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THREE hundred feet below the outskirts of Geneva lies part of a 17-mile-long tubular track, circling its way across the French border and back again, whose interior is so pristine and whose nearly 10,000 surrounding magnets so frigid, that it’s one of the emptiest and coldest regions of space in the solar system. The track is part of the Large Hadron Collider, a technological marvel built by physicists and engineers, and described alternatively as heralding the next revolution in our understanding of the universe or, less felicitously, as a doomsday machine that may destroy the planet. After more than a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Astronomers have found some matter that had been missing in deep space and say it is strung along web-like filaments that form the backbone of the universe. The ethereal strands of hydrogen and oxygen atoms could account for up to half the matter that scientists knew must be there but simply could not see, the researchers reported on Tuesday. Scientists have long known there is far more matter in the universe than can be accounted for by visible galaxies and stars. Not only is there invisible baryonic matter -- the protons and neutrons that make up atoms...

Astronomers have found a piece of the universe's puzzle that's been missing for awhile: a type of extremely hot, dense matter that is all but invisible to us. Engaging in something like cosmic accounting, astronomers have tried to balance the scant amount of matter that has been directly observed with the vast amount that remains unobserved directly. The latter constitutes about 90 percent of the universe's matter. Galaxies, the stars within them, the planet we live on and the chairs we sit on are made up of normal matter — the protons, electrons and neutrons that are collectively called baryons....

GENEVA -- Michelangelo L. Mangano, a respected particle physicist who helped discover the top quark in 1995, now spends most days trying to convince people that his new machine won't destroy the world. "If it were just crackpots, we could wave them away," the physicist said in an interview at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French acronym, CERN. "But some are real physicists."

Can the Genesis Record of Creation be Valuable to Academia?: From the View of Astronomy, Biology, Physics, and Social Sciences     Christian Student Fellowship will host a symposium on the development of an integrative science consistent with the Genesis account on April 5th, 2008, at Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky.   Entitled A Scientific Theory of Genesis, the lecture will demonstrate how the Scientific Method can be used in connection with the Genesis account of creation to establish a Unified Creation Theory. By using experimental results from the most respected laboratories in the U.S., this lecture will...

The first stars to appear in the Universe may have been powered by dark matter, according to US scientists. Normal stars are powered by nuclear fusion reactions, where hydrogen atoms meld to form heavier helium. But when the Universe was still young, there would have been abundant dark matter, made of particles called Wimps: Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. These would have fused together and obliterated each other long before nuclear fusion had the chance to start. As a result, the first stars would have looked quite different from the ones we see today, and they may have changed the course...

Beamish and Day are the only researchers in Canada conducting experimental research in this area of fundamental physics. At very low temperatures, helium gas turns into a liquid. Put under extreme pressure the liquid turns into a solid. Physicists have been manipulating solid helium so they can study its unusual behaviour. In 2004, a research team at Penn State university in the United States, led by Dr. Moses Chan, electrified the physics world when it announced that it may have discovered an entirely new state of matter - supersolidity. The team made the discovery by cooling solid helium to an...

You would think that a star anywhere from 400 to 200,000 times wider than the Sun would be fairly easy to detect. But not if it’s a ‘dark star,’ the name for a new, theoretical entity about to make its appearance in Physical Review Letters. Astrophysicist Paolo Gondolo (University of Utah) makes the case that dark matter would have affected the temperature and density of the gases that formed the first stars. Dark stars would mostly contain normal matter — hydrogen and helium — but they would have been much larger than the Sun, glowing largely in the infrared. Hypothetical...

Astronomers have discovered a chaotic scene unlike any witnessed before in a cosmic "train wrecK" between giant galaxy clusters. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical telescopes revealed a dark matter core that was mostly devoid of galaxies, which may pose problems for current theories of dark matter behavior. Astronomers have discovered a chaotic scene unlike any witnessed before in a cosmic “train wreck” between giant galaxy clusters. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical telescopes revealed a dark matter core that was mostly devoid of galaxies, which may pose problems for current theories of dark matter behavior. "These results challenge our...

We exist, therefore we question. Or at least, that paraphrases (poorly) an old quote from an old scholar... We know the masses and general composition of the four inner (rocky) planets in our solar system, and from basic chemistry, we know the number of atoms in a gram of any material. Multiplying Avogadro's number x the mass of these four planets, dividing by a weighted average atomic weight for the materials in each planet, we get about 3 x 10^ 50 heavy nuclei produced since creation/the big bang. Take your pick, that's the number of atomic nuclei we have to...

Caption: Fig. 1: Image of the mass distribution over a patch of sky about one quarter of the area of the Full Moon. These images were made by PhD student Stefan Hilbert using the Millennium Simulation, the largest computer simulation of cosmic structure formation ever carried out. The left panel represents the kind of image which could be made by a low-frequency radio telescope with a diameter of 100 kilometres, using the gravitational distortion of images of pregalactic structure in the neutral hydrogen distribution. The right panel represents the kind of image which could be made for the same region...

This thread is a continuation of the first thread "Questions For Atheists & Non-Atheists" Some points were brought up that I wish to address here. I look forward to the responses. Taken from one of my dictionaries in my personal library: "Occam's Razor. A principle devised by the English philospher William of Occam, which states that entities must not be multiplied beyond what is necessary. In a scientific context, Occam's Razor is the choice of the simplest theory from among the theories which fit what we know. In logic, Occam's Razor is the statement of an argument in its essential...

Antimatter and matter combine in chemical reaction 19:47 13 October 2006 NewScientist.com news service Stephen Battersby Mixing antimatter and matter usually has predictably violent consequences – the two annihilate one another in a fierce burst of energy. But physicists in Geneva have found a new way to make the two combine, at least briefly, into a single substance. This exceptionally unstable stuff, made of protons and antiprotons, is called protonium. The feat of "antichemistry" actually took place back in 2002, but nobody had realised it until now. It happened in an experiment at the CERN particle physics lab, when both...

Everyone is scientific circles is abuzz with the big news: there's proof that dark matter exists! The paper from the scientists who made the discovered is here; and a Sean Carroll (no relation) has a very good explanation on his blog, Cosmic Variance. This discovery happens to work as a great example of just why good science needs good math. As I always say, one of the ways to recognize a crackpot theory in physics is by the lack of math. For an example, you can look at the electric universe folks. They have a theory, and they make predictions:...

JOKES about Jews and the Holocaust have become increasingly common at the Edinburgh Fringe as comedians tackle one of the last taboos. Some think that controversy over Israeli attacks on Lebanon have made Jewish history and beliefs worthy topics for stand-up routines. But one comedian has apologised after his outburst offended Jewish comedians and audience members. Steve Hughes, an Australian stand-up, told The Times that he regretted describing Richard Perle, an advisor to President George Bush, as “that f***ing Jew Richard Perle”. The comment, in his show The Storm, offended audience members including Jamie Glassman, a Jewish comedy writer. Glassman...

Homeland Security: The war in Lebanon is an object lesson in border protection. Hezbollah secretly beefed up its forces there as Israel lowered its northern guard. Then Hezbollah attacked. We should take note. Lest Americans think this is "Israel's war," it's worth repeating that it was Hezbollah that bombed the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing some 250 Americans. Hezbollah also kidnapped Americans Terry Anderson and Beirut CIA Station Chief William Buckley. Buckley died in captivity with nine others. Some of the masterminds are still at large. --snip-- So now we have a Shiite enemy living among us,...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (March 12, 2006) -- Since its launch in October 2000, the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program has been preparing Marines for unarmed combat in a wartime scenario. The whole purpose of the program is to train Marines how to use the most lethal weapon in their arsenal, the mind. But to become more than just a user, to become a Martial Arts Instructor, Marines will need more than brainpower alone to succeed. MCMAP is an integrated martial art designed for, and executed by, all Marines throughout their careers, according to Marine Corps Order 1500.54B....

'Only a matter of time before terrorists use weapons of mass destruction' By Con Coughlin (Filed: 17/01/2006) Biological weapons pose a far more serious long-term terrorist threat to the West than nuclear weapons, according to Washington's leading counter-terrorism expert. And Henry "Hank" Crumpton, the newly-appointed head of counter-terrorism at the US State Department, believes that it is simply a matter of time before international terrorist groups such as al-Qa'eda acquire weapons of mass destruction and use them in attacks. Henry Crumpton refuses to rule out the military option to tame Iran's nuclear amitions In an exclusive interview with The Daily...

A Dallas cab driver is in big trouble for getting caught on tape sprinkling dried feces on pastries. 49-year-old Behrouz Nahidmobarekeh is on trial for allegedly throwing fecal matter on pastries at a Fiesta grocery store. Police said they found a pile of human feces by his bed. He would dry it, either by microwave or just letting it sit out and grate it up with a cheese grater and then sprinkle it at the store, officials said. Neither attorneys in the case is clear about a motive or why the defendant would resort to something so repulsive. Prosecutors will...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16, 2005 – Officials are counting the votes in Iraq's historic constitutional referendum and people are asking whether the people of Iraq have accepted or rejected their new constitution. But to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, the results of yesterday's referendum are less important than the fact that Iraq had a highly successful and relatively peaceful election in which the Sunnis participated in very large numbers. "Whatever happens with the referendum ... the Iraqi people clearly are taking advantage of the political process to make their views known, and that's bad...

Passport proposal a controversial security matter Bush administration reconsiders its plans By LARA JAKES JORDAN Associated Press Writer Traffic lines up on the Rainbow Bridge plaza for entry into the United States from Niagara Falls, Ontario, in Niagara Falls, N.Y. AP Photo/DON HEUPEL NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. -- Millions of Americans like Kathy Currier could soon run into trouble returning home from Canada because they don't have passports. On a recent trip back across the border, Currier, 49, cleared security screening with her driver's license and birth certificate. But if she needs a passport in the future to get back into...

An AIDS patient writes a letter to the HIV virus, forgiving it for the harm it’s done him and thanking it for inspiring him to live a fuller life. A recovering alcoholic reminds herself to “let go and let God.” Parents pray to see their son as “the perfect child of God” rather than call a doctor to prescribe medication for his earache. A collective of incorporeal beings sends this message to a best-selling author: “There is nothing you cannot be, do, or have.” What do these people have in common? All of them are heirs of the religious philosophy...

An illustration of the inivisible galaxy The invisible galaxy could only be 'seen' using radio waves Astronomers say they have discovered an object that appears to be an invisible galaxy made almost entirely of dark matter. The team, led by Cardiff University, claimed it is the first to be detected. A dark galaxy is an area in the Universe containing a large amount of mass that rotates like a galaxy, but contains no stars. It was found 50 million light years away using radio telescopes in Cheshire and Puerto Rico. The unknown material that is thought to hold these...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

TED: 2:55 pm EDT June 16, 2004 UPDATED: 3:03 pm EDT June 16, 2004 In a step toward making ultra-powerful computers, scientists have transferred physical characteristics between atoms by using a phenomenon so bizarre that even Albert Einstein called it spooky. Such "quantum teleportation" of characteristics had been demonstrated before between beams of light. The work with atoms is "a landmark advance," H.J. Kimble of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and S.J. van Enk of Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., declare in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Two teams of scientists report similar results in...

John Kerry's (search) campaign has said he -- "never, ever" attended a 1971 meeting of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War that debated a plan to assassinate pro-war congressmen, insisting Kerry had resigned from the group months earlier. But it now turns out Kerry was being followed by the FBI at the time, and newly released FBI records indicate Kerry was in fact at that November meeting in Kansas City. Kerry reportedly rejected the assassination plan, and then resigned shortly afterward -- not months earlier. Kerry's campaign now says he -- "had no personal recollection of this meeting ... [but]...

14 January 2004--In the 15 January 2004 issue of the journal Nature, two physicists from Penn State University will announce their discovery of a new phase of matter, a "supersolid" form of helium-4 with the extraordinary frictionless-flow properties of a superfluid. "We discovered that solid helium-4 appears to behave like a superfluid when it is so cold that the laws of quantum mechanics govern its behavior," says Moses H. W. Chan, Evan Pugh Professor of Physics at Penn State. "We apparently have observed, for the first time, a solid material with the characteristics of a superfluid." "The possible discovery of...

In mind over matter, scientists say the brain really matters By Steve Connor, Science Editor 02 September 2003 Scientists trying to find whether there is any truth to "mind over matter" say brain activity can control resistance to influenza. They have demonstrated a direct link between the brain's emotional state and the body's immune defences to explain why depressed people are more likely to catch a cold. Although there is considerable research showing a person's mood can influence their susceptibility to a virus, no previous study has found a direct link to the brain. Neuroscientists led by Richard Davidson, of...

Stephen Beres writes: Cleaning out my basement, I came across some Dark Matter. I couldn't sweep it up, or vacuum it or anything. It just lay there, very dark. Just kidding. Seriously now, if you had a kilogram of Dark Matter, what would its physical and chemical properties be? Would it be invisible? Containable? Measurable? In short, how would Dark Matter manifest itself in our world? Would it just sink invisible into the Earth's gravitational field? Is there any way to contain it or study it? How would you know Dark Matter if it were present? Could it be present...

TORONTO (CP) - A pair of Canadian astronomers and an American scientist have for the first time measured the shape and size of dark matter surrounding galaxies and its effect on light emitted from more distant sources - findings that tip the scale in favour of the existence of the mysterious substance. The existence of dark matter has been hotly debated among astronomers for years. It's believed to comprise about 25 per cent of the total mass of the universe, with the rest consisting of normal matter (five per cent) and dark energy (70 per cent). Dark energy is believed...

Indiana University Scientists First To Detect Rare Nuclear Fusion Violating Charge Symmetry BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Scientists at the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility in Bloomington have made the first unambiguous detection of a rare process, the fusion of two nuclei of heavy hydrogen to form a nucleus of helium and an uncharged pion. The pion is one of the subatomic particles responsible for the strong force that holds every nucleus together. The achievement will be announced Saturday (April 5) at the meeting of the American Physical Society in Philadelphia. "Scientists have searched for this rare fusion process since the 1950s," said...

In January 2002, a dull star in an obscure constellation suddenly became 600,000 times more luminous than our Sun, temporarily making it the brightest star in our Milky Way galaxy.The mysterious star has long since faded back to obscurity, but observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of a phenomenon called a "light echo" have uncovered remarkable new features. These details promise to provide astronomers with a CAT-scan-like probe of the three-dimensional structure of shells of dust surrounding an aging star. The results appear this week in the journal Nature. "Like some past celebrities, this star had its 15 minutes of...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 February 19 Pauli Exclusion Principle: Why You Don't Implode Credit & Copyright: Andrew Truscott & Randall Hulet (Rice U.) Explanation: Why doesn't matter just bunch up? The same principle that keeps neutron stars and white dwarf stars from imploding also keeps people from imploding and makes normal matter mostly empty space. The observed reason is known as the Pauli Exclusion Principle. The principle states that identical fermions...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 February 12 WMAP Resolves the Universe Credit: WMAP Science Team, NASA Explanation: Analyses of a new high-resolution map of microwave light emitted only 380,000 years after the Big Bang appear to define our universe more precisely than ever before. The eagerly awaited results from the orbiting Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe resolve several long-standing disagreements in cosmology rooted in less precise data. Specifically, present analyses of above WMAP...

Friday, 22 November, 2002, 14:39 GMTDid quark matter strike Earth? By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor A group of researchers have identified two seismic events that they think provide the first evidence of a previously undetected form of matter passing through the Earth. We can't prove that this was strange quark matter, but that is the only explanation that has been offered so far The so-called strange quark matter is so dense that a piece the size of a human cell would weigh a tonne. The two events under study both took place in 1993. Other scientists...

Wednesday, 13 November, 2002, 14:40 GMT Mirror matter mystery Eros: Possible site of mirror matter impacts By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor Two Australian scientists believe they have found evidence of a parallel universe of strange matter within our own Solar System. Dr Robert Foot and Dr Saibal Mitra, of the University of Melbourne, report that close-up observations of the asteroid Eros by the Near-Shoemaker probe indicate it has been splattered by so-called "mirror matter". Mirror matter is not anti-matter, it is altogether weirder. It is somehow a "reflection" of normal matter, a sort of parallel series...

Wednesday, 13 November, 2002, 14:40 GMTMirror matter mystery Eros: Possible site of mirror matter impacts By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor Two Australian scientists believe they have found evidence of a parallel universe of strange matter within our own Solar System. Dr Robert Foot and Dr Saibal Mitra, of the University of Melbourne, report that close-up observations of the asteroid Eros by the Near-Shoemaker probe indicate it has been splattered by so-called "mirror matter". Mirror matter is not anti-matter, it is altogether weirder. It is somehow a "reflection" of normal matter, a sort of parallel series of...

Strange Stars? Odd features hint at novel matter Peter Weiss Exotic forms of matter never observed before in the wild may have turned up in the remnants of two collapsed stars, according to new findings publicized last week by NASA. At an April 10 briefing at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., researchers argued that observations by the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory indicate that the astronomical object dubbed RXJ1856.5-3754 may lack the neutrons, protons, and electrons of ordinary matter. Another object, 3C58, may contain odd forms of matter surrounded by neutrons. Since its discovery in 1996, astronomers had thought that RXJ1856...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 April 21 The Center of Centaurus A Credit: E.J. Schreier (STScI) et al., HST, NASA Explanation: A fantastic jumble of young blue star clusters, gigantic glowing gas clouds, and imposing dark dust lanes surrounds the central region of the active galaxy Centaurus A. This mosaic of Hubble Space Telescope images taken in blue, green, and red light has been processed to present a natural color picture of...

Scientists have created a new kind of matter: It comes in waves and bridges the gap between the everyday world of humans and the micro-domain of quantum physics.Bose-Einstein condensates ("BECs" for short) aren't like solids, liquids and gases. They are not vaporous, hard nor fluid. There are no ordinary words to describe them. Bose-Einstein condensates are curious objects that obey the laws of the small even as they intrude on the big. BECs come from another world, the world of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics describes the rules of light and matter on atomic scales. Matter can be in two places...