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Keyword: stringtheory

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  • Discovery of Hotspots Circling Milky Way Black Hole Has Astronomers Excited

    11/21/2018 7:58:43 AM PST · by BenLurkin · 30 replies
    Space.com ^ | November 21, 2018 08:00am ET | Samantha Mathewson,
    Broderick's work builds on earlier research by two teams that studied the galactic center of the Milky Way in near-infrared. This included the work of Reinhard Genzel, an astronomer from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, as well as researchers Andrea Ghez and Mark Morris of University of California, Los Angeles. At the time, their work revealed that the center of the Milky Way wasn't steady, but instead would drastically brighten about once a day for about 30 or 40 minutes, Broderick said. Researchers think supermassive black holes exist at the center of most, if not...
  • On This Day in Space! Nov. 21, 1676: Astronomer (Accidentally) Discovers Speed of Light

    11/21/2018 1:22:53 PM PST · by ETL · 27 replies
    Space.com ^ | Nov 21, 2018 | Hanneke Weitering, Space.com Staff Writer
    Welcome to "On This Day ... in Space!" where we peer back in our archives to find historic moments in spaceflight and astronomy. So enjoy a blast from the past with Space.com's Hanneke Weitering to look back at what happened on this day in space! On Nov.  21, 1676, the Danish astronomer Ole Rømer discovered the speed of light . Before Rømer figured it out, scientists thought that light travels instantaneously, or infinitely fast. Rømer disproved this almost by accident when he was studying Jupiter's moon Io. He was trying to figure out how long it takes Io to orbit Jupiter in hopes...
  • Chinese Fusion Experiment Reaches 100 Million Degrees

    11/20/2018 5:19:10 PM PST · by BenLurkin · 43 replies
    Universe Today ^ | 11/18/2018
    Currently, the two most popular methods for producing fusion power are the inertial confinement approach, and the tokamak reactor. In the former case, lasers are used to fuse pellets of deuterium (H², or “heavy hydrogen”) to create a fusion reaction. In the latter, the process involves a torus-shaped confinement chamber that uses magnetic fields and an internal current to confine high-energy plasma. Whereas other tokamak reactors rely on magnetic coils to keep a plasma torus stable, the Chinese EAST reactor relies on the magnetic fields produced by the moving plasma itself to keep the torus in check. This makes it...
  • Star spinning so ‘extremely fast’ it risks ‘one of the most powerful explosions in the universe’

    11/20/2018 9:12:23 AM PST · by ETL · 75 replies
    Full title: Star spinning so ‘extremely fast’ it risks causing ‘one of the most powerful explosions in the universe’ It's one of a pair of stars that could be involved in one of the universe's biggest explosions, experts suggest. Scientists say the previously unknown star system is wrapped in an "elegant spiral dust cloud", making it look "spectacular".At its heart is a pair of massive Wolf-Rayet stars, according to an international team of researchers who published the findings in the Nature Astronomy journal. Wolf-Rayet stars are special in that they're among the hottest in the universe.They blast out powerful winds...
  • Chandra Captures Collision of Two Galaxy Clusters: Abell 1033

    11/19/2018 9:18:25 AM PST · by ETL · 14 replies
    Sci-News.com ^ | Nov 19, 2018 | News Staff / Source
    Galaxy clusters are cosmic structures containing hundreds or even thousands of galaxies. Multi-million-degree gas fills the space in between the individual galaxies. The mass of the hot gas is about six times greater than that of all the galaxies combined.This superheated gas is invisible to optical telescopes, but shines brightly in X-rays, so an X-ray telescope like Chandra is required to study it.By combining X-rays with other types of light, such as radio waves, a more complete picture of these important cosmic objects can be obtained.Using X-ray and radio data, a team of astronomers led by Leiden Observatory’s Dr. Francesco...
  • Schrödinger's Bacteria? Physics Experiment Leads to 1st Entanglement of Living Organisms

    11/16/2018 9:19:36 AM PST · by ETL · 25 replies
    LiveScience.com ^ | Nov 14, 2018 | Rafi Letzter, Staff Writer
    A lot of scientists think that major quantum effects like entanglement, in which particles separated by vast distances mysteriously link up their states, shouldn't work for living things. But a new paper argues that it already has — that scientists in 2016 have already created a sort of Schrödinger's cat — only with quantum-entangled bacteria. Usually, we describe quantum physics as a set of rules that governs the behavior of extremely tiny things: light particles, atoms and other infinitesimally small objects. The larger world, at the bacterial scale (which is also our scale — the chaotic realm of life) isn't...
  • Large, strangely dim galaxy found lurking on far side of Milky Way

    11/13/2018 10:17:10 AM PST · by ETL · 15 replies
    ScienceMag.com ^ | Nov 13, 201 | Adam Mann
    Circling our galaxy is a stealthy giant. Astronomers have discovered a dwarf galaxy, called Antlia 2, that is one-third the size of the Milky Way itself. As big as the Large Magellanic Cloud, the galaxy’s largest companion, Antlia 2 eluded detection until now because it is 10,000 times fainter. Such a strange beast challenges models of galaxy formation and dark matter, the unseen stuff that helps pull galaxies together. “It’s a very odd object and kind of exciting because we don’t know yet how to interpret all of its properties,” says Andrey Kravtsov of The University of Chicago in Illinois,...
  • Black Holes Can Raise the Cosmic Dead

    11/11/2018 1:29:21 PM PST · by ETL · 19 replies
    LiveScience.com ^ | Nov 1, 2018 | Kimberly Hickok, Reference Editor
    Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California suspect that midsize black holes might be just the right size to provide enough gravitational force to reignite a dead white dwarf star — the stellar corpse of a star that's about the mass of the sun and that's used up its nuclear fuel. To test their idea, the team members ran supercomputer simulations of dozens of different close-encounter scenarios between these dead stars and midsize black holes. Every time a white dwarf got close to the Goldilocks black hole, the star reignited. The gravitational force from the black hole would cause the...
  • Feminist researcher invents ‘intersectional quantum physics’ to fight ‘oppression’ of Newton

    05/30/2017 7:40:07 AM PDT · by C19fan · 22 replies
    College Fix ^ | May 30, 2017 | Toni Airaksinen
    A feminist academic affiliated with the University of Arizona has invented a new theory of “intersectional quantum physics,” and told the world about it in a journal published by Duke University Press. Whitney Stark argues in support of “combining intersectionality and quantum physics” to better understand “marginalized people” and to create “safer spaces” for them, in the latest issue of The Minnesota Review.
  • Feminist researcher invents ‘intersectional quantum physics’ to fight ‘oppression’ of Newton

    05/29/2017 10:22:06 PM PDT · by ForYourChildren · 79 replies
    The College Fix ^ | 05/30/2017 | Toni Airaksinen
    ‘Binary and absolute differences’ are ‘exploitative’ A feminist academic affiliated with the University of Arizona has invented a new theory of “intersectional quantum physics,” and told the world about it in a journal published by Duke University Press. Whitney Stark argues in support of “combining intersectionality and quantum physics” to better understand “marginalized people” and to create “safer spaces” for them, in the latest issue of The Minnesota Review. Because traditional quantum physics theory has influenced humanity’s understanding of the world, it has also helped lend credence to the ongoing regime of racism, sexism and classism that hurts minorities, Stark...
  • E=mc2 is a "sexed equation". Newton's Principia (a "rape manual")

    02/11/2004 1:55:19 PM PST · by Helms · 74 replies · 9,332+ views
    NYU Dept. Physics ^ | Published in Nature, 9 July 1998, vol. 394, pp. 141-143.] | Richard Dawkins
    The feminist 'philosopher' Luce Irigaray is another who gets whole-chapter treatment from Sokal and Bricmont. In a passage reminiscent of a notorious feminist description of Newton's Principia (a "rape manual"), Irigaray argues that E=mc2 is a "sexed equation". Why? Because "it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us" (my emphasis of what I am rapidly coming to learn is an 'in' word). Just as typical of this school of thought is Irigaray's thesis on fluid mechanics.Fluids you see, have been unfairly neglected. "Masculine physics" privileges rigid, solid things. Her American expositor Katherine Hayles...
  • Astronomers Observe Interstellar Material Orbiting Close to Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

    11/04/2018 9:33:21 AM PST · by ETL · 26 replies
    Sci-News.com ^ | Oct 31, 2018 | News Staff / Source
    Astronomers using the GRAVITY instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) have detected flares of infrared radiation coming from the accretion disk around Sagittarius A*, the 4-million-solar-mass black hole at the heart of our Milky Way Galaxy. The flares the GRAVITY instrument detected provide long-awaited confirmation that the object in the center of our Galaxy is a supermassive black hole.The flares originate from material orbiting very close to the black hole’s event horizon — making these the most detailed observations yet of material orbiting this close to a black hole.While some matter in the accretion disk — the belt...
  • Why DARPA Is Betting a Million Bucks on an "Impossible" Space Drive

    11/02/2018 2:06:22 PM PDT · by LibWhacker · 45 replies
    Popular Mechanics ^ | 11/2/18 | David Hambling
    <p>Agency responsible with filling the government's coffers with cutting-edge tech is funding a controversial drive that's based on unproven science.</p> <p>The law of conservation of momentum says that a rocket (or anything else) can't accelerate forward without some form of exhaust ejected backward. But in 1998, a British engineer named Roger Shawyer announced the seemingly impossible—he had built a closed system that could generate thrust.</p>
  • Quantum Weirdness May Seem to Outrun Light — Here's Why It Can't

    09/29/2018 10:23:05 AM PDT · by ETL · 15 replies
    Space.com ^ | Sept 29, 2018 | Paul Sutter, Astrophysicist
    Entanglement is one of the most confusing aspects of quantum mechanics — a field of physics that isn't exactly known to be clear-cut, sensible, common-sense and easy-to-understand.  Even Albert Einstein himself was flummoxed by the surprising behavior of microscopic particles, and he firmly believed that we were fundamentally misunderstanding the universe with quantum mechanics. It turns out that Einstein was wrong, but it's going to take a while to explain where he went wrong and what's really going on in the quantum realm. Head of state One of the most important lessons from quantum mechanics is that we have to...
  • Mysterious Light Flashes Are Coming from Deep Space, and AI Just Found More of Them

    09/13/2018 8:19:41 AM PDT · by ETL · 33 replies
    Space.com ^ | Sept 11, 2018 | Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer
    Last year's mysterious outburst of deep-space light flashes was even more frenzied than previously thought, a new study reports. On Aug. 26, 2017, astronomers with the Breakthrough Listen project — a $100 million effort to hunt for signs of intelligent alien life — spotted 21 repeating light pulses called fast radio bursts (FRBs) emanating from the dwarf galaxy FRB 121102 within the span of 1 hour. Some scientists think FRBs come from fast-rotating neutron stars, but their source has not been nailed down. And that explains Breakthrough Listen's interest: It's possible that the bursts are produced by intelligent extraterrestrials, perhaps...
  • An Anonymous Online Anime Fan Solved A Problem That's Been Eluding Mathematicians For Decades

    10/30/2018 6:55:18 PM PDT · by Eddie01 · 36 replies
    IFL Science ^ | 10/25/2018 | staff
    You may not have heard of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, but, among anime fans at least, it’s a pretty big deal. Originally a series of light novels, it follows the adventures of typical high schooler Kyon and the time-travel alien ESP club he is forced to help create by his beautiful if eccentric friend, the titular Haruhi. Since its original run in 2003, it has spawned 10 additional volumes, a film adaptation, several video games, and even its own religion, Haruhiism. It was first adapted into an anime back in 2006. The show only lasted three months but there...
  • Could Misbehaving Neutrinos Explain Why the Universe Exists?

    10/29/2018 10:18:28 AM PDT · by ETL · 32 replies
    Space.com ^ | Oct 28, 2018 | Don Lincoln, Senior Scientist, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
    Scientists revel in exploring mysteries, and the bigger the mystery, the greater the enthusiasm. There are many huge unanswered questions in science, but when you're going big, it's hard to beat "Why is there something, instead of nothing?" That might seem like a philosophical question, but it's one that is very amenable to scientific inquiry. Stated a little more concretely, "Why is the universe made of the kinds of matter that makes human life possible so that we can even ask this question?" Scientists conducting research in Japan have announced a measurement last month that directly addresses that most fascinating...
  • Bringing Dark Energy Out into the Light

    10/28/2018 1:28:32 PM PDT · by ETL · 32 replies
    Space.com ^ | Oct 18, 2018 | Paul Sutter, Astrophysicist
    Let's talk about dark energy. We've known for about 20 years that the expansion of our universe is accelerating; every day, our cosmos grows bigger and bigger, doing so faster and faster. It's a subtle effect, and it takes extensive and deep cosmological surveys and studies for scientists to notice it. But multiple independent lines of evidence all point to the same conclusion: accelerating expansion. Astronomers quickly cooked up a cool name for that accelerated expansion: dark energy. But now we’re left with the much harder job of finding a culprit — what's causing it? A universal mistake We use...
  • Stunning Nasa image reveals the youngest pulsar ever found: X-ray scans of the supernova [tr]

    10/22/2018 6:30:18 AM PDT · by C19fan · 7 replies
    UK Daily Mail ^ | October 22, 2018 | Harry Pettit
    An amazing new Nasa image captures the youngest pulsar ever found by scientists. The pulsar - an ultra-dense chunk of a star leftover from its explosive death into a supernova - sits just 19,000 light years from Earth. It provides our best look yet at the early stages of star death, a mysterious and violent process that scientists still don't fully understand. The image was taken using Nasa's Chandra X-ray Observatory, an orbiting telescope that has been out of action for nearly two weeks following a catastrophic gyroscope failure.
  • Five mysteries the Standard Model can’t explain

    10/19/2018 9:14:03 AM PDT · by MtnClimber · 44 replies
    Symmetry ^ | 18 Oct, 2018 | Oscar Miyamoto Gomez
    Our best model of particle physics explains only about 5 percent of the universe. The Standard Model is a thing of beauty. It is the most rigorous theory of particle physics, incredibly precise and accurate in its predictions. It mathematically lays out the 17 building blocks of nature: six quarks, six leptons, four force-carrier particles, and the Higgs boson. These are ruled by the electromagnetic, weak and strong forces. “As for the question ‘What are we?’ the Standard Model has the answer,” says Saúl Ramos, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). “It tells us that every...