Shown here is the crystal structure of molybdenite, MoS2. When hit with a burst of laser light, freed electrons and holes combine to form combinations called trions, consisting of two electrons and one hole, represented here by orange and green balls. (Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT)
via mit
A test version of NASA’s Orion capsule floats in the rear of the USS Anchorage during a recovery drill off the coast of California September 15, 2014. Orion is NASA’s next exploration spacecraft, designed to carry astronauts to destinations in deep space, including an asteroid and Mars. Picture taken September 15, 2014. (Credit: REUTERS/Mike Blake)
via reuters
A few major factors will drive exponential growth in the amount of terabytes falling on us from the skies over the next couple of decades: the increasing speed of commercial satellite deployment, implementation of faster communication technology, and the onset of interplanetary missions. (Credit: SKA Telescope, Golubovich)
via venturebeat
How many exoplanets have been discovered? According to the Extrasolar Planet Encyclopedia, a semi-official catalog based in Europe, there were as of the end of September last year 990 confirmed exoplanets and 2,321 candidate exoplanets. (Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation)
via phys.org
A collaborative robot from Rethink Robotics, works on a mocked-up assembly line. Setting limits on the level of pain a robot may (accidentally) inflict on a human is a crucial goal of the first safety standards being drawn up for these “collaborative” robots. (Credit: Rethink Robotics, Simonite)
via technologyreview
if we have a system of qubits all in the same state (with the same probability distributions), we have identical qubits, even though we might get different results upon measuring the individual qubits. Strangely enough, particles in the quantum world can be both identical and distinct at the same time. (Credit: M. Byrne)
This composite X-ray/radio image of Abell 400 shows radio jets (pink), immersed in a vast cloud of multimillion degree X-ray emitting gas (blue) that pervades the cluster. The jets emanate from the vicinity of two supermassive black holes (bright spots in the image) in the galaxy. Chandra and radio data confirm that the unusual structure is due to the merger of two large galaxies, whose supermassive black holes are bound together by their mutual gravity. (Credit: X-Ray: NASA/CXC/D. Hudson, T.Reiprich et al. (AIfA); Radio: NRAO/VLA/ NRL)
via phys
a region of jet activity can be seen at the neck of the comet. These jets, originating from several discrete locations, are a product of ices sublimating and gases escaping from inside the nucleus. (Credit: ESA, NASA)
via phys.org
Researcher will mash together the visual recognition skills of humans and the spatial memory system of rats to enable robots to navigate in any environmental conditions. (Credit: The Australian)
via theaustralian
The image above shows a standard prediction for the dark matter distribution within about 1 million light years of the Milky Way galaxy, which is expected to be swarming with thousands of small dark matter clumps called `halos’. (Credit: Garrison, Kimmel, Bullock, UCI)
via dailygalaxy
There is no doubt in my mind that society invests its billions well if it invests in theoretical physics. Whether that investment should go into particle colliders though is a different question. I don’t have a good answer to that, and I don’t see that the question is seriously being discussed. (Credit: Hossenfelder)
via backreaction
The vibrant, starry stream of the Milky Way frames radio telescopes of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array – known as the ALMA Observatory – in Chile’s Atacama Desert. (Credit: Y. Beletsky/ESO)
via cornell
Two international teams of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes in Australia and Chile have discovered the first examples of isolated stellar-mass black holes adrift among the stars in our galaxy. (Credit: NASA/ESA, D. Bennett)
via backreaction
The first teleportation of a photon inside a photonic chip illustrates both the potential for quantum computation and the significant challenges that lay ahead.
via technologyreview
rtist’s concept of an atom chip for use by NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) aboard the International Space Station. CAL will use lasers to cool atoms to ultracold temperatures. (Credit: NASA)
via jpl
A paper just released by the team behind Planck, a European space telescope, casts serious doubt on the BICEP-2 result. (Credit: D. Simonds)
via economist
“The atomic age is an incredible epoch, filled with people we think we know already—from Marie Curie and Albert Einstein to Ronald Reagan and the plant workers of Fukushima—but they all turn out to be a lot more complicated and interesting than any of us could’ve imagined,” says Nelson. (Credit: Helvio Faria)
via scitation
Dust map of the Universe. The region studied by BICEP2 is indicated by the rectangle in the right circle. (Credit: Planck Collaboration)
via universetoday
n this illustration, the artificial atom on the right side of the image sends out sound waves that are picked up by the microphone on the left. (Credit: Philip Krantz)
via livescience
A serious challenge to the discovery of gravity waves by the BICEP2 2014 results has appeared: the researchers had underestimated the amount of interstellar dust that could be contaminating their data. (Credit: MacRobert, Andrei Linde)
via skyandtelescope
Scientists have found definitive traces of water on a relatively small exoplanet. HAT-P-11b is the size of Neptune and four times the size of Earth. The exoplanet has copious amounts of both water vapor and hydrogen in its atmosphere. (Credit: NASA)
via bbc
Our current model of the early inflationary period predicts that the universe should be flat, and so far that has held up. If the universe actually is curved, then the inflationary period must have been more complex than we have thought. (Credit: Koberlien)
via phys.org
Few scientists doubt that Einstein was right. But the mathematics describing the time-dilation effect are “fundamental to all physical theories”, says Thomas Udem, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, who was not involved in the research. “It is of utmost importance to verify it with the best possible accuracy.” (Credit: A. Witze, Martin Poole/Getty)
via nature
Graphic representation of a seaborgium hexacarbonyl molecule on the silicon dioxide covered detectors of a COMPACT detector array. (Credit: Alexander Yakushev (GSI) / Christoph E. Düllmann)
via newscientist
A transmission electron microscopic image of titanium dioxide plates resting on a near-invisible sheet of graphene. (Credit: Rozhkova et. al.)
via anl.gov
There have been recent near misses – an explosion over Russia, a mysterious crater in Nicaragua. But what would we do in the event of an actual meteor strike? A simulated meteor strike at a training facility in Texas. (Credit: Nick Ballon)
via theguardian
ITTY BITTY LIVING SPACE The tiny galaxy M60-UCD1 (circled in white) harbors a black hole with the mass of around 21 million suns. M60-UCD1 may be a remnant of a larger galaxy torn apart by the massive galaxy M60 (center), which is also pulling in a nearby spiral galaxy (upper right). (Credit: NASA, ESA)
via sciencenews
The illustration shows how oscillating photons create an image of frozen light. At first, photons in the experiment flow easily between two superconducting sites, producing the large waves shown at left. After a time, the scientists cause the light to ‘freeze,’ trapping the photons in place. Fast oscillations on the right of the image are evidence of the new trapped behavior. (Credit: James Raftery et al.)
via princeton
Pakistan is a signing ceremony away from becoming the associate member of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. Above photo is CERN Labs on the Swiss-French border. (Credit: CERN)
via dawn
The quasicrystals formed 4.5 billion years ago in a violent collision between two rocks, among the asteroids that coalesced into planets. The rock with the quasicrystals landed in Chukotka as a meteorite. “They’re part of the primal stuff that formed our solar system,” Dr. Steinhardt said. The above is A penteract (5-cube) pattern using 5D orthographic projection to 2D using Petrie polygon basis vectors overlaid on the diffractogram from an Icosahedral Ho-Mg-Zn quasicrystal. (Credit: NYTimes)
via nytimes
