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"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler", Albert Einstein
Browsing All Posts published on »October 5th, 2011«
What Existed Before the Big Bang?
“Cosmologists are trained to say there was no time before the Big Bang, when we should say that we don’t know whether there was anything – or if there was, what it was.” Sean Carroll, physicist, CalTech, author From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time
Nikolaos Paschalidis: Miniaturized Details and the Big Picture
October 5, 2011
Nikolaos Paschalidis has been reading a lot lately. He has read reports and read proposals, as he tries to get a handle on the multitude of projects, technological innovations, and engineering feats being herded to development by some 300 NASA heliophysics scientists and engineers. Coordinating the technology advancement for the Heliophysics Science Division at NASA’s […]
Eternal Symmetree
October 5, 2011
Daniel Harlow, Stephen Shenker, Douglas Stanford, Leonard Susskind In this paper we introduce a simple discrete stochastic model of eternal inflation that shares many of the most important features of the continuum theory as it is now understood. The model allows us to construct a multiverse and rigorously analyze its properties. Although simple and easy […]
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011
October 5, 2011
2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be announced within the hour! Watch the live webcast here (update) http://youtu.be/QiT00AUwQl8 This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been won by Daniel Shechtman – Technion Department of the Faculty of Materials Engineering – in Israel, for the discovery of quasicrystals http://youtu.be/EZRTzOMHQ4s Nobel win for crystal discovery The Nobel prize […]
Most ancient supernovas discovered
October 5, 2011
Supernovas — stars in the process of exploding — open a window onto the history of the elements of Earth’s periodic table as well as the history of the universe. All of those heavier than oxygen were formed in nuclear reactions that occurred during these explosions. The most ancient explosions, far enough away that their […]
Dark Energy FAQ
October 5, 2011
In honor of the Nobel Prize, here are some questions that are frequently asked about dark energy, or should be. What is dark energy? It’s what makes the universe accelerate, if indeed there is a “thing” that does that. (See below.) So I guess I should be asking… what does it mean to say the universe […]
Europe to lead daring Sun mission
October 5, 2011
Europe is to lead the most ambitious space mission ever undertaken to study the behaviour of the Sun. Known as Solar Orbiter, the probe will have to operate a mere 42 million km from our star – closer than any spacecraft to date. The mission proposal was formally adopted by European Space Agency (Esa) member […]
October 5, 2011
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