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"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler", Albert Einstein
Browsing All Posts published on »August, 2012«
Hubble Spotted a Supernova in NGC 5806
A new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 5806, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo (the Virgin). It lies around 80 million light years from Earth. Also visible in this image is a supernova explosion called SN 2004dg. The exposures that are combined into this image were carried out in early […]
See Stephen Hawking Perform With Orbital at Paralympics Opener
August 30, 2012
Stephen Hawking appeared onstage with Orbital for a moving rendition of “Where Is It Going?” during the Paralympic Games opening ceremony Wednesday night in London. The techno tune, from the recent Orbital album Wonky, samples the voice of Hawking, the theoretical physicist the BBC called “the most famous disabled person in the world.” “The Large […]
A Sky Chock-Full of Black Holes
August 29, 2012
Read more: NASA’s WISE Survey Uncovers Millions of Black Holes
Hans Camenzind, 555 timer inventor
August 29, 2012
SAN FRANCISCO – 8/15/2012 Hans Camenzind, the Swiss emigre analog guru who invented one of the most successful circuits in electronics history and introduced the concept of phase-locked loop to IC design, passed away in his sleep at the age of 78. Camenzind came to the United States in 1960 and worked for several years at […]
Gravity waves spotted from white-dwarf pair
August 29, 2012
By Jason Palmer Researchers have spotted visible-light evidence for one of astronomy’s most elusive targets – gravity waves – in the orbit of a pair of dead stars. Until now, these ripples in space-time, first predicted by Einstein, have only been inferred from radio-wave sources. But a change in the orbits of two white dwarf […]
Rolling in the Higgs (Adele Parody)
August 29, 2012
A Capella Science – Rolling in the Higgs (Adele Parody) http://youtu.be/VtItBX1l1VY
Modeling a falling slinky
August 28, 2012
R. C. Cross, M. S. Wheatland A slinky is an example of a tension spring: in an unstretched state a slinky is collapsed, with turns touching, and a finite tension is required to separate the turns from this state. If a slinky is suspended from its top and stretched under gravity and then released, the […]
Criteria of Science, Cosmology, and Lessons of History
August 28, 2012
Helge Kragh Perhaps more than any other of the physical sciences, cosmology exemplifies the inevitable contact between science and philosophy, including the problem of the demarcation criteria that distinguish science from non-science. Although modern physical cosmology is undoubtedly scientific, it is not obvious why it has this status, and nor is it obvious that all […]
Hadron Collider is a work of art
August 28, 2012
AN EXHIBITION of textiles inspired by the Large Hadron Collider goes on show at the Old Fire Station Gallery next week. The quilts and framed pieces are the work of local artist Kate Findlay who has a studio in Henley and teaches art at St Mary’s School on St Andrew’s Road. She has recently shown […]
How far can Tarzan jump?
August 23, 2012
Hiroyuki Shima The tree-based rope swing is a popular recreation facility, often installed in outdoor areas, giving pleasure to thrill-seekers. In the setting, one drops down from a high platform, hanging from a rope, then swings at a great speed like “Tarzan”, and finally jumps ahead to land on the ground. The question now arises: […]
Quantum dynamics of the avian compass
August 22, 2012
Zachary B. Walters The ability of migratory birds to orient relative to the Earth’s magnetic field is believed to involve a coherent superposition of two spin states of a radical electron pair. However, the mechanism by which this coherence can be maintained in the face of strong interactions with the cellular environment has remained unclear. […]
Star is caught devouring planet
August 21, 2012
First Evidence Discovered of Planet’s Destruction by Its Star The first evidence of a planet’s destruction by its aging star has been discovered by an international team of astronomers. The evidence indicates that the missing planet was devoured as the star began expanding into a “red giant” — the stellar equivalent of advanced age… Read […]
InSight: Digging Deep with NASA’s Next Mars Lander
August 21, 2012
Mission team members for InSight, the new Mars lander mission selected by NASA to launch in 2016, explain how the spacecraft will advance our knowledge of Mars’ history and rocky planet evolution. http://youtu.be/E993SKBCZ-g
Molecular Visualizations of DNA
August 21, 2012
These DNA molecular visualizations were created for the multifaceted ‘DNA’ project, celebrating the 50th anniversary in 2003 of the discovery of the double helix. The ‘DNA’ project includes a five-part documentary series, museum film and ‘DNAi’ online resources for teachers and students. The dynamics and molecular shapes were based on X-ray crystallographic models and other […]
Scientists place new limits on sterile neutrinos
August 21, 2012
Two Fermilab experiments have put new boundaries on a search for a possibly undiscovered type of neutrino, leaving prior measurements unexplained. So far, scientists have observed three types, or flavors, of neutrino: the electron neutrino, the muon neutrino and the tau neutrino. But physicists have seen hints that this may not be the whole picture. […]
A Matterwave Transistor Oscillator
August 20, 2012
Seth C. Caliga, Cameron J. E. Straatsma, Alex A. Zozulya, Dana Z. Anderson A triple-well atomtronic transistor combined with forced RF evaporation is used to realize a driven matterwave oscillator circuit. The transistor is implemented using a metalized compound glass and silicon substrate. On-chip and external currents produce a cigar-shaped magnetic trap, which is divided […]
Space-time ripples record black hole crashes
August 19, 2012
Did monster black holes pull the first galaxies together, or were they born inside those galaxies? It’s a long-standing mystery. Now a new analysis of the gravitational ripples from colliding black holes could reveal the answer by helping astronomers reconstruct a crash rather than just surveying its aftermath. Most large galaxies we see have supermassive black holes […]
Physicists demonstrate that 15=3×5 about half of the time
August 19, 2012
Computing prime factors may sound like an elementary math problem, but try it with a large number, say one that contains more than 600 digits, and the task becomes enormously challenging and impossibly time-consuming. Now, a group of researchers at UC Santa Barbara has designed and fabricated a quantum processor capable of factoring a composite […]
Communicating with Aliens through DNA
August 19, 2012
By Christina Agapakis DNA encodes the information for all the proteins inside the cell, their amino acid sequence, when and where to turn them on, and a whole lot of other things that we probably don’t fully understand yet. With the ability to write DNA, to synthesize our own arbitrary stretches of A’s, T’s, C’s, and G’s, we can […]
An Underlying Theory for Gravity
August 18, 2012
Yuan K. Ha A new direction to understand gravity has recently been explored by considering classical gravity to be a derived interaction from an underlying theory. This underlying theory would involve new degrees of freedom at a deeper level and it would be structurally different from classical gravitation. It may conceivably be a quantum […]
Einstein’s Equations, Cosmology and Astrophysics
August 18, 2012
Paul S. Wesson I give a compact, pedagogical review of our present understanding of the universe as based on general relativity. This includes the uniform models, with special reference to the cosmological ‘constant’; and the equations for spherically-symmetric systems, in a particularly convenient form that aids their application to astrophysics. New ideas in research are […]
Heat Shield, Meet Mars
August 18, 2012
This sequence of images shows the heat shield from NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory hitting the ground on Mars and raising a cloud of dust. The images were taken by the Mars Descent Imager on the mission’s Curiosity rover while the rover was still suspended on a parachute, after the spacecraft had jettisoned the heat shield. […]
Could life arise around a dying star?
August 18, 2012
The habitability and detection of Earth-like planets orbiting cool white dwarfs L. Fossati, S. Bagnulo, C. A. Haswell, M. R. Patel, R. Busuttil, P. M. Kowalski, D. V. Shulyak, M. F. Sterzik Since there are several ways planets can survive the giant phase of the host star, we examine the habitability and detection of planets […]
The Emerging Revolution in Game Theory
August 16, 2012
The discovery of a winning strategy for Prisoner’s Dilemma is forcing game theorists to rethink their discipline. Their conclusion? Winning isn’t everything. The world of game theory is currently on fire. In May, Freeman Dyson at Princeton University and William Press at the University of Texas announced that they had discovered a previously unknown strategy […]
LRO Spectrometer Detects Helium in Moon’s Atmosphere
August 16, 2012
Scientists using the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) spectrometer aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have made the first spectroscopic observations of the noble gas helium in the tenuous atmosphere surrounding the moon…. Read more: www.nasa.gov
ICARUS: Neutrinos Travel At Light Speed. Period.
August 14, 2012
By Tommaso Dorigo Little less than one year ago the world of fundamental physics was shaken by the bold claim of the OPERA collaboration, which produced a measurement of the time of flight of neutrinos traveling underground from Geneva to the Gran Sasso mine in central Italy. The beam of neutrinos, produced by the CERN SpS […]
Curiosity Gets Ready to Rove Red Planet
August 14, 2012
NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover team member Jessica Samuels updates you on developments and status of the mission now that it’s preparing to explore Gale Crater. Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on NASA’s Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools, such as […]
Further proof of extraterrestrial origin of quasicrystals
August 13, 2012
An international team of researchers has found nine new samples of naturally occurring quasicrystals. The work also provides further proof that quasicrystals were delivered to the Earth by a meteorite. The team’s discovery challenges our understanding of both crystallography and solar-system formation. Conventional crystal structures are made of atoms, or clusters of atoms, that repeat […]
Will we ever… find life elsewhere in the universe?
August 12, 2012
Phil Plait The idea of aliens may seem absurd. But times change, as does science, says Phil Plait, and this makes the idea far more plausible than it once appeared. One of the reasons I love astronomy is that it doesn’t flinch from the big questions. And one of the biggest is: are we alone? […]
Isaac Newton and Erwin Schrödinger
August 12, 2012
Today is Schrodinger‘s birthday (12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961) www.smbc-comics.com
UCLA scientist discovers plate tectonics on Mars
August 10, 2012
For years, many scientists had thought that plate tectonics existed nowhere in our solar system but on Earth. Now, a UCLA scientist has discovered that the geological phenomenon, which involves the movement of huge crustal plates beneath a planet’s surface, also exists on Mars. “Mars is at a primitive stage of plate tectonics. It gives […]
Physicists unveil plans for ‘LEP3′ collider at CERN
August 9, 2012
A group of physicists from Switzerland, Japan, Russia, US and the UK has proposed using the tunnel that currently houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN particle-physics lab near Geneva for a dedicated machine to study the Higgs boson. The facility, dubbed LEP3, is named after CERN’s previous accelerator, the Large Electron–Positron Collider […]
Plenty of dark matter near the Sun
August 9, 2012
Astronomers at the University of Zürich and the ETH Zürich, together with other international researchers, have found large amounts of invisible “dark matter” near the Sun. Their results are consistent with the theory that the Milky Way Galaxy is surrounded by a massive “halo” of dark matter, but this is the first study of its […]
A Flight Through the Universe, by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
August 8, 2012
This animated flight through the universe was made by Miguel Aragon of Johns Hopkins University with Mark Subbarao of the Adler Planetarium and Alex Szalay of Johns Hopkins. There are close to 400,000 galaxies in the animation, with images of the actual galaxies in these positions (or in some cases their near cousins in type) […]
Bruce Willis Couldn’t Save Us from Asteroid Doom
August 8, 2012
According to the internet hysteria surrounding the ancient Mayan calendar, an asteroid could be on its way to wipe out the world on December 21, 2012. Obviously this is pretty unlikely — but if an asteroid really is on its way, could we take a cue from the disaster movie Armageddon in order to save the planet? […]
Physicists see hints of Majorana fermions
August 7, 2012
Evidence for the existence of “Majorana fermions” – theoretically proposed particles that are also their own anti-particles – could be seen in the behaviour of a novel Josephson junction. That is the view of physicists at Stanford University in the US, who have examined the properties of a Josephson junction that incorporates material called a […]
Quantum discord as resource for remote state preparation
August 6, 2012
An international collaboration led by physicists of the University of Vienna shines new light on the question of the resources required for achieving quantum information processing. The scientists demonstrate that less demanding resources, which are easier to prepare and to control, can be used for quantum-enhanced technologies. In the experiment, which is published in Nature […]
NASA Lands Car-Size Rover Beside Martian Mountain
August 6, 2012
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s most advanced Mars rover Curiosity has landed on the Red Planet. The one-ton rover, hanging by ropes from a rocket backpack, touched down onto Mars Sunday to end a 36-week flight and begin a two-year investigation. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft that carried Curiosity succeeded in every step of the […]
Nasa’s Curiosity Mars rover set for high risk landing
August 5, 2012
By Jonathan Amos One of the most daring space missions ever undertaken is nearing Mars. In the next few hours Nasa will attempt to land its one-tonne Curiosity rover on the Red Planet to study the possibility that this world may once have hosted microbial life. The vehicle is packed with scientific instruments, including a laser that […]
The beauty of the Higgs boson
August 5, 2012
Jeff Forshaw The dust is beginning to settle – a new particle has been discovered using the Large Hadron Collider. Discovering new particles of nature is not an everyday occurrence and we are reasonably entitled to proclaim that this is the arrival of the Higgs. We aren’t certain, though: more careful examination of the particle’s […]
The Making of a Genius: Richard P. Feynman
August 4, 2012
Christian Forstner In 1965 the Nobel Foundation honored Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger, and Richard Feynman for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics and the consequences for the physics of elementary particles. In contrast to both of his colleagues only Richard Feynman appeared as a genius before the public. In his autobiographies he managed to connect […]
The Most Cruel Death of Cupid and Belinda
August 4, 2012
by Lisa Grossman A pair of star-cross’d lovers orbits Uranus, and when they rush to meet their fate, the duo could leave the cosmic stage littered with more bodies than the final scene of Hamlet. But the deaths of the moons Cupid and Belinda might not bring down the curtain on Uranus’s satellites. Instead they could mark the beginning of […]
Can the future affect the past?
August 3, 2012
What you do today could affect what happened yesterday – that is the bizarre conclusion of a thought experiment in quantum physics described in a preprint article by Yakir Aharonov of Tel-Aviv University in Israel and colleagues. It sounds impossible, indeed as though it is violating one of science’s most cherished principles – causality – but the […]
First Demonstration of A Quantum Router
August 3, 2012
Chinese physicists unveil a router that uses a quantum control signal to determine the path of a quantum data signal Physicists have exploited the quantum nature of photons to transmit information for some time now. And in doing so they’ve discovered just how powerful quantum communication can be compared to the classical kind. Instead of […]
Most distant black hole ‘heard’ munching star
August 3, 2012
by Kelly Oakes The wobbles in energy produced as a black hole consumes a star have been detected from further away than ever before. Because they are so regular, their discoverer likes to think of the wobbles as a kind of sound. “We are able to metaphorically hear a star being devoured by a supermassive […]
Measuring g with a beam of antihydrogen
August 1, 2012
AEgIS is a physics experiment that takes place at the european laboratory CERN, using the antiprotons delivered by the AD accelerator. AEgIS is a collaboration of physicists from all around the world. The primary scientific goal of the AEgIS experiment is the direct measurement of the Earth’s gravitational acceleration g on antihydrogen. In the first […]
Entangled Particles Break Classical Law of Thermodynamics
August 1, 2012
Japanese physicists show how to extract more energy from entangled particles than is possible with classical thermodynamics In 1867, the Scottish physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, published a thought experiment showing how to extract heat from a container of gas. Maxwell dreamt up a container divided in half by a wall with a trap door that […]
August 31, 2012
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