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Keyword: physics

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  • 'Doomsday Machine' Lawsuit Tossed Out by Judge

    09/29/2008 10:14:51 AM PDT · by cups · 14 replies · 225+ views
    HONOLULU — A federal judge in Hawaii has dismissed a lawsuit trying to stop the world's largest atom smasher. U.S. District Court Judge Helen Gilmor ruled Friday that federal courts don't have jurisdiction over the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, near Geneva. Two Hawaii residents sued because they feared that the machine could create small black holes or other phenomena that could destroy the planet.
  • 2008 Physics Nobel Prize Honors American and Japanese Particle Theorists

    10/08/2008 9:00:41 PM PDT · by neverdem · 4 replies · 223+ views
    ScienceNOW Daily News ^ | 7 October 2008 | Adrian Cho
    Enlarge ImageBreaking their way. Makoto Kobayashi (left), Toshihide Maskawa (center), and Yoichiro Nambu share the prize for work on two different aspects of "broken symmetry."Credit: KYODO/Reuters This year's Nobel Prize in physics honors three particle theorist of Japanese origin, one for pioneering the use of a key conceptual tool and the other two for making, in essence, an inspired educated guess that expanded the family of fundamental subatomic particles. Yoichiro Nambu, 87, of the University of Chicago in Illinois receives half the $1.4 million prize for, in the early 1960s, applying to particle physics the concept of spontaneous symmetry...
  • Horus Channels Sir Isaac Newton

    09/24/2008 5:27:14 PM PDT · by pharmamom · 2 replies · 66+ views
    WhenWeAreQueen ^ | September 24, 2008 | pharmamom
    People anthropomorphize animals all the time. Amusingly, usually. And most of us are guilty (although I have a workmate who never indulges in this behavior. She did call me the other day, though, to have me instruct her in the pronunciation of the word, so that she might not sound like a fool while she ridicules those of her acquaintance who imagine their dogs to be smiling at them.) I myself frequently imagine Horus to be gazing at me in loving adoration, while he more probably is projecting the little dotted butcher’s lines onto the contours of my flesh and...
  • The Multiverse: Big Bangs Without End

    09/23/2008 3:14:32 PM PDT · by LibWhacker · 42 replies · 107+ views
    Sky and Telescope ^ | 9/18/08 | Dan Falk
    Three different trends in physics each suggest that our universe is just one of many.We usually think of the universe as being “everything there is.” But many astronomers and physicists now suspect that the universe we observe is just a small part of an unbelievably larger and richer cosmic structure, often called the “multiverse.” This mind-bending notion – that our universe may be just one of many, perhaps an infinite number, of real, physical universes – was front and center at a three-day conference entitled "A Debate in Cosmology — The Multiverse," held at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics...
  • 'Big Bang Machine' Damage Forces 2-Month Halt

    09/20/2008 8:14:14 AM PDT · by AngieGal · 12 replies · 26+ views
    Fox News ^ | 9/20/08 | AP
    GENEVA — The world's largest atom smasher — which was launched with great fanfare earlier this month — has been damaged worse than previously thought and will be out of commission for at least two months, its operators said Saturday.
  • The Origins of the Universe: A Crash Course

    09/12/2008 10:07:14 PM PDT · by neverdem · 32 replies · 53+ views
    NY Times ^ | September 12, 2008 | BRIAN GREENE
    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...
  • Particle physics, podcasts and pajama party [Large Hadron Collider First Beam Events]

    09/11/2008 11:41:54 AM PDT · by Mike Fieschko · 3 replies · 11+ views
    eurekalert.org ^ | 11-Sep-2008 | Anne Heavey
    September 10 marked the startup of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland--the first attempt to circulate protons through its full 27 km circumference. International Science Grid This Week (www.isgtw.org) brings you podcasts straight from the local control centers and a report from the scene at Fermilab’s Remote Operations Center in Batavia, Illinois. We all know about the event at CERN, but what else is happening to mark this event? That is where LHC First Beam Events <http://www.uslhc.us/first_beam> comes in. It has information about what several U.S. institutions, involved in the construction and startup of the LHC, are doing. Probably...
  • Scientists start up giant particle-smashing machine (CERN Hadron Collider)

    09/10/2008 12:40:45 AM PDT · by HAL9000 · 45 replies · 197+ views
    Reuters (excerpt) ^ | September 10, 2008 | Robert Evans
    Excerpt - GENEVA, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) started up a huge particle-smashing machine on Wednesday, aiming to re-enact the conditions of the "Big Bang" that created the universe. Experiments in the Large Hadron Collider, a 10 billion Swiss franc ($9 billion) accelerator built underneath the Swiss-French border, could unlock the remaining secrets of particle physics and answer questions about the universe and its origins.
  • Fermilab physicists discover "doubly strange" particle

    09/03/2008 12:54:20 PM PDT · by decimon · 29 replies · 28+ views
    Fermilab ^ | Sept. 3, 2008 | Unknown
    Batavia, Ill. - Physicists of the DZero experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have discovered a new particle made of three quarks, the Omega-sub-b (Ωb). The particle contains two strange quarks and a bottom quark (s-s-b). It is an exotic relative of the much more common proton and weighs about six times the proton mass. The discovery of the doubly strange particle brings scientists a step closer to understanding exactly how quarks form matter and to completing the "periodic table of baryons." Baryons (derived from the Greek word "barys," meaning "heavy") are particles that contain...
  • Do nuclear decay rates depend on our distance from the sun?

    09/02/2008 8:14:57 PM PDT · by B-Chan · 112 replies · 30+ views
    The Physics Arxiv Blog ^ | August 29th, 2008 | KFC
    Here’s an interesting conundrum involving nuclear decay rates. We think that the decay rates of elements are constant regardless of the ambient conditions (except in a few special cases where beta decay can be influenced by powerful electric fields). So that makes it hard to explain the curious periodic variations in the decay rates of silicon-32 and radium-226 observed by groups at the Brookhaven National Labs in the US and at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesandstalt in Germany in the 1980s. Today, the story gets even more puzzling. Jere Jenkins and pals at Purdue University in Indiana have re-analysed the raw data...
  • Do nuclear decay rates depend on our distance from the sun?

    08/29/2008 11:29:54 AM PDT · by Mike Fieschko · 2 replies · 13+ views
    the physics arXiv blog ^ | August 29th, 2008 | kfc
    Here's an interesting conundrum involving nuclear decay rates. We think that the decay rates of elements are constant regardless of the ambient conditions (except in a few special cases where beta decay can be influenced by powerful electric fields). So that makes it hard to explain the curious periodic variations in the decay rates of silicon-32 and radium-226 observed by groups at the Brookhaven National Labs in the US and at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesandstalt in Germany in the 1980s. Today, the story gets even more puzzling. Jere Jenkins and pals at Purdue University in Indiana have re-analyzed the raw...
  • Will lasers brighten nuclear’s future?

    08/29/2008 8:09:52 AM PDT · by Pontiac · 5 replies · 13+ views
    The Christian Science Monitor ^ | August 27, 2008 | Mark Clayton
    Inside a bland industrial building in Wilmington, N.C., an experiment is in the works that could vastly reduce the cost, time, and space needed to make fuel for nuclear power plants and, some nonproliferation experts say, for nuclear bombs as well. In that building, secret uranium-enrichment technology licensed by GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy is nearing a pilot test. If successful, the new technology will enable the company to supply low-cost nuclear fuel to power reactors worldwide, officials say. -Snip- If SILEX is successful, GE-Hitachi could produce low-enriched uranium fuel for power plants at half the cost of centrifuge-based technology, Dr. Eerkens...
  • Do nuclear decay rates depend on our distance from the sun?

    08/29/2008 9:29:09 AM PDT · by LibWhacker · 108 replies · 91+ views
    Here’s an interesting conundrum involving nuclear decay rates. We think that the decay rates of elements are constant regardless of the ambient conditions (except in a few special cases where beta decay can be influenced by powerful electric fields). So that makes it hard to explain the curious periodic variations in the decay rates of silicon-32 and radium-226 observed by groups at the Brookhaven National Labs in the US and at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesandstalt in Germany in the 1980s. Today, the story gets even more puzzling. Jere Jenkins and pals at Purdue University in Indiana have re-analysed the raw data...
  • Quantum cryptography can go the distance

    08/27/2008 9:41:11 PM PDT · by neverdem · 9 replies · 23+ views
    Nature News ^ | 27 August 2008 | Geoff Brumfiel
    Proof-of-concept system could lead to ultra-secure international communication. Entangled photons of light could help to create ultra-secure communication systems.Punhstock Physicists have built a communication network, secured by quantum cryptography, that could one day work on a global scale. Quantum cryptography scrambles data using the laws of quantum mechanics, relying on a concept known as entanglement to ensure absolutely security. Entanglement allows two particles to be quantum-mechanically connected even when they are physically separated. Although the specific condition of either particle cannot be precisely known, taking measurements of one will instantly tell you something about the other. The trick can't be...
  • Do subatomic particles have free will?

    08/16/2008 6:40:10 PM PDT · by LibWhacker · 40 replies · 20+ views
    Science News ^ | 8/15/08 | Julie Rehmeyer
    If we have free will, so do subatomic particles, mathematicians claim to prove.“If the atoms never swerve so as to originate some new movement that will snap the bonds of fate, the everlasting sequence of cause and effect—what is the source of the free will possessed by living things throughout the earth?”—Titus Lucretius Carus, Roman philosopher and poet, 99–55 BC. Human free will might seem like the squishiest of philosophical subjects, way beyond the realm of mathematical demonstration. But two highly regarded Princeton mathematicians, John Conway and Simon Kochen, claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest...
  • Quantum Imaging: Enhanced Image Formation Using Quantum States of Light

    08/14/2008 5:59:33 PM PDT · by Maelstorm · 14 replies · 7+ views
    http://www.optics.rochester.edu/ ^ | April 14th, 2008 | Robert Boyd
    http://www.optics.rochester.edu/workgroups/boyd/presentations/Boyd_UMD-Q-Im_08.pdf
  • Physicists spooked by faster-than-light information transfer

    08/14/2008 5:42:56 PM PDT · by LibWhacker · 52 replies · 46+ views
    Nature ^ | 8/13/08 | Geoff Brumfiel
    Quantum weirdness even stranger than previously thought.Two photons can be connected in a way that seems to defy the very nature of space and time, yet still obeys the laws of quantum mechanics. Physicists at the University of Geneva achieved the weird result by creating a pair of ‘entangled’ photons, separating them, then sending them down a fibre optic cable to the Swiss villages of Satigny and Jussy, some 18 kilometres apart. The researchers found that when each photon reached its destination, it could instantly sense its twin’s behaviour without any direct communication. The finding does not violate the laws...
  • Physicists: Faster-Than-Light Travel Might Be Possible

    08/14/2008 5:51:05 AM PDT · by BloodOrFreedom · 81 replies · 12+ views
    FoxNews ^ | August 13, 2008 | Jeremy Hsu
    Travel by bubble might seem more appropriate for witches in Oz, but two physicists suggest that a future spaceship could fold a space-time bubble around itself to travel faster than the speed of light. We're talking about the very distant future, of course. The idea involves manipulating dark energy — the mysterious force behind the universe's ongoing expansion — to propel a spaceship forward without breaking the laws of physics. "Think of it like a surfer riding a wave," said Gerald Cleaver, a physicist at Baylor University. "The ship would be pushed by the spatial bubble and the bubble would...
  • Spooky Physics: Signals Seem to Travel Faster Than Light

    08/13/2008 12:11:36 PM PDT · by decimon · 35 replies · 16+ views
    LiveScience ^ | Aug 13, 2008 | Charles Q. Choi
    Strange events that Einstein himself called "spooky" might happen at least 10,000 times the speed of light, according to the latest attempt to understand them.
  • Scientists: Nature's Fundamental Laws May Be Changing

    08/12/2008 8:56:29 PM PDT · by grey_whiskers · 43 replies · 15+ views
    ScienceLive via Fox News ^ | July 13, 2006 | Michael Schirber
    Public confidence in the "constants" of nature may be at an all-time low. Recent research has found evidence that the value of certain fundamental parameters, such as the speed of light or the strength of the invisible glue that holds atomic nuclei together, may have been different in the past. "There is absolutely no reason these constants should be constant," says astronomer Michael Murphy of the University of Cambridge. "These are famous numbers in physics, but we have no real reason for why they are what they are." The observed differences are small — roughly a few parts in a...
  • Invisibility cloak dreams could become reality with light-bending material

    08/10/2008 9:26:20 PM PDT · by Free ThinkerNY · 24 replies · 19+ views
    telegraph.co.uk ^ | August 10, 2008 | Aislinn Simpson
    The creation of the magical technology has been the subject of intense research ever since Victorian author HG Wells captivated readers with his tales of a scientist who becomes invisible after consuming a cocktail of drugs. Now scientists at the University of California in Berkeley have developed a material that can bend light around three dimensional objects making them "disappear", according to an article on Nature magazine's website. The research, funded by the American military, paves the way for stealth tanks, aircraft and even warships that can disappear from enemy soldiers' sights. The technology works like water flowing around a...
  • Secret to Towering Rogue Waves Revealed (waves can amplify instead of dissipating)

    08/04/2008 10:23:27 PM PDT · by TigerLikesRooster · 34 replies · 85+ views
    Live Science ^ | 08/04/08 | Charles Q. Choi
    Secret to Towering Rogue Waves Revealed Charles Q. Choi Special to LiveScience LiveScience.com Mon Aug 4, 11:41 AM ET Deadly rogue waves 100 feet tall or higher could suddenly rise seemingly out of nowhere from the ocean, research now reveals. Understanding how such monstrous waves form could lead to ways to predict when they might emerge or, potentially, even drive them at enemy vessels, scientists added. For centuries these killer waves had been dismissed as myths - towering walls of water blamed for mysterious disappearances of ships. But on New Year's Day on 1995, a wave that reached more than...
  • China Becomes A Physics Powerhouse

    08/04/2008 7:12:09 AM PDT · by Brilliant · 19 replies · 22+ views
    ScienceDaily ^ | Aug. 4, 2008 | ScienceDaily
    Judged by the astonishing increase in journal papers written by scientists in China, there can be little doubt that China is finding its place as one of the world's scientific power houses. Michael Banks, Physics World's News Editor, quantifies this surge in scientific output from China and asks whether quality matches quantity in August's Physics World. Nanoscience, quantum computing and high-temperature superconductivity are three of the cutting-edge areas of physics that have seen particularly large increases. Published journal articles in nanoscience, for example, with at least one co-author based in China, have seen a 10-fold increase since the beginning of...
  • Absoutely Priceless Example of How Poor Alarmists' Science Can Be

    08/03/2008 6:33:19 PM PDT · by Delacon · 39 replies · 6+ views
    This is absolutely amazing.  I was checking out this article in the Ithaca Journal called "Climate Change 101: Positive Feedback Cycles" based on a pointer from Tom Nelson.The Journal is right to focus on feedback.  As I have written on numerous occasions, the base effects of CO2 even in the IPCC projections is minimal.  Only by assuming unbelievably high positive feedback numbers does the IPCC and other climate modelers get catastrophic warming forecasts.  Such an assumption is hard to swallow - very few (like, zero) long-term stable natural processes (like climate) are dominated by high positive feedbacks (the IPCC...
  • Large Hadron Collider Rap Teaches Particle Physics in 4 Minutes

    08/02/2008 9:43:47 AM PDT · by AngieGal · 7 replies · 12+ views
    Popular Mechanics ^ | 8/1/08 | Jennifer Bogo
    If there's one thing we can appreciate here at Popular Mechanics, it's geeks willing to embarrass themselves in the name of science communication. So hats off to Kate McAlpine and crew, who took to the tunnels under CERN to bring us the most entertaining explanation of physics we've seen since Schoolhouse Rock.
  • Invention no pipe dream for Willow physicist (Fractal tubes)

    07/20/2008 10:39:15 AM PDT · by AlaskaErik · 18 replies · 7+ views
    Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman ^ | July 20, 2008 | Michael Rovito
    WILLOW — Daniel Russell calls himself the country physicist, and if what he’s invented gets noticed by someone with the ability to mass produce it, he could help revolutionize the building industry. Russell, a German immigrant living in Willow, holds three U.S. patents and has two pending. Two of those patents could impact the building world by providing a process and product to construct super-strong, nearly indestructible buildings without killing a single tree. Daniel Russell holds the patent on fractal tubes, which are hollow fibers formed into tubes that are then formed into hollow cylinders. These fractal tubes, which can...
  • The American Physical Society Owes Lord Monckton an Immediate Apology

    07/19/2008 11:49:32 PM PDT · by neverdem · 57 replies · 38+ views
    American Thinker ^ | July 19, 2008 | Marc Sheppard
    The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley has penned a letter to the President of the American Physical Society demanding that an offensive disclaimer to one of his papers be removed from the APS website or justified to his satisfaction. And he's also expecting a well deserved apology for the horrendous mistreatment the Society has recently subjected him to. First, the editors of APS newsletter Physics and Society invited Lord Monckton to present them a paper explaining his disagreement with the AGW findings of the IPCC.  And the former science advisor to Margaret Thatcher happily accepted the offer, submitting a brilliant, must...
  • Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate

    07/18/2008 12:14:11 AM PDT · by bgolds99 · 20 replies · 24+ views
    DailyTech ^ | July 16, 2008 | Michael Asher
    The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."
  • Single atoms spied on graphene sliver

    07/17/2008 10:06:48 PM PDT · by neverdem · 9 replies · 11+ views
    Nature News ^ | 16 July 2008 | Katharine Sanderson
    Electron microscope spots hydrogen atoms resting on invisible carbon sheet. The smallest of atoms can now be seen sitting in splendid isolation with a standard transmission electron microscope, thanks to the most fashionable form of carbon, graphene. The technique, developed by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, could help to produce images of individual molecules in atomic detail using relatively conventional laboratory kit. The research is reported in this week's Nature1. A transmission electron microscope (TEM) works by firing a beam of electrons through a very thin sample supported by a scaffold....
  • My first book on physics

    07/10/2008 6:51:50 PM PDT · by free me · 88 replies · 11+ views
    vanity | 07/10/2008 | Free Me
    My wife just took up an interest in physics. What would be a good book for her to start with? I've never posted a vanity thread before, but I'm sure there is no better people to ask than my fine freeper friends. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!!
  • Right Again, Einstein

    07/05/2008 5:49:29 PM PDT · by neverdem · 32 replies · 28+ views
    ScienceNOW Daily News ^ | 3 July 2008 | Phil Berardelli
    Enlarge ImageIt's relative. Astronomers have been measuring spin precession in an eclipsing pair of pulsars.Credit: Daniel Cantin/McGill University As if his reputation needed cementing, astronomers have confirmed Albert Einstein's status as a supergenius once more. Studying a unique pair of pulsars--small and extremely dense leftovers from supernova explosions--researchers have measured an effect that was predicted by Einstein's 92-year-old general theory of relativity. The result, they report tomorrow in Science, is almost exactly what the famous physicist had foreseen. In Einstein's relativistic universe, matter curves space and slows down time, and the speed of light remains the only constant. But...
  • Time to defreeze? (cold fusion)

    06/30/2008 12:17:02 AM PDT · by neverdem · 38 replies · 37+ views
    Deccan Herald ^ | Jun 24, 2008 | Jayalakshmi K
    Unlimited energy from a simple unit? Yes, latest work suggests that cold fusion is not so dead and cold! Jayalakshmi K shares the details. As the world grapples with the energy crisis, a group of maverick scientists working on the fringes of accepted science has yet again come up with tantalising results. Last month in Japan, Yoshiaki Arata, a highly respected physicist in Japan and recipient of Japan's highest award, the Emperor's Prize, demonstrated the production of continuous excess heat from a simple experiment. This low-energy nuclear reaction experiment was one more in the sporadic efforts to prove 'cold fusion',...
  • Earth Will Survive After All, Physicists Say

    06/22/2008 11:44:33 AM PDT · by neverdem · 35 replies · 20+ views
    NY Times ^ | June 21, 2008 | DENNIS OVERBYE
    That black hole that was going to eat the Earth? Forget about it, and keep making the mortgage payments — those of you who still have them. A new particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider scheduled to go into operation this fall outside Geneva, is no threat to the Earth or the universe, according to a new safety review approved Friday by the governing council of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or Cern, which is building the collider. “There is no basis for any concerns about the consequences of new particles or forms of matter that could possibly be...
  • Meet the Intraterrestrials

    06/12/2008 1:00:33 AM PDT · by neverdem · 14 replies · 3+ views
    NY Times ^ | June 10, 2008 | Olivia Judson
    Some weeks ago, I wrote about microbes in the air and their possible role in helping clouds form, in causing rain and in altering the chemistry of the high atmosphere. This week, I want to go in the opposite direction and plunge down into the earth. For many bacteria live deep in the oceans and deep in the earth, far from light, far from what we normally think of as good, comfortable places to live. For example: the bottom of the Mariana Trench. This is a seam on the sea floor in the northwestern Pacific, not far from the island...
  • Dark, Perhaps Forever (Is the theory of everything unattainable?)

    06/04/2008 11:07:19 AM PDT · by LibWhacker · 88 replies · 21+ views
    New York Times ^ | 6/3/08 | Dennis Overbye
    BALTIMORE — Mario Livio tossed his car keys in the air. They rose ever more slowly, paused, shining, at the top of their arc, and then in accordance with everything our Galilean ape brains have ever learned to expect, crashed back down into his hand. That was the whole problem, explained Dr. Livio, a theorist at the Space Telescope Science Institute here on the Johns Hopkins campus. A decade ago, astronomers discovered that what is true for your car keys is not true for the galaxies. Having been impelled apart by the force of the Big Bang, the galaxies, in...
  • Anonymous Donor Saves Last U.S. Particle Physics Lab From Going Under

    06/02/2008 8:25:55 PM PDT · by Flavius · 67 replies · 38+ views
    daily tech ^ | 6/2/2008 | Jason Mick
    article physics is one of the most intriguing scientific fields, probing the nature of the very makeup of the universe itself. However, over the last half decade, due to the growing economic crisis and various items such as war funding taking precedence in government budgets, the budget to help the U.S. stay leaders in the field of particle physics has been slipping. The U.S. currently is down to only one remaining particle physics lab, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, associated with the University of Chicago and the lab was looking to be on the way out....
  • Cold-fusion demonstration "a success"

    06/01/2008 12:47:24 PM PDT · by hripka · 15 replies · 48+ views
    Physicsworld.com ^ | May 23, 2008 | Jon Cartwright
    On 23 March 1989 Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton, UK, and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah, US, announced that they had observed controlled nuclear fusion in a glass jar at room temperature, and — for around a month — the world was under the impression that the world's energy woes had been remedied. But, even as other groups claimed to repeat the pair's results, sceptical reports began trickle in. An editorial in Nature predicted cold fusion to be unfounded. And a US Department of Energy report judged that the experiments did "not provide convincing evidence that...
  • Scientist Creates Cold Fusion For The Fist Time in Decades

    06/01/2008 12:18:07 AM PDT · by spyone · 85 replies · 39+ views
    gidmodo.com ^ | May 24, 2008 | unknown
    Cold Fusion, the act of producing a nuclear reaction at room temperature, has long been relegated to science fiction after researchers were unable to recreate the experiment that first "discovered" the phenomenon. But a Japanese scientist was supposedly able to start a cold fusion reaction earlier this week, which—if the results are real—could revolutionize the way we gather energy. Yoshiaki Arata, a highly respected physicist in Japan, demonstrated a low-energy nuclear reaction at Osaka University on Thursday. In front of a live audience, including reporters from six major newspapers and two TV studios, Arata and a co-professor Yue-Chang Zhang, produced...
  • Atom-smashing lab says experiment to start end-June [scofs at fear of black hole destroying Earth]

    05/27/2008 12:53:48 PM PDT · by Brilliant · 32 replies · 74+ views
    AP via Yahoo! ^ | 5/27/08 | AFP
    European particle physics laboratory CERN is set to launch its gigantic experiment which hopes to throw light on the origins of the universe within a month, the laboratory's head said Tuesday. If things go according to plan, the greatest experiment in the history of particle physics could unveil a sub-atomic component, the Higgs Boson, known as "the God Particle." The "Higgs," named after the eminent British physicist, Peter Higgs, who first proposed it in 1964, would fill a gaping hole in the benchmark theory for understanding the physical cosmos. Other work on the so-called Large Hadron Collider (LHC) could explain...
  • Arguments that Prove that Climate Change is driven by Solar Activity and not by CO2 Emission

    05/26/2008 4:09:08 PM PDT · by Delacon · 44 replies · 26+ views
    Canada Free Press ^ | May 26, 2008 | Dr. Gerhard Löbert
    <p>Conveyor of a super-Einsteinian theory of gravitation that explains, among many other post-Einstein-effects, the Sun-Earth-Connection and the true cause of the global climate changes.</p> <p>As the glaciological and tree ring evidence shows, climate change is a natural phenomenon that has occurred many times in the past, both with the magnitude as well as with the time rate of temperature change that have occurred in the recent decades. The following facts prove that the recent global warming is not man-made but is a natural phenomenon.</p>
  • Looking for ET's neutrino beam

    05/22/2008 3:13:44 PM PDT · by LibWhacker · 8 replies · 22+ views
    Physics World ^ | 5/21/08 | Edwin Cartlidge
    For several decades scientists have been using telescopes to scan the heavens for unnatural-looking radio or optical transmissions coming from intelligent alien life. With this search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) having so far failed to pick up a single signal, however, researchers in the US now believe it is worth extending the search beyond electromagnetic waves and start paying attention to neutrinos. John Learned of the University of Hawaii and colleagues have worked out that advanced alien civilizations could send messages within the Milky Way using neutrinos, and that these messages could be picked up using neutrino detectors currently under...
  • Written in the skies: why quantum mechanics might be wrong

    05/18/2008 10:40:38 PM PDT · by neverdem · 77 replies · 37+ views
    Nature News ^ | 15 May 2008 | Zeeya Merali
    Observations of the cosmic microwave background might deal blow to theory. The background patterns of space could help us focus on quantum problems.NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team The question of whether quantum mechanics is correct could soon be settled by observing the sky — and there are already tantalizing hints that the theory could be wrong. Antony Valentini, a physicist at Imperial College, London, wanted to devise a test that could separate quantum mechanics from one of its closest rivals — a theory called bohmian mechanics. Despite being one of the most successful theories of physics, quantum mechanics...
  • Black holes not black after all

    05/13/2008 6:18:03 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 35 replies · 11+ views
    www.physorg.com ^ | 05/13/2008 | Source: University of St Andrews
    International scientists have used flowing water to simulate a black hole, testing Stephen Hawking's theory that black holes are not black after all. The researchers, led by Professor Ulf Leonhardt at the University of St Andrews and Dr Germain Rousseaux at the University of Nice, used a water channel to create analogues of black holes, simulating event horizons. An event horizon is the place in the channel where the water begins to flow faster than the waves. The scientists sent waves against the current, varied the water speed and the wavelength, and filmed the waves with video cameras. Over several...
  • Scientists discover exotic quantum state of matter

    05/04/2008 9:17:11 PM PDT · by neverdem · 33 replies · 16+ views
    These images collected by Princeton University scientists show (top) the first direct image of the dancing pattern of electrons on the edge of the bismuth-antimony bulk crystal, which is a quantum Hall insulator; (center) a schematic and another image showing the electron distribution in three dimensions; and (bottom) a schematic and an image conveying the distribution of edge-electrons in two dimensions. Images: Zahid Hasan A team of scientists from Princeton University has found that one of the most intriguing phenomena in condensed-matter physics -- known as the quantum Hall effect -- can occur in nature in a way that no...
  • Ozone: Friend or Foe?

    05/03/2008 8:34:17 PM PDT · by neverdem · 13 replies · 8+ views
    ScienceNOW Daily News ^ | 24 April 2008 | Phil Berardelli
    Enlarge ImageOut of the frying pan.Studies show that pumping sulfur into the atmosphere could seriously damage the ozone layer.Credit: Ross J. Salawitch [via Science] The ozone layer protects all life on Earth, but it's frustrating scientists' attempts to curb global warming. Take geoengineering: Researchers have proposed that injecting sulfur particles into the stratosphere might counter the effects of greenhouse gas buildup, but a new study suggests that the approach could thin the planet's already fragile ozone layer. Leaving the ozone layer alone comes with its own risks, however. A second study warns that the gradual recovery of the Antarctic...
  • Missing Link of Electronics Discovered: "Memristor"

    05/03/2008 2:41:08 PM PDT · by neverdem · 64 replies · 18+ views
    sciam.com ^ | May 1, 2008 | JR Minkel
    Memory plus resistor may add up to longer-lasting batteries and faster-booting computers After nearly 40 years, researchers have discovered a new type of building block for electronic circuits. And there's at least a chance it will spare you from recharging your phone every other day. Scientists at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, Calif., report in Nature that a new nanometer-scale electric switch "remembers" whether it is on or off after its power is turned off. (A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.)Researchers believe that the memristor, or memory resistor, might become a useful tool for constructing nonvolatile computer memory,...
  • Physicists Renew Claim, in New Experiment, of Detecting Dark Matter Particles

    04/17/2008 11:38:51 PM PDT · by neverdem · 9 replies · 9+ views
    NY Times ^ | April 17, 2008 | DENNIS OVERBYE
    A team of Italian and Chinese physicists on Wednesday renewed a controversial claim that they had detected the mysterious dark matter particles that astronomers say swaddle the galaxies in halos and direct the evolution of the universe. The team, called Dama, from “DArk MAtter,” and led by Rita Bernabei of the University of Rome, has maintained since 2000 that a yearly modulation in the rate of flashes in a detector nearly a mile underneath the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy is the result of the Earth’s passage through a “wind” of dark matter particles as it goes around the Sun....
  • Pioneer spacecraft mystery may be laid to rest

    04/16/2008 8:14:45 AM PDT · by AndrewC · 26 replies · 6+ views
    New Scientist Space ^ | 15 April 2008 | Valerie Jamieson
    Pioneer spacecraft mystery may be laid to rest 14:30 15 April 2008 NewScientist.com news service Valerie Jamieson, St Louis What is making NASA's twin Pioneer spacecraft mysteriously drift off course, apparently defying the laws of physics? A rigorous new analysis suggests ordinary heat emission can at least partly explain the wayward probes' strange trajectories.Pioneer 10 and 11 were launched in the early 1970s and explored the outer solar system. But in 1980, mission scientists noticed that the spacecraft have unexpectedly drifted off course.Both spacecraft have been pulled a little harder than expected towards the sun, and since their launch, they...
  • New atom-smasher could fill gaps in scientific knowledge -- or open a black hole

    04/14/2008 5:29:17 PM PDT · by Flavius · 40 replies · 22+ views
    ny times ^ | 4/14/08 | John Johnson
    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."
  • Key scientist sure "God particle" will be found soon

    04/07/2008 8:05:12 PM PDT · by rpage3 · 89 replies · 42+ views
    Reuters via Yahoo ^ | 04/07/2008 | Robert Evans
    GENEVA (Reuters) - British physicist Peter Higgs said on Monday it should soon be possible to prove the existence of a force which gives mass to the universe and makes life possible -- as he first argued 40 years ago. Higgs said he believes a particle named the "Higgs boson," which originates from the force, will be found when a vast particle collider at the CERN research centre on the Franco-Swiss border begins operating fully early next year."The likelihood is that the particle will show up pretty quickly ... I'm more than 90 percent certain that it will," Higgs told...