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In February of 2013, skywatchers around the world turned their attention toward asteroid 2012 DA14, a cosmic rock about 150 feet (50 meters) in diameter that was going to fly closer to Earth than the spacecraft that bring us satellite TV. Little did they realize as they prepared for the once-in-several-decades event that another bit of celestial debris was hurtling toward Earth, with a more direct heading. On Feb. 15, 2013, the Chelyabinsk meteor, a roughly 62-foot (19 meter)-diameter asteroid exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, as it entered Earth's atmosphere at a shallow angle. The blast shattered windows...

For more than a century, physicists have hunted for superconductivity in warmer materials.... In 1986, researchers uncovered ceramics that were superconductive at temperatures as high as 30 degrees above absolute zero, or minus 406 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 243 degrees Celsius). Later, in the 1990s, researchers first looked in earnest at very high pressures, to see if they might reveal new kinds of superconductors. The next big breakthrough came in 2001, when researchers showed that magnesium diboride (MgB2) was superconductive at 39 degrees above absolute zero, or minus 389 F (minus 234 C). Since then, the hunt for warm superconductors has...

The EmDrive propulsion system might be able to take us to the stars, but first it must be reconciled with the laws of physics. Giulio Prisco is a futurist, theoretical physicist, and computer scientist. He writes about science, technology, and the future. He's also a cofounder of Space Cooperative. A tentative theoretical explanation for the mysterious, "impossible" EmDrive propulsion system was published in the Journal of Applied Physical Science International in August. First proposed by British engineer Roger Shawyer, the EmDrive is an asymmetric box that looks like a truncated cone, with a standing microwave field inside that—apparently violating known...

Scientists have been using quantum theory for almost a century now, but embarrassingly they still don’t know what it means. An informal poll taken at a 2011 conference on Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality showed that there’s still no consensus on what quantum theory says about reality—the participants remained deeply divided about how the theory should be interpreted. Some physicists just shrug and say we have to live with the fact that quantum mechanics is weird. So particles can be in two places at once, or communicate instantaneously over vast distances? Get over it. After all, the theory...

Speaking at the National Press Club Wednesday, outgoing Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced a new “scientific integrity” policy for an agency recently wracked by concerns about how an administration led by President-elect Donald Trump will treat employees who worked on climate change and other sensitive energy-related issues. “It’s part of establishing the environment that allows scientist to do their work, to stay with us, and to recruit new people,” Moniz said in announcing the new policy. Moniz, a physicist, gave an example of his own role in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal. “Seven of our laboratories were providing near real-time...

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...

Climate scientists highlight cloud mysteries in a bid to compete with astronomy and cosmology. Clouds are key to understanding climate change, but more-realistic models of their formation are needed.I wonder which junk science genius came up with that (that random blobs of water vapor floating around in the atmosphere are the key to understanding). And in light of the claims of this article, how did he ever convince himself that it was true, given that he was incapable of doing the science himself? And why should we believe him? In an earlier time, he would've no doubt claimed it was...

BROOKHAVEN, N.Y., May 9 (UPI) -- U.S. physicists say they're planning a new experiment in particle physics -- but first there's the small matter of moving a 50-foot-diameter magnet 3,200 miles. Along with colleagues from 26 institutions around the world, they are planning an experiment to study the properties of muons, tiny subatomic particles that exist for only 2.2 millionths of a second. But first the core of the experimental equipment, a complex electromagnet 50 feet in diameter, needs to be moved from the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York to the department's Fermi National Accelerator...

It's the sort of abstract puzzle that keeps a scientist awake at night: Can you predict how three objects will orbit each other in a repeating pattern? In the 300 years since this "three-body problem" was first recognized, just three families of solutions have been found. Now, two physicists have discovered 13 new families. It's quite a feat in mathematical physics, and it could conceivably help astrophysicists understand new planetary systems. The trove of new solutions has researchers jazzed. "I love these things," says Robert Vanderbei a mathematician at Princeton University who was not involved in the work. He says...

Ever wondered what would happen if the dimension of time came to a sudden end? A new experiment reveals all One of the most exciting areas of science is the emerging field of spacetime analogues. This is the discipline in which physicists play around with systems that have a formal mathematical link with general relativity. For example, changes in the way electrons move in graphene as it is cooled are identical to the changes that may have occurred in the universe soon after the big bang. So physicists can use cool graph to test theories about the universe's earliest behaviour....

As if the idea ideas of quantum entanglement and time travel weren’t difficult enough to wrap one’s head around separately, two physicists at the Universtiy of Queensland in Australia have further compounded the headache by merging the two ideas via a new kind of quantum entanglement that links particles not across space, but across time. Quantum entanglement is that “spooky action” (Einstein’s words, not ours) that links two particles such that a measurement on one immediately influences the state of the other, even if the two particles are separated by miles, or even light years. Entanglement defies the intuitive way...

The strongest limit on the number of possible universes is the human ability to distinguish between different universes. (PhysOrg.com) -- Over the past few decades, the idea that our universe could be one of many alternate universes within a giant multiverse has grown from a sci-fi fantasy into a legitimate theoretical possibility. Several theories of physics and astronomy have hypothesized the existence of a multiverse made of many parallel universes. One obvious question that arises, then, is exactly how many of these parallel universes might there be. In a new study, Stanford physicists Andrei Linde and Vitaly Vanchurin have calculated...

Two physicists speculate God—or "time agents from the future"—shut it down to keep them from discovering the God Particle. REPORTER'S NOTE: I've come across a lot of quirky articles in publishing intriguing news, but this rates up there with the most odd of all. What is odd, is that two such brilliant scientists would publicly proclaim their hypothesis that God not only exists, but interevened in their scientific endeavors. Wow. Not only that, but the addendum—that it could have been God OR "time agents from the future"—made me wonder. If these men were schooled in the divine supernatural, they may...

The biggest, most expensive physics machine in the world is riddled with thousands of bad electrical connections. Many of the magnets meant to whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies. Some physicists are deserting the European project, at least temporarily, to work at a smaller, rival machine across the ocean. After 15 years and $9 billion, and a showy “switch-on” ceremony last September, the Large Hadron Collider, the giant particle accelerator outside Geneva, has to yet collide any particles at all. But soon? This week, scientists and engineers...

PARIS (AFP) – European astronomers said on Wednesday that an anomalous energy signal detected by an orbiting satellite could be a telltale of the enigmatic substance known as dark matter. The researchers, in a study appearing in the British journal Nature, say the hunch is that they picked up a signature of this strange phenomenon, but more work is needed. Some years ago, astrophysicists calculating the amount of matter in the Universe arrived at the startling discovery that ordinary material -- atoms -- comprises perhaps as little as five percent of the stuff in the cosmos. The rest, they believe,...

Physicists Bow to Darwin March 18, 2009 ... Making Darwin the god of physics demonstrates once for all that the Darwiniacs have turned evolutionism into a religion. You need no more proof than to read these articles...

CHICAGO (AFP) – Physicists have come closer to finding the elusive "God Particle," which they hope could one day explain why particles have mass, the US Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced Friday. Researchers at the Fermilab have managed to shrink the territory where the elusive Higgs Boson particle is expected to be found -- a discovery placing the American research institute ahead of its European rival in the race to discover one of the biggest prizes in physics. Physicists have long puzzled over how particles acquire mass. In 1964, a British physicist, Peter Higgs, came up with...

Bureaucrats at the American Physical Society (APS) have issued a curious warning to their members about an article in one of their own publications. Don't read this, they say - we don't agree with it. But what is it about the piece that is so terrible, that like Medusa, it could make men go blind? It's an article that examines the calculation central to climate models. As the editor of the APS's newsletter American Physics Jeffrey Marque explains, the global warming debate must be re-opened. "There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not...

ISTANBUL, Nov. 30 — A Turkish passenger jet crashed in the mountains of western Turkey early Friday, killing all 57 people on board, including several prominent nuclear physicists on their way to a conference, Turkish authorities said. The plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 operated by Atlasjet, an airline based in Istanbul, took off from Istanbul and disappeared from radar shortly before it was due to land at the airport in Isparta. It crashed about seven miles from the airport, near the town of Keciborlu, the authorities said. The cause of the crash was unclear. The weather was good, airline officials...

On Monday, October 19, 1987 – infamously known as “black Monday” – the Dow fell 508 points, or 22.9%, marking the largest crash in history. Using an analytical approach similar to the one applied to explore heart rate, physicists have discovered some unusual events preceding the crash. These findings may help economists in risk analysis and in predicting inevitable future crashes. continue Physicists Predict Stock Market Crashes