Physics in the News

Friday, July 18, 2014

Is the universe a bubble? Let’s check(VIDEO)

via perimeterinstitute

Meet the electric life forms that live on pure energy(VIDEO)

via newscientist

Scientists crush diamond with pressure from world’s biggest laser(VIDEO)

via upi

Asteroid Vesta Has a Colorful History(VIDEO)

via nationalgeographic

NASA space station commander discusses life and work floatig in space(VIDEO)

Strange “beads on a string” star formation explained(VIDEO)

via fromquarkstoquasars

Physics in the News

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Stalking the Shadow Universe(VIDEO)

The mathematics of quantum computing

(Credit: Ritvars Skuja) — The Quantum Computer Science project was completed in August 2013. The project focused on the mathematical aspects of quantum computing. Andris Ambainis, a theoretical computer scientist at the University of Latvia in Riga, was the principal coordinator of the project. (Credit: Ritvars Skuja)

Perth’s planet hunter helps discover unusual exoplanet

Perth engineer ‘TG’ Tan hunts planets with his backyard observatory in Mt Claremont. (Credit: TG Tan)

Touchdown! Supply capsule arrives at International Space Station

The International Space Station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2, grapples the Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus cargo craft. (Source: NASA TV) — The International Space Station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2, grapples the Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus cargo craft. (Credit NASA TV)

via cbs

The machine learning community contest to take on the Higgs

(Credit: Sandbox Studio, Chicago) — Kaggle is currently running about 20 contests on its site. Most of them will attract between 300 and 500 teams. But the Higgs contest, which does not end until September, has already drawn almost 970. Names appear and drop off of the leader board every day. (Credit: Sandbox Studio, Chicago)

via symmetrymagazine

Pentagon enlists Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson to design a space plane

DARPA wants its new experimental spaceship to fly 10 times within in 10 days and it wants the contractor to show that the vessel can fly at 10 times the speed of sound or more. (Credit: DARPA)

via thedailybeast

Physicists propose molecular clock to expose new physics

(Credit: S. Schiller et al., Phys. Rev. Lett (2014)) — A lot of physics is based on the assumption that the mass of a proton remains constant over time—pretty much forever. But what if that’s not true? What if it grows or shrinks over time? That would mean that the ratio between them and electrons changes as well, and if that’s true, then physicists are going to have to come up with some new ideas to explain what that might mean. (Credit: S. Schiller et al., Phys. Rev. Lett (2014))

Holographic displays coming to smartphones

Quantum Photonic Imager: Ostendo’s light-field display produces 3-D images using light-emitting pixels and piles of pixel-level processing. (Credit: Ostendo Technologies) — Light-field displays for mobile devices might be only a year away. Ostendo’s light-field display produces 3-D images using light-emitting pixels and piles of pixel-level processing. (Credit: Ostendo Technologies)

Physics in the News

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Breaking news on the ISEE-3 mission: It may not be lost – it’s those “O” rings again

High temperatures expanding the seal material could have either impeded the flow, or have precluded the latch valve from opening even with the microswitch indicated to telemetry that the valve was open. — High temperatures expanding the seal material could have either impeded the flow, or have precluded the latch valve from opening even with the microswitch indicated to telemetry that the valve was open. (Credit: Farquhar, R, Muhonen, D, Church, L, Curtis, M.S)

via wattsupwiththat

Deep-space radio waves ‘heard’ at opposite points on Earth(VIDEO)

New data shows Earth’s magnetic field is weakening fast(VIDEO)

via weather.com

Happy birthday, Matt Bunting! Dmitri hexapod creator

Physicists detect process even rarer than the long-sought Higgs particle

Brookhaven Lab/ATLAS physicist Marc-André Pleier adjusting detector components. (Credit: Brookhaven Lab/ATLAS) — Physicist Marc-André Pleier adjusting detector components. (Credit: Brookhaven Lab/ATLAS)

via bnl

Huge Meteorite on Mars Discovered by NASA’s Curiosity Rover

This photo by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the huge iron meteorite "Lebanon" (7 feet wide) and its smaller companion "Lebanon B." The two meteorites were found by Curiosity on May 25, 2014. The circular insets are more detailed views by Curiosity's Chem-Cam instrument overlaid on an image by the rover's Remote Micro-Imager. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/LPGNantes/CNRS/IAS/MSSS) — This photo by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows the huge iron meteorite “Lebanon” (7 feet wide) and its smaller companion “Lebanon B.” The two meteorites were found by Curiosity on May 25, 2014. The circular insets are more detailed views by Curiosity’s Chem-Cam instrument overlaid on an image by the rover’s Remote Micro-Imager.
(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/LPGNantes/CNRS/IAS/MSSS)

Single hotspot may be the source of many ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays

The hotspot map for ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays. (Credit: Telescope Array)

via arstechnica

Cassini spacecraft’s new look at Saturn’s colossal hexagon storm

(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI) — The clear central eye of the storm is about 2000 km across – ten times the typical size on Earth – and clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane on Saturn are moving at more than 500 kph – rather faster than on Earth. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)

via dailygalaxy

Large number of dark matter peaks found using gravitational lensing

This map shows the distribution of dark matter (black) in the Universe, overlapping with optical measured clusters of galaxies (red circles). The mass peaks in the map contain significant cosmological information, will provide us with an improved understanding about the dark side of the Universe. The size of this map is about 4 square degrees corresponding to only 2.5% of the full CS82 survey footprint shown in the next figure. (Credit: CS82, SDSS)

Scientists Believe There May Be An Ancient Earth Older Than The Moon Inside Earth

(Credit: NASA)

Physics in the News

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

New qubit design provides parity bit for Schrödinger cat states

The device combines a superconducting microwave resonator to trap the photons and a circuit quantum electrodynamic qubit that's linked to the resonator.(Credit: Schoelkopf Lab, Yale) — The device combines a superconducting microwave resonator to trap the photons and a circuit quantum electrodynamic qubit that’s linked to the resonator.(Credit: Schoelkopf Lab, Yale)

via arstechnica

The world’s first photonic router

This image depicts from left to right Serge Rosenblum, Yulia Lovsky, Orel Bechler and Itay Shomroni. At the center of the photonic router is a single atom that routes photons in different directions. (Credit: Weizmann Institute of Science)

Two anomalies worth noticing

The results obtained by the CMS Collaboration showing that six different channels all give a non-zero value for the decay rate of Higgs boson into pairs of tau and muon. (Credit: Pauline Gagnon) — The results obtained by the CMS Collaboration showing that six different channels all give a non-zero value for the decay rate of Higgs boson into pairs of tau and muon.
(Credit: Pauline Gagnon)

via quantumdiaries

Ukraine to turn Chernobyl into ‘biosphere radiologic reserve’

The damaged 4th unit of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and a memorial sign “Heroes, Professionals – those who protected the world from nuclear disaster” in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (Credit: RIA Novosti)

Smallest Swiss cross—made of 20 single atoms

20 bromine atoms positioned on a sodium chloride surface using the tip of an atomic force microscope at room temperature, creating a Swiss cross with the size of 5.6nm. The structure is stable at room temperature and was achieved by exchanging chlorine with bromine atoms. (Credit: Department of Physics, University of Basel)

Consider the ‘Anticrystal’

Materials can be described as being on a spectrum from a perfectly ordered crystal to a perfectly disordered anticrystal. (Credit: Liu, Goodrich, Nagel)

A Critical Test of Quantum Criticality

a) An example of the classical phase transition in a ferromagnet. Thermal fluctuations causing the random reorientation of the constituent spins grow with temperature. They compete with the tendency of the local magnetic fields to align the spins. As a result, the net magnetization in the ordered state continuously decreases with temperature (orange line) and drops to zero at a critical temperature Tc, surrounded by a narrow critical region (dashed rectangle). (b) A generic example of the quantum phase transition. Quantum fluctuations controlled by the nonthermal parameter g lead to a similar phase transition at a critical value gc, the so called quantum critical point, already at zero temperature, T=0. Their interplay with thermal fluctuations opens up a progressively broader, V-shaped quantum critical region extending much above the zero temperature (dashed lines).

via physics.aps

Online Isaac Newton manuscripts workshop

India's Zetatrek citizen science initiative is online workshop starting on 19th July, where science and math hobbyists from all over the world are invited to study the original manuscripts of Sir Isaac Newton. — India’s Zetatrek citizen science initiative is online workshop starting on 19th July, where science and math hobbyists from all over the world are invited to study the original manuscripts of Sir Isaac Newton.

Physics in the News

Monday, July 14, 2014

Confirmed: Magnetic waves cannot accelerate solar wind(VIDEO)

via thewatchers

British researchers devise material so dark it looks like a black hole

British scientists have created a material which absorbs all but 0.035 per cent of light, a new world record, and is so dark the human eye struggles to discern what it is that it is seeing, giving the appearance of a black hole. (Credit: Surrey Nano Systems)

via independent

Boron ‘buckyball’ discovered

Researchers have shown that clusters of 40 boron atoms form a molecular cage similar to the carbon buckyball. This is the first experimental evidence that such a boron cage structure exists. (Credit: Wang lab / Brown University)

How To Measure A Sun-Like Star’s Age

Image Caption: Artist's conception of a hypothetical exoplanet orbiting a yellow, Sun-like star. Astronomers have measured the ages of 22 Sun-like stars using their spins, in a method called gyrochronology. Before now, only two Sun-like stars had measured spins and ages. (Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)) — Artist’s conception of a hypothetical exoplanet orbiting a yellow, Sun-like star. Astronomers have measured the ages of 22 Sun-like stars using their spins, in a method called gyrochronology. Before now, only two Sun-like stars had measured spins and ages. (Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA))

Keeping an eye on passing asteroids

Bathurst Observatory Research Facility manager Ray Pickard said work will begin on the Bathurst Asteroid Research Telescope next week. (Credit: ZENIO LAPKA)

via westernadvocate

D-Wave Systems Secures $30M (CAD) Funding to Accelerate Quantum Computing

What’s going on inside the D-Wave Two is still a matter of debate. (Credit D-Wave Systems)

via marketwatch

A light bending exercise… in space!

An air bubble was blown into the water droplet to create this effect. (Credit: Imgur) — On Board the International Space Station, ESA astronaut Andre Kuipers blows an air bubble into a water droplet to create this effect. (Credit: ESA/NASA)