational waves in sufficient strength to cause observed acceleration can be compatible with the cosmic microwave background under reasonable physical circumstances. An instance of […]
How much time does a measurement take?
September 22, 2011
We consider the problem of measurement using the Lindblad equation, which allows the introduction of time in the interaction between the measured system and the measurement apparatus. We used analytic results, valid for weak system-environment coupling, obtained for a two-level system in contact with a measurer (Markovian interaction) and a thermal bath (non-Markovian interaction), where […]
2011 Nobel Prize Predictions
September 21, 2011
… in Physics Alain Aspect CNRS Distinguished Scientist and Head of the Atom Optics Group, Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Institut d’Optique, Palaiseau France WHY: with John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger, for their tests of Bell’s inequalities and research on quantum entanglement John F. Clauser Research Physicist, J.F. Clauser & Associates, Walnut Creek, CA USA WHY: with Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger, for their […]
Can Anything Move Faster Than Light?
September 21, 2011
Yes, the universe itself will eventually outpace the speed of light. Just how this will happen is a bit complicated, so let’s begin at the very beginning: the big bang. Around 14 billion years ago, all matter in the universe was thrown in every direction. That first explosion is still pushing galaxies outward. Scientists know […]
Possible life in the Martian trenches?
September 21, 2011
A team of scientists at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, have drawn attention to a couple of small mineral-rich depressions on Mars that, perhaps relatively recently in the red planet’s history, could have been places for life. The troughs were discovered at Noctis Labyrintus, also known as ‘the labyrinth of the night’ – […]
Could the Higgs boson explain the size of the Universe?
September 21, 2011
The Universe wouldn’t be the same without the Higgs boson. This legendary particle plays a role in cosmology and reveals the possible existence of another closely related particle. The race to identify the Higgs boson is on at CERN. This Holy Grail of particle physics would help explain why the majority of elementary particles possess […]
Could primordial black holes be dark matter?
September 21, 2011
“We know that about 25% of the matter in the universe is dark matter, but we don’t know what it is,” Michael Kesden tellsPhysOrg.com. “There are a number of different theories about what dark matter could be, but we think one alternative might be very small primordial black holes.” When many of us think about black […]
September 30, 2011
0