Free Republic

Charges build up due to exchange of material, study suggests A balloon rubbed against the head can be both a hair-raising and a hair-tearing experience, a new study suggests. Clumps of balloon and hair invisible to the naked eye may break off each object during contact and stick to the other. The existence of this exchange could challenge traditional theories about how static electricity builds up, a process known as contact electrification. “The basic assumptions people have made about contact electrification are wrong,” says Bartosz Grzybowski, a physical chemist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. He and his colleagues describe...

For popular historians, there is a constant tension between patching up a holey narrative and honoring a commitment to the facts, as rickety as these often are. Perhaps authors of historical fiction have an easier time of it; they use facts as the yeast to grow fully formed characters, convincing dialogue and a credible story line. We are eager partners in these literary deceptions, for the opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with Renault's Alexander or Graves's Claudius. Nonfiction historians are hogtied; no amount of speculative verbiage can truly fill an absence of facts. Such is the case with Fibonacci...

US particle physicists are inching closer to determining why the Universe exists in its current form, made overwhelmingly of matter. Physics suggests equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been made in the Big Bang. In 2010, researchers at the Tevatron accelerator claimed preliminary results showing a small excess of matter over antimatter as particles decayed. The team has submitted a paper showing those results are on a firmer footing.

It's official: science is the new rock and roll.That's according to the physicist and author of Free Radicals Michael Brooks, who argues that scientists have laboured under the suffocating blanket of sober respectability for too long. It's time to throw off the shackles and celebrate the truly creative endeavour that science really is. After World War II, he argues, science was given a makeover - turned into a brand much like Coca-Cola, Disney or McDonald's. Science had proved its worth in the heat of battle, but while Penicillin and radar had helped us survive it was the awesome destructive power...

Berkeley Lab Scientists Find Unique Luminescence in Tetrapod NanocrystalsObservation of a scientific rule being broken can sometimes lead to new knowledge and important applications. Such would seem to be the case when scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) created artificial molecules of semiconductor nanocrystals and watched them break a fundamental principle of photoluminescence known as “Kasha’s rule.” Named for chemist Michael Kasha, who proposed it in 1950, Kasha’s rule holds that when light is shined on a molecule, the molecule will only emit light (fluorescence or phosphorescence) from its lowest energy excited...

Magnetic microprocessors could use million times less energy than today's silicon chipsFuture computers may rely on magnetic microprocessors that consume the least amount of energy allowed by the laws of physics, according to an analysis by University of California, Berkeley, electrical engineers. Today's silicon-based microprocessor chips rely on electric currents, or moving electrons, that generate a lot of waste heat. But microprocessors employing nanometer-sized bar magnets – like tiny refrigerator magnets – for memory, logic and switching operations theoretically would require no moving electrons. Such chips would dissipate only 18 millielectron volts of energy per operation at room temperature, the...

30 June 2011 ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory has provided results that will dramatically affect the search for physics beyond Einstein. It has shown that any underlying quantum ‘graininess’ of space must be at much smaller scales than previously predicted. Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity describes the properties of gravity and assumes that space is a smooth, continuous fabric. Yet quantum theory suggests that space should be grainy at the smallest scales, like sand on a beach. One of the great concerns of modern physics is to marry these two concepts into a single theory of quantum gravity. Now, Integral has...

The mathematical constant pi is under threat from a group of detractors who will be marking "Tau Day" on Tuesday. Tau Day revellers suggest a constant called tau should take its place: twice as large as pi, or about 6.28 - hence the 28 June celebration. Tau proponents say that for many problems in maths, tau makes more sense and makes calculations easier. Not all fans of maths agree, however, and pi's rich history means it will be a difficult number to unseat. "I like to describe myself as the world's leading anti-pi propagandist," said Michael Hartl, an educator and...

Established Physics Has Another New Fusion Problem June 27, 2011 | 2 Comments Brillouin Energy Corp In Berkeley California has another Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) method in the development and proving stage. The new method comes at fusion from a different path than the Rossi E-Cat. The reports have the Brillouin at nearly 2 times the energy coming out from that going in. If this is real the established physicists have a new “won’t fit” phenomena to cope with. In the simple explanation the Brillouin technique uses an electromagnetic pulse slamming into hydrogen or H1. The pulse pushes some...

two new elements have been added to the periodic table...The elements were recognized by an international committee of chemists and physicists. For now, they are called Elements 114 and 116 — permanent names and symbols will be chosen later.People are not likely to run into either of them. Scientists make them in labs by smashing atoms of other elements together to create the new ones...the new ones are short-lived. Atoms of 114 disintegrate within a few seconds, while 116 disappears in a fraction of a second, ..Both elements were discovered by a collaboration of scientists from Livermore and Russia. They...

This Is HUGE News: Defkalion Press Conference FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 2011 Greek Deputy Development Minister Socrates Xynidis Attends Agreement With 3 Multinational Companies 17 Countries Have Expressed Interest Establishment Of Research New Centre 3 New Plants Making e-cats in Xanthi Investment Totals 200 Million Euros Co-operation With University of Xanthi Also in attendance: President of the Association of Exporters of Northern Greece President of "Larco" which will supply nickel General Secretariat for Research of China Chairman of the Technical Chamber of Greece Representative of German Green Party Press Conference just finished (around 16.30 Athens time) In Palaio Faliro Municipality Congress...

What do you think about Andrea Rossi's E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) technology? Game Changer, Stinks of Fraud or just your run of the mill Mad Scientist. Biggest hurdle to me is his credibility, Rossi was convicted and jailed from a previous energy endeavor. Appears to be real... http://defkalion-energy.com/ Odd that US rights are licensed to DOE connected Ampenergo. my guess is too many income streams are impacted and the rollout here will be slow. Appears the media labeled the e-cat to be some type of cold fusion or LENR. Rossi and company are claiming it to be a type of exothermic...

One of the most interesting things on the new Defkalion Green Technologies (DGT) web site is a white paper that gives an overview of the company’s technology and its business plan. It appears that they have carefully thought out how to introduce and proliferate their E-Cat-based technology which will be marketed under the brand name Hyperion. Reading through the white paper some key points regarding the manufacturing and distribution of E-Cat based technology emerge:

The quantum mechanical entanglement is at the heart of the famous quantum teleportation experiment and was referred to by Albert Einstein as "spooky action at a distance". A team of researchers led by Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences used a system which does not allow for entanglement, and still found results which cannot be interpreted classically. Their findings were published in the latest issue of the renowned scientific journal Nature. Asher Peres, a pioneer of quantum information theory once remarked jokingly in a...

A Nobel Laureate speaks out on the Energy Catalyzer June 22, 2011 by Ivy Matt Dr. Brian Josephson, winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on superconductivity, has recently released a YouTube video of an interview of himself conducted by Judith Driscoll, Professor of Materials Science at Cambridge University. The stated purpose of the video is to wake up the media to the E-Cat story, which has not been widely reported on in the mainstream media of the English-speaking world. While some cold fusion advocates hypothesize the existence of a conspiracy of silence to suppress news...

In 1893, Orlando Ferguson, a real estate developer based in South Dakota, drew a map of the Earth that combined biblical and scientific knowledge in a unique way. The map accompanied a 92-page lecture that Ferguson — referring to himself as a "professor" — delivered in town after town, traveling far and wide to share his theory of geography, highlighted by his belief that the Earth was flat. Only one fully intact version of Ferguson's map, which represents the Earth as a giant, rectangular slab with a dimpled upper surface, remains. Don Homuth of Salem, Ore., just donated the map...

When the Swift Gamma Burst Mission spacecraft first detected the flash within the constellation Draco, astronomers thought it was a gamma-ray burst from a collapsing star. On March 31, however, UC Berkeley's Joshua Bloom sent out an email circular suggesting that it wasn't a typical gamma-ray burst at all, but a high-energy jet produced as a star about the size of our sun was shredded by a black hole a million times more massive. Careful analysis of the Swift data and subsequent observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory confirmed Bloom's initial insight. The details are...

FAIRFAX, Va., June 15, 2011—George Mason University scientists discovered recently that a phenomenon called a giant magnetic rope is the cause of solar storms. Confirming the existence of this formation is a key first step in helping to mitigate the adverse effects that solar storm eruptions can have on satellite communications on Earth. The discovery was made by associate professor Jie Zhang and his graduate student Xin Cheng using images from the NASA Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) spacecraft. Though the magnetic rope was believed to be the cause of these giant eruptions on the Sun, scientists had previously not been...

Experimental test of a mini-Rossi device at the Leonardocorp, Bologna 29 March 2011. Participants: Giuseppe Levi, David Bianchini, Carlo Leonardi, Hanno Essén, Sven Kullander, Andrea Rossi, Sergio Focardi. Travel report by Hanno Essén and Sven Kullander, 3 April 2011. We gathered in the Leonardo Corporation building where the 10 kW apparatus for anomalous energy production by nickel and hydrogen was demonstrated during a press conference on 14th of January. References [1] to [4] for the original papers describing the innovation are listed at the end. In the same building, two CHP facilities were located, based on biodiesel from waste which...

Called blue stragglers, these cannibal stars have been spotted in other parts of the Milky Way. They seem to lag in age next to the other stars with which they formed—appearing hotter, and thus younger and bluer. Astronomers suspect blue stragglers look so youthful because they've stolen hydrogen fuel from other stars, perhaps after colliding into their victims. These cannibal stars are routinely found in dense star clusters, where stars have many chances to feed off each other. Now, however, scientists have found blue stragglers in the Milky Way's galactic bulge, a dense region of stars and gas surrounding the...