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Are We Living In A Black Hole? // / Here’s an idea, what if the universe and everything we see around us is actually inside a black hole?Whenever I’m asked this question, what folks typically have in mind is that the universe began as an infinitely dense point, just like the singularity of a black hole, and because of cosmic expansion there’s a limit to how far we can observe, so maybe that’s like the event horizon. While it’s an interesting idea, things aren’t quite so simple.To begin with, the universe did not begin with an explosion from a...

For years nuclear scientists have talked about a revival of molten salt reactors, which are powered by a liquid fuel rather than solid fuel rods, that will help spark the long-awaited “nuclear renaissance.” Recent developments indicate that this alternative nuclear power technology is finally making progress toward commercialization. A consortium of research institutes and universities working under the aegis of the European Commission, including the Technology University of Delft (TU Delft), in the Netherlands, France’s National Center for Scientific Research, and the Commission’s Joint Research Center, in Brussels, in August embarked on a four-year research program designed to demonstrate the...

The matter, known as a quark-gluon plasma (or QGP), is predicted to exist when temperatures and densities are so extreme that regular matter cannot exist. Instead, a “perfect liquid” exists for a short time before it cools and condenses into the regular stuff that forms the building blocks of matter. Although physicists have announced the detection of this exotic state of matter before, new results from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Upton, New York, appear to show the tiniest droplets of quark-gluon plasma appear, in a specific pattern,...

ATLAS and CMS experiments shed light on Higgs properties 01 Sep 2015 Results of the analyses by individual experiments (coloured) and both experiments together (black), showing the improvement in precision resulting from the combination of results. Geneva/Saint Petersburg, 1st September 2015. Three years after the announcement of the discovery of a new particle, the so-called Higgs boson, the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations present for the first time combined measurements of many of its properties, at the third annual Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference (LHCP 2015). By combining their analyses of the data collected in 2011 and 2012, ATLAS and CMS...

(Phys.org)—Due to quantum effects, it's possible to build a quantum computer that computes without running—or as the scientists explain, "the result of a computation may be learned without actually running the computer." So far, however, the efficiency of this process, which is called counterfactual computation (CFC), has had an upper limit of 50%, limiting its practical applications. Now in a new paper, scientists have experimentally demonstrated a slightly different version called a "generalized CFC" that has an efficiency of 85% with the potential to reach 100%. This improvement opens the doors to realizing a much greater variety of applications, such...

A team of Antarctic scientists has just verified the existence of cosmic neutrinos — tiny, energetic particles that might hail from far reaches of the Milky Way and beyond. And these ghostly little flecks of matter could hold the key to some of the deepest mysteries of the cosmos. High-energy cosmic neutrinos are thought to be produced by some of the universe’s most violent agents, including black holes, supernovae, and the energetic cores of galaxies. Unchanged as they zip across space and time, these particles may represent something of an intergalactic breadcrumb trail, pointing us in the direction of any...

Device acts like a wormhole, as if the magnetic field was transferred through an “extra special dimension”Ripped from the pages of a sci-fi novel, physicists have crafted a wormhole that tunnels a magnetic field through space. "This device can transmit the magnetic field from one point in space to another point, through a path that is magnetically invisible," said study co-author Jordi Prat-Camps, a doctoral candidate in physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. "From a magnetic point of view, this device acts like a wormhole, as if the magnetic field was transferred through an extra special dimension."...

The Case for Complex Dark Matter The physicist James Bullock explains how a complicated “dark sector” of interacting particles may illuminate some puzzling observations of the centers of galaxies. Jonathan Alcorn for Quanta MagazineJames Bullock, a physicist at the University of California, Irvine, imagines what the universe would look like if dark matter interacted with itself. By: Liz KruesiAugust 20, 2015 Dark matter — the unseen 80 percent of the universe’s mass — doesn’t emit, absorb or reflect light. Astronomers know it exists only because it interacts with our slice of the ordinary universe through gravity. Hence the hunt for this...

Is the world we live in a computer simulation in the minds of Robotic Overlords who are using humanity as playthings? This is the "scientific" theory put forward by a number of physicists and Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom.(1) Bostrom is one of the founders of the World Transhumanist Association. Transhumanism is a blend of revitalized Gnostic pagan and Eastern occult pantheist elements and magic science undergirded by a strong Darwinian impulse. Thus it subscribes to the modern myth of a coming Superman that is actually a counterfeit of the Christian vision of a new and perfected human race spiritually...

Matter and antimatter appear to be perfect mirror images of each other as far as anyone can see, scientists have discovered with unprecedented precision, foiling hope of solving the mystery as to why there is far more matter than antimatter in the universe. Everyday matter is made up of protons, neutrons or electrons. These particles have counterparts known as antiparticles — antiprotons, antineutrons and positrons, respectively — that have the same mass but the opposite electric charge. (Although neutrons and antineutrons are both neutrally charged, they are each made of particles known as quarks that possess fractional electrical charges, and...

The Los Angeles Times (8/10, Khan) reports that an international study led by Simon Driver of the University of Western Australia and presented at the International Astronomical Union meeting on Monday found that the amount of light the 200,000 galaxies are outputting is half of what they did two billion years ago, meaning “the universe is dying.” The article notes that seven telescopes were used in the study, including NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer spacecraft. Driver said that the conclusion is consistent with each of the three indicators measured. However, the universe should continue to exist “far into the foreseeable...

A cutaway view of the proposed ARC reactor. Thanks to powerful new magnet technology, the much smaller, less-expensive ARC reactor would deliver the same power output as a much larger reactor. Credit: the MIT ARC team ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's an old joke that many fusion scientists have grown tired of hearing: Practical nuclear fusion power plants are just 30 years away—and always will be. But now, finally, the joke may no longer be true: Advances in magnet technology have enabled researchers at MIT to propose a new design for a practical compact tokamak fusion reactor—and it's one that might be realized...

Neutrinos are unimaginably numerous, but their infrequent interaction with matter make the particles a challenge to study. Neutrinos exist in three “flavors:” muon, electron and tau. The NOvA experiment aims to investigate one of the peculiar properties of neutrinos — their tendency to change flavors, or oscillate. NOvA is what the physicists call a long-baseline experiment, as the neutrinos travel more than 500 miles underground. “We make a beam of muon-type neutrinos at Fermilab, and then we detect those at Ash River, Minnesota,” Vahle explained. “We are looking for muon-type neutrinos to change into electron-type neutrinos. We also look for...

Physicists say there is a possibility that our world is merely a simulation They claim there may be evidence of this if only we know where to look For instance, some of the laws of physics may not quite add up, they say The year is 2050 and super-intelligent robots have taken over the planet. Except you have no idea, because you're living in a computer simulation, depicting what life was like in 2015. Everything you see and touch right now has been created by robotic overlords who are using humanity as playthings in their virtual game. That's the radical...

Scientists and engineers at Arizona State University, in Tempe, have created the first lasers that can shine light over the full spectrum of visible colors. The device’s inventors suggest the laser could find use in video displays, solid-state lighting, and a laser-based version of Wi-Fi. Although previous research has created red, blue, green and other lasers, each of these lasers usually only emitted one color of light. Creating a monolithic structure capable of emitting red, green, and blue all at once has proven difficult because it requires combining very different semiconductors. Growing such mismatched crystals right next to each other...

Later today, July 27, German scientists will present new experimental results on the controversial, "impossible" EM Drive, at the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics' Propulsion and Energy Forum in Orlando. The presentation is titled "Direct Thrust Measurements of an EmDrive and Evaluation of Possible Side-Effects." Presenter Martin Tajmar is a professor and chair for Space Systems at the Dresden University of Technology, interested in space propulsion systems and breakthrough propulsion physics. A Revolutionary Development for Space Travel The EM Drive (Electro Magnetic Drive) uses electromagnetic microwave cavities to directly convert electrical energy to thrust without the need to expel...

And it could be the key to understanding one of the biggest mysteries in physics today - high-temperature superconductors.An international team of scientists has announced the discovery of a new state of matter in a material that appears to be an insulator, superconductor, metal and magnet all rolled into one, saying that it could lead to the development of more effective high-temperature superconductors. Why is this so exciting? Well, if these properties are confirmed, this new state of matter will allow scientists to better understand why some materials have the potential to achieve superconductivity at a relativity high critical temperature...

The 2011 Cold Fusion/Lattice-Assisted Nuclear Reactions Colloquium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — Part 2 (Report prepared by staff of JET Energy, Inc.) INFINITE ENERGY • ISSUE 99 • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 The 2011 Lattice-Assisted Nuclear Reactions/Cold Fusion Colloquium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts) was held on Saturday, June 11 and Sunday, June 12, 2011. The meeting focused on the science and technology of cold fusion (CF) and lattice-assisted nuclear reactions (LANR). In 1989, the initial failures of cold fusion resulted from bad experiments, bad paradigm, materials issues, poor loadings and a poor appreciation of the...

MIT and Cold Fusion: A Special Report Compiled and written by Eugene F. Mallove, Sc.D. MIT Class of 1969, S.B. Aero/Astro Eng., 1970 S.M. Aero/Astro Eng. Editor-in-Chief, Infinite Energy Magazine President, New Energy Foundation, Inc. Introduction When on March 23, 1989 Drs. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons announced that they had measured nuclear-scale excess energy from a palladium-heavy water electrochemical cell, and that they had also detected some preliminary evidence of nuclear signatures from their exotic energy-producing reactions, the world was in awe. Their famous afternoon press conference at the University of Utah, coming less than twelve hours before the...

Scientists at The University of Manchester have discovered a new class of materials which have previously only existed in science fiction films and books. A team of British and Russian scientists led by Professor Geim have discovered a whole family of previously unknown materials, which are one atom thick and exhibit properties which scientists had never thought possible. Not only are they ultra-thin, but depending on circumstances they can also be ultra-strong, highly-insulating or highly-conductive, offering a wide range of unique properties for space-age engineers and designers to choose from. Professor Andre Geim said: "This discovery opens up practically infinite...