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"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler", Albert Einstein
Browsing All Posts published on »October 20th, 2011«
Herschel Finds Oceans of Water in Disk of Nearby Star
Using data from the Herschel Space Observatory, astronomers have detected for the first time cold water vapor enveloping a dusty disk around a young star. The findings suggest that this disk, which is poised to develop into a solar system, contains great quantities of water, suggesting that water-covered planets like Earth may be common in […]
The Ozone Hole: Summer 2011
October 20, 2011
NASA, NOAA Data Show Significant Antarctic Ozone Hole Remains The Antarctic ozone hole, which yawns wide every Southern Hemisphere spring, reached its annual peak on Sept. 12. It stretched to 10.05 million square miles, the ninth largest ozone hole on record. Above the South Pole, the ozone hole reached its deepest point of the season […]
Something Curious at the Large Hadron Collider
October 20, 2011
Matt Strassler From the CMS talk at Berkeley; I’ve added the red dots and excised the low-statistics four-lepton results. Table of numbers of events at CMS in various categories. MET is a measure of whether invisible particles are present; HT is a measure of how much energy is in visible particles. No-OSSF means that if […]
Ergodic theorem passes the test
October 20, 2011
For more than a century scientists have relied on the “ergodic theorem” to explain diffusive processes such as the movement of molecules in a liquid. However, they had not been able to confirm experimentally a central tenet of the theorem – that the average of repeated measurements of the random motion of an individual molecule […]
String theory finds a bench mate
October 20, 2011
The exotic theory of everything could shed light on the behaviour of real materials, thanks to an unexpected mathematical connection with condensed-atter physics On one side,” says Jan Zaanen, “you have this refined, almost other-worldly intellectual — the perfectionist obsessed with detail, barely interested in earthly pleasures. On the other, you have the loud, boisterous, […]
Lectures on Cosmology and Particle Physics
October 20, 2011
by Sean Carroll Lecture One: Introduction to Cosmology http://youtu.be/vUNtO2r_-eo Lecture Two: Dark Matter http://youtu.be/Gq-lGX2PRrc Lecture Three: Dark Energy http://youtu.be/cYVj2RhXxeU Lecture Four: Thermodynamics and the Early Universe http://youtu.be/178mMnGvWs0 Lecture Five: Inflation and Beyond http://youtu.be/M1PeXaMqKto
Pi enthusiast calculates its ten trillionth digit
October 20, 2011
Shigeru Kondo is a seriously committed guy. Ever since discovering he had an interest in calculating pi (aka π) back in his college days, he’s been following the results achieved by others using massive supercomputers. Now, in his late 50′s, with some help from Northwestern University grad school student Alexander Yee, he’s succeeded in calculating […]
New planet, the youngest ever found
October 20, 2011
…is revealed by cosmic trick photography US and Australian astronomers cancel out light from solar cloud to reveal new planet LkCa 15 b forming in swirl of stardust A University of Hawaii astronomer has captured the first direct image of a planet forming around a star. Dubbed LkCa 15 b, it is the youngest planet […]
October 20, 2011
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