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"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler", Albert Einstein
Browsing All Posts published on »May, 2012«
ALMA turns its eyes to Centaurus A
This new image of Centaurus A combines ALMA and near-infrared observations of the massive elliptical radio galaxy. The new ALMA observations, shown in a range of green, yellow and orange colors, reveal the position and motion of the clouds of gas in the galaxy. They are the sharpest and most sensitive such observations ever made. […]
First VLBI SETI Search Finds No Radio Transmissions
May 31, 2012
… From Gliese 581 Astronomers have completed the first search for extraterrestrial intelligence on nearby exoplanets using very long baseline interferometry A telescope’s angular resolution is its ability to distinguish small details of a distant object. The Hubble Space telescope, for example, has an angular resolution of about 100 milliarcseconds. That’s good but by no […]
Quark Excitement: Is there anything smaller?
May 31, 2012
Mankind has forever sought to determine the most fundamental components of matter. From the atom to the nucleus to the proton and neutron, and finally to the quark, we have asked each step of the way “Is this it or is there something inside?” ATLAS physicists have just taken another step toward tackling that very […]
Moon Rise
May 31, 2012
Aboard the International Space Station in May 2012, Expedition 31 astronaut Don Pettit opened the shutters covering the cupola observation windows in time to watch the moon rise. The time-lapse scene was photographed from the airlock of the Station’s Russian segment. http://youtu.be/YcHUlVMKy5o
The ATLAS detector on a smartphone
May 30, 2012
About LHsee LHsee is an educational tool available for Android OS mobile smartphones and tablet PCs. It has been custom designed to provide an accurate and interactive visual representation of complex high-energy physics events recorded by the ATLAS detector. Features include live streaming and reconstruction of collision data from the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The […]
Soviet Moon Lander Discovered Water on The Moon in 1976
May 30, 2012
The last Soviet mission to the moon, Luna-24, returned to Earth with water-rich rocks from beneath the lunar surface. But the West ignored the result The possibility of water on the moon has excited scientists and science fiction fans for decades. If we ever decide to maintain a human presence on the moon, clear evidence […]
Cricket swing theory does not hold water: study
May 30, 2012
Swing bowling — when a delivery curves sideways in mid-air — has long been regarded as one of the game’s dark arts, not only deceiving hapless batsmen but also puzzling cricket-loving scientists. Researchers from Britain’s Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Auckland in New Zealand reviewed scientific literature on the subject and conducted their […]
Measuring the Universe
May 30, 2012
by Royal Observatory Greenwich This is the film from our micro exhibition ‘Measuring the Universe: from the transit of Venus to the edge of the cosmos’
Newton saved the UK economy £10 million
May 29, 2012
by Jacob Aron Where’s a scientific genius when you need one? A statistical analysis suggests that Isaac Newton saved the UK economy the equivalent of millions of pounds by implementing measures tostandardise the country’s gold coins. Although Newton is famous for his theory of gravity, he also spent the last 30 years of his life […]
‘Olympic rings’ molecule olympicene in striking image
May 28, 2012
Scientists have created and imaged the smallest possible five-ringed structure. A collaboration between the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), the University of Warwick and IBM Research – Zurich has allowed the scientists to bring a single molecule to life in a using a combination of clever synthetic chemistry and state-of-the-art imaging techniques http://youtu.be/dFp8Eoh_Vqo Read more: […]
2012 Annular Eclipse – Sundial Bridge in Redding, California
May 27, 2012
http://youtu.be/m4jvnJkmwC4
How Many Stars Never Make the Big Time?
May 26, 2012
by Ken Croswell Becoming a star can be a challenge. But new observations reveal that it’s much easier in space than in Hollywood. Only about 14% of all aspiring celestial stars fizzle out, researchers report. In principle, it’s easy to deduce how many stars succeed: just compare the numbers of normal stars with the number […]
The Square Kilometre Array
May 25, 2012
South Africa, Australia and New Zealand will host the biggest radio telescope ever built. The Members of the SKA Organisation today agreed on a dual site solution for the Square Kilometre Array telescope, a crucial step towards building the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope. The ASKAP and MeerKAT precursor dishes will be incorporated […]
Return of the Vacuum Tube
May 24, 2012
by Jon Cartwright Peer inside an antique radio and you’ll find what look like small light bulbs. They’re actually vacuum tubes—the predecessors of the silicon transistor. Vacuum tubes went the way of the dinosaurs in the 1960s, but researchers have now brought them back to life, creating a nano-sized version that’s faster and hardier than […]
Why do bubbles in Guinness sink?
May 24, 2012
E. S. Benilov, C. P. Cummins, W. T. Lee Stout beers show the counter-intuitive phenomena of sinking bubbles while the beer is settling. Previous research suggests that this phenomena is due the small size of the bubbles in these beers and the presence of a circulatory current, directed downwards near the side of the wall […]
Crisis averted: Dark matter was there all along
May 24, 2012
by Lisa Grossman Fans of dark matter can rest easy. A study published last month raised eyebrows by suggesting that our cosmic neighbourhood is empty of the extra mass needed to hold the galaxy together. But a re-analysis shows that the dark matter was there all along. Dark matter is the mysterious, invisible stuff that makes up 83 […]
Matière noire: polémique entre astrophysiciens
May 24, 2012
Nous ne voyons pas de matière noire dans notre coin de Galaxie, clamait une équipe d’astrophysiciens. Vos travaux sont «incorrects» les tance une autre équipe, dans un article soumis à la critique des pairs sur le site arXiv.org qui vient leur répliquer de manière assez sévère. Dessin: la vision classique de la matière noire dans notre galaxie. L’affaire démarre […]
New Planet Found in Our Solar System?
May 23, 2012
Odd orbits of remote objects hint at unseen world, new calculations suggest. An as yet undiscovered planet might be orbiting at the dark fringes of the solar system, according to new research. Too far out to be easily spotted by telescopes, the potential unseen planet appears to be making its presence felt by disturbing the […]
Relativistic kinematics for musicians
May 23, 2012
Lily Asquith begins a guide to making music from particles Read more: www.guardian.co.uk
Brian Greene: Welcome to the Multiverse
May 23, 2012
The latest developments in cosmology point toward the possibility that our universe is merely one of billions. “What really interests me is whether God had any choice in creating the world.” That’s how Albert Einstein, in his characteristically poetic way, asked whether our universe is the only possible universe. The reference to God is easily […]
The May 2012 Annular Eclipse as Seen From Space
May 21, 2012
As people all over the world looked up to see the Moon eclipse the Sun on May 20, 2012, NASA astronaut Don Pettit looked down from the International Space Station and saw the shadow it cast on Earth. Keep your eye on the solar array – which captures the sun’s energy to power the International […]
European Physicists Smash Chinese Teleportation Record
May 21, 2012
The battle over distance records sets up a fascinating race to be the first to teleport to an orbiting satellite Just a couple of weeks ago, we discussed a Chinese experiment in which physicists teleported photons over a distance of almost 100 kilometres. That’s almost an order of magnitude more than previous records. Today, European physicists […]
Telerobotics offers third way for space exploration
May 21, 2012
by Jeff Hecht SPACE exploration may have a new direction. In the 1960s, humans did the exploring but since the last moon landing in 1972, NASA’s only explorers beyond low Earth orbit have been semi-autonomous robots. Now the agency is pondering a third approach, sending astronauts who would remain in orbit around alien worlds and […]
How would the public react if Seti found evidence of alien life?
May 21, 2012
‘In a sense, we’ve run that experiment,’ says Seth Shostak, chief alien hunter at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Read more: www.guardian.co.uk
NASA to Watch Solar Eclipse from Grand Canyon Sunday
May 19, 2012
A solar eclipse is set to impress skywatchers around the world this weekend, and a team of NASA scientists are hosting a fun viewing party at one of the most spectacular destinations in the United States: The Grand Canyon. Officials from NASA’s Lunar Science Institute (NLSI), at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., […]
Hubble Spies Edge-on Beauty
May 18, 2012
Visible in the constellation of Andromeda, NGC 891 is located approximately 30 million light-years away from Earth. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope turned its powerful wide field Advanced Camera for Surveys towards this spiral galaxy and took this close-up of its northern half. The galaxy’s central bulge is just out of the image on the […]
Plutonium signature captured after 50 years of trying
May 17, 2012
by Jacob Aron Devoted fans can wait hours on the red carpet to get their favourite movie star’s autograph, but that’s nothing compared to acquiring the signature of plutonium-239. After 50 years of trying, physicists have finally managed to analyse the fissile isotope using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. This could potentially allow them to […]
MAJORANA, the search for the most elusive neutrino of all
May 17, 2012
In a cavern almost a mile underground in the Black Hills, an experiment called the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR, 40 kilograms of pure germanium crystals enclosed in deep-freeze cryostat modules, will soon set out to answer one of the most persistent and momentous questions in physics: are neutrinos their own antiparticles? If the answer is yes, it […]
Two beautiful new particles
May 16, 2012
In beautiful agreement with the Standard Model, two new excited states (see below) of the Λb beauty particle have just been observed by the LHCb Collaboration. Similarly to protons and neutrons, Λb is composed of three quarks. In the Λb’s case, these are up, down and… beauty. Although discovering new particles is increasingly looking like […]
First Simulation Of Quantum Tunnelling …
May 15, 2012
… On A Quantum Computer Quantum tunnelling had always been thought too complex to simulate on today’s simple quantum computers. Now a new approach to quantum computing has changed that and opens the door to more complex simulations The exploitation of quantum weirdness for computing is one of the great goals of modern physics. It’s […]
Is this the most boring experiment ever?
May 14, 2012
Scientists watch drops of pitch form – and there have been eight in 75 years Experiment began in 1927 to prove pitch is a liquid In 75 years, just EIGHT drops have fallen The rate is slowing, and last drop fell 12 years ago Current custodian has watched since 60s – but has missed all […]
Transit of Venus
May 13, 2012
Alan Pickup Britain is poorly placed for views of the astronomical highlight of 2012, but the situation is not hopeless. To see the whole of the transit of Venus across the Sun’s disc on June 5-6, though, it is not too late to travel eastwards, perhaps to areas around the W Pacific. If we are […]
Teleporting independent qubits through a 97 km free-space channel
May 11, 2012
Juan Yin, He Lu, Ji-Gang Ren, Yuan Cao, Hai-Lin Yong, Yu-Ping Wu, Chang Liu, Sheng-Kai Liao, Yan Jiang, Xin-Dong Cai, Ping Xu, Ge-Sheng Pan, Jian-Yu Wang, Yu-Ao Chen, Cheng-Zhi Peng, Jian-Wei Pan With the help of quantum entanglement, quantum communication can be achieved between arbitrarily distant places without passing through intermediate locations by quantum teleportation. […]
NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Images Big Dipper
May 11, 2012
In England it is known as the “Plough,” in Germany the “Great Cart,” and in Malaysia the “Seven Ploughs.” Since humanity first turned its eyes skyward, the seven northern hemisphere stars that compose the “Big Dipper” have been a welcome and familiar introduction to the heavens. “I can recall as a kid making an imaginary […]
Aberration features in directional dark matter detection
May 11, 2012
Nassim Bozorgnia, Graciela B. Gelmini, Paolo Gondolo The motion of the Earth around the Sun causes an annual change in the magnitude and direction of the arrival velocity of dark matter particles on Earth, in a way analogous to aberration of stellar light. In directional detectors, aberration of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) modulates the […]
NASA Spacecraft Detects Changes in Martian Sand Dunes
May 9, 2012
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed that movement in sand dune fields on the Red Planet occurs on a surprisingly large scale, about the same as in dune fields on Earth. This is unexpected because Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth, is only about one percent as dense, and its high-speed winds are […]
The ‘monster’ sunspot AR 1476
May 9, 2012
Heat is on: ‘Monster’ sunspot could put Earth in the crosshairs of powerful solar storms It could result in a gigantic coronal mass ejection, which would blast the Earth with radiation and possibly knock-out power lines and disrupt satellites… Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk http://youtu.be/kP-dwbXgLsc
On the reality of the quantum state
May 9, 2012
Matthew F. Pusey, Jonathan Barrett & Terry Rudolph Quantum states are the key mathematical objects in quantum theory. It is therefore surprising that physicists have been unable to agree on what a quantum state truly represents. One possibility is that a pure quantum state corresponds directly to reality. However, there is a long history of […]
NASA’s Spitzer Sees the Light of Alien ‘Super Earth’
May 8, 2012
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has detected light emanating from a “super-Earth” planet beyond our solar system for the first time. While the planet is not habitable, the detection is a historic step toward the eventual search for signs of life on other planets. “Spitzer has amazed us yet again,” said Bill Danchi, Spitzer program scientist […]
On a proposal of superluminal communication
May 8, 2012
GianCarlo Ghirardi, Raffaele Romano Recently, various new proposals of superluminal transmission of information have appeared in the literature. Since they make systematic resort to recent formal and practical improvements in quantum mechanics, the old theorems proving the impossibility of such a performance must be adapted to the new scenario. In this paper we consider some […]
Magnetic bacteria may be building future bio-computers
May 7, 2012
Magnet-making bacteria may be building biological computers of the future, researchers have said. Leeds and Japan’s Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have used microbes that eat iron. As they ingest the iron, the microbes create tiny magnets inside themselves, similar to those in PC hard drives. The research may lead to the creation of […]
The Single Theory That Could Explain Emergence
May 7, 2012
Organisation And The Origin of Life Biochemists have long imagined that autocatalytic sets can explain the origin of life. Now a new mathematical approach to these sets has even broader implications One of the most puzzling questions about the origin of life is how the rich chemical landscape that makes life possible came into existence. […]
No SUSY In New CMS Search
May 7, 2012
By Tommaso Dorigo This week’s graph comes from a recent publication by the CMS experiment, the one I am a proud member of together with about 3000 colleagues from all over the world. CMS (see a 3-D sketch below) is one of the two huge detectors collecting the faint signals of particles produced in the powerful 8-TeV […]
Still waiting to catch the gravitational wave
May 5, 2012
European Space Agency (Esa) member states have decided to select a mission to Jupiter and its icy moons as their next great venture. Juice, as the spacecraft is currently known, will leave Earth in 2022 on a long journey that should see it returning science from the outer Solar System in the 2030s. The champagne […]
The first successful implant of ‘bionic’ eye microchips
May 4, 2012
Microchips restore sight to people suffering retinitis pigmentosa – an incurable condition that leads to blindness Condition affects one in every 3,000-4,000 people Clinical trial with two sufferers ‘exceeds expectations’ Sufferers able to detect outlines of objects ‘within days’ Vision expected to improve further as 3mm chip ‘beds in’ Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk -www.bbc.co.uk
Lightning Signature Could Help Reveal the Solar System’s Origins
May 4, 2012
Every second, lightning flashes some 50 times on Earth. Together these discharges coalesce and get stronger, creating electromagnetic waves circling around Earth, to create a beating pulse between the ground and the lower ionosphere, about 60 miles up in the atmosphere. This electromagnetic signature, known as Schumann Resonance, had only been observed from Earth’s surface […]
Trouble with the Lorentz law of force
May 3, 2012
Incompatibility with special relativity and momentum conservation Masud Mansuripur The Lorentz law of force is the fifth pillar of classical electrodynamics, the other four being Maxwell’s macroscopic equations. The Lorentz law is the universal expression of the force exerted by electromagnetic fields on a volume containing a distribution of electrical charges and currents. If electric […]
How to Find a Meteorite in 5 Steps
May 3, 2012
To start, get permission to keep what you find, find a barren spot like the Mojave Desert or Great Plains, and track down ‘dark flight trajectories’ from recent fireballs By Natalie Wolchover and Life’s Little Mysteries Earth is under constant bombardment by space rocks. When they crash and burn through the atmosphere, most of the […]
What would happen if you put your hand in the Large Hadron Collider?
May 3, 2012
http://youtu.be/_NMqPT6oKJ8 http://youtu.be/lVefgfmFg9o
May 31, 2012
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