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A jet of gas spewing from a huge black hole has mysteriously brightened, flaring to 90 times its normal glow. For seven years the Hubble Space Telescope has been watching the jet, which pours out of the supermassive black hole in the center of the M87 galaxy. It has photographed the strange phenomenon fading and then brightening, with a peak that even outshines M87's brilliant core. Scientists have dubbed the enigmatic bright blob HST-1, and are so far at a loss to explain its weird behavior. "I did not expect the jet in M87 or any other jet powered by...

Perfect liquids suggest theory’s math mirrors something real Shadows live in a simple world. They glide effortlessly across any sort of surface, oblivious to the higher dimension of space in which 3-D bodies move, collide and sometimes block the paths of rays of light. Shadows have no idea how important that third dimension is, and how objects in it endow those very shadows with their quasi-physical existence. Indeed, the laws of shadow physics all depend on the third dimension’s presence. And just as the clueless inhabitants of the shadow world require an extra dimension to explain how they exist and...

Is theoretical physics becoming the next battleground in the culture wars? Not according to some theologians and scientists.People have long sought after a theory of everything, even when they had nothing but their five senses as tools of measurement. In the 6th century BCE Thales asserted that all matter is made of water; Anaximenes responded that itÂ’s all air. Parmenides a century later concluded with exacting proofs that everything we see is an illusion and that reality really consists of a single, unchanging sphere. Today, scientists are once again looking beyond the pale of measurable time and space to answer...

A new kind of laser could mean cheaper gadgets for allLasers might be pushing 50, but they are still the youthful pin-ups of fundamental physics. Since the first one was unveiled in 1960, the more apocalyptic predictions of how they might be used - as death rays, for example - have proved to be overblown. Their peaceful application, on the other hand, can be seen everywhere from cutting and welding to combating cancer and cataracts, to powering telecoms and consumer electronics, and has mushroomed into an industry worth $6 billion in 2007. Advances in the laser lab translate into gadgets...

Europe's innovative Goce satellite has switched on the super-sensitive instrument that will make ultra-fine measurements of Earth's gravity. The sophisticated gradiometer will feel the subtle variations in Earth's tug as it sweeps around the globe. The spacecraft has also fired up the British-built engine that will help maintain its orbit. Goce needs tiny but continuous levels of thrust to keep it stable and prevent it from falling out of the sky. European Space Agency (Esa) mission manager Rune Floberghagen said all systems on the spacecraft had now been activated following the launch from Russia last month.

A 10-year study of 100,000 galaxies close to our own offers compelling proof that long-hypothesized "dark matter" does exist and is in fact a guiding force behind the structure of the universe, a team of Australian, British, and American astronomers revealed this week. Saying that "the universe we see is really quite structured," one of the lead researchers explained that the 10-year "census" of galaxies near our own Milky Way offers powerful evidence that this invisible dark matter "seems to hold the galaxies together." The dark matter's influence on galaxies "stops their constituent stars from flying off and it seems...

In this centennial year of Albert Einstein's revolutionary theories of space, time, and gravity, humanities scholars say that his influence extended far beyond science. Time is a nebulous thing, except maybe for lunchtime. That's a lesson from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the science-fiction romp by Douglas Adams that was thrown into Hollywood's Infinite Improba bility Drive and emerged as an early-summer movie hit. Consider the elaborately imagined history of the Guide itself, and of its various editors. We learn that one Lig Lury Jr., hired by a publishing consortium operating from a chunk of celestial real estate called...

Lutherans sure love screwing with bulbs. Especially ones at St. Olaf College. The dynamic minds won the national Rube Goldberg competition. This is seriously the coolest science competition in the nation. All those years playing Mouse Trap don't compare to the video you are about to see. Watch the video on their website.

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,...

The quantum stickiness between very close surfaces produces no drag when they move, researchers claim.The 'sticky' Casimir force can even be repulsive.Jay Penni and Federico Capasso The quantum-mechanical effect that makes objects stick together when they are very close produces no friction when the objects are moving, two physicists claim. The results suggest that the operation of nanoscale machinery might not be as sticky a problem as feared. It's long been thought that the 'Casimir force', which pulls together two objects when they are much less than a hair's breadth apart, will create a drag force when the objects move....

A French-Russian mathematician has won the Abel Prize today for his work on advanced forms of geometry. The winner of the 6 million Norwegian kroner (US$920,000) prize, Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov, has held a permanent appointment at the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies (IHES) outside Paris since 1982. The Abel committee cited Gromov specifically for his contributions to three sub-disciplines of modern geometry: the study of Riemannian space, symplectic geometry, and groups of polynomial growth. Gromov is "renowned among mathematicians for his original approach", says Ian Stewart, a mathematician at the University of Warwick in Coventry. Among other things, modern geometers...

...Clinton poet Josie Kearns... has released... a full length collection called The Theory of Everything... The Theory of Everything, released by Mayapple Press, pulls seven years of work together in 43 poems that are derived from Kearns's own interest in quantum physics and string theory. Kearns said she attended a lecture given by physicist Alan Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams among other books, and his discussion got her thinking about how the things in everyday life are interconnected. This is hardly the physics we all grew up with, however. For Kearns, the poetics of physics provides the basis for exploration...

ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2009) — Researchers are reporting compelling new scientific evidence for the existence of low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), the process once called "cold fusion" that may promise a new source of energy.

Yesterday Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) re-introduced the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act.  This year it's H.R. 801 (last year it was H.R. 6845), and co-sponsored by Steve Cohen (D-TN), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Darrell Issa (R-CA), and Robert Wexler (D-FL).  The language has not changed.  The Fair Copyright Act is to fair copyright what the Patriot Act was to patriotism.  It would repeal the OA policy at the NIH and prevent similar OA policies at any federal agency.  The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee, where Conyers is Chairman, and where he has consolidated his power...

There are some things science needs to survive, and to thrive: eager, hardworking scientists; a grasp of reality and a desire to understand it; and an open and clear atmosphere to communicate and discuss results. That last bit there seems to be having a problem. Communication is key to science; without it you are some nerd tinkering in your basement. With it, the world can learn about your work and build on it. Recently, government-sponsored agencies like NIH have moved toward open access of scientific findings. That is, the results are published where anyone can see them, and in fact...

The nanotube aerogel can expand and contract up to 1,000 times a second.Science Technology Education Media As light as air, yet stronger than steel and bendier than rubber. A new material made from bundles of carbon nanotubes combines all of these characteristics in a substance that twitches like a bionic man's biceps when a voltage is applied.The 'artificial muscle' is an aerogel — a lightweight, sponge-like material consisting mostly of air — drawn into a long ribbon.Applying a voltage across the width of the ribbon electrically charges the nanotubes that thread through the material. This makes them repel one another,...

Enlarge ImageSolid evidence? An ultracold gas of rubidium atoms shows a crystalline-like arrangement of magnetic regions, making a possible supersolid material. Credit: M. Vengalattore et al., arXiv.org (24 January 2009) PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA--Five years ago, researchers in the United States saw the first evidence of a "supersolid," a bizarre state of matter in which crystals of ultracold helium could flow like a liquid without viscosity. But the evidence for supersolidity in helium has not been ironclad. Now, there is a new contender for the supersolidity claim. At the American Physical Society meeting here today, Dan Stamper-Kurn, a physicist at the...

Enlarge ImageStrange swirls. The vortices in the type-2 superconductor niobium diselenide form an orderly pattern (bottom); those in the "type-1.5" superconductor magnesium diboride form a disorderly pattern filled with stripes and voids. Credit: V. V. Moshchalkov and M. Menghini/K. U. Leuven Superconductors, materials that carry electricity without resistance, can be divided into two broad groups depending on how they react to a magnetic field--or so physicists thought. New experiments show that one well-studied superconductor actually belongs to both groups at the same time. "If the experiment is true, this would add a whole new class of superconductors," says Egor...

... # Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun. # Only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time. # Only 47% of adults can roughly approximate the percent of the Earth's surface that is covered with water.* # Only 21% of adults answered all three questions correctly

Today the John Templeton Foundation announced the winner of the annual Templeton Prize of a colossal £1 million ($1.4 million), snip D'Espagnat boasts an impressive scientific pedigree, having worked with Nobel laureates Louis de Broglie, Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr. De Broglie was his thesis advisor; he served as a research assistant to Fermi; and he worked at CERN when it was still in Copenhagen under the direction of Bohr. snip Third view Unlike classical physics, d'Espagnat explained, quantum mechanics cannot describe the world as it really is, it can merely make predictions for the outcomes of our observations. If...