September 2009
39 posts
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Watchroomthily:
Spinning water droplets behave like black holes - New Scientist
wild.
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Stephen Hawking Is Making His Comeback →
Stephen Hawking, the master of time, space, and black holes, steps back into the spotlight to secure his scientific legacy—and to explain the greatest mystery in physics: the origin of the universe.
Two decades after rocketing to scientific stardom with his book A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking still knows how to make an entrance. On a mild March evening in Pasadena, California, 4,500...
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Physicists make discovery in quantum mechanics →
Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have made an important advance in quantum mechanics using a superconducting electrical circuit. The finding is reported in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.
The researchers showed that they could detect the quantum correlations in the results of measurements of entangled quantum bits, using a superconducting electrical circuit. The correlations are...
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German scientists produce first Bose-Einstein... →
Physicists at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (Germany) have succeeded in producing a Bose-Einstein condensate from the alkaline earth element calcium. The use of alkaline earth atoms creates new potential for precision measurements, for example for the determination of gravitational fields.
The physicist and Nobel Prize winner Wolfgang Ketterle once described it as an “identity...
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Endgame for the Tevatron →
With little fanfare, last week the Tevatron at Fermilab, and the two experiments CDF and D0, emerged from an 11-week shutdown for what will likely be the final run of the collider, which is over 20 years old. In the past year, the machine has regularly set new records for luminosity (essentially the number of collisions per second) and delivered over 2 fb-1 (inverse femtobarns) of...
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Magnetism Observed In Gas For The First Time →
brylog:
For the first time, MIT scientists have observed ferromagnetic behavior in an atomic gas, addressing a decades-old question of whether it is possible for a gas to show properties similar to a magnet made of iron or nickel… (more @ ScienceDaily)
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How Long Would It Take a Physics Lecture to... →
roomthily:
piquant:
In the comments: “If the professor puts everyone to sleep, they’ll all live longer.”
math can do no wrong.
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Sept. 16, 1736: One Degree of Separation —... →
1736: German physicist and instrument maker Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit dies in the Netherlands. His pioneering work on thermometers means he will live on, to a degree.
Fahrenheit, however, wanted to standardize the thermometer. First, he produced two thermometers in 1714 that gave identical readings, a major accomplishment for the time. He went on to substitute mercury for alcohol as the...
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How to Measure What We Don't Know →
How do we discover new things? For scientists, observation and measurement are the main ways to extract information from Nature. Based on observations, scientists build models that, in turn, are used to make predictions about the future or the past. To the extent that the predictions are successful, scientists conclude that their models capture Nature’s organization. However, Nature does not...
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Could Exotic Matter Provide an Infinite Source of... →
Generally, scientists prefer to avoid the concept of perpetual motion. The idea of a machine that could produce movement that goes on forever, and using that movement to generate an endless stream of energy, is usually considered more science fiction than science. But recently, physicist Pavel Ivanov has investigated previous speculation that an exotic fluid with unusual properties could cause...
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NASA Levitating Mice With Magnetic Fields →
proofmathisbeautiful:
nickholmes:
“… NASA built a device to simulate variable levels of gravity. It consists of a superconducting magnet that generates a field powerful enough to levitate the water inside living animals…”
This is effing crazy/cool.
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High-Energy Particle Physics Demystified | Wired... →
With the Large Hadron Collider set to start up in November, a new book takes you inside the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
Physicist Paul Halpern explores the past, present and intriguing future of high-energy particle physics in Collider. He explains what all the hubbub surrounding the LHC is about and why physicists are pretty much beside themselves with...
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Quantum Mechanics And Gravity
nowihaveablog:
Via Wikipedia:
Several decades after the discovery of general relativity it was realized that general relativity is incompatible with quantum mechanics.[19] It is possible to describe gravity in the framework of quantum field theory like the other fundamental forces, such that the attractive force of gravity arises due to exchange of virtual gravitons, in the same way as the...
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A Theory of Dark Matter →
Among the most astounding, unexpected, and important achievements of the past century (or even more) have been the discoveries of dark matter and dark energy, collectively dubbed the “dark sector.”
A whopping 96% of the essence of our universe lies in the dark sector, where essence refers to everything that controls evolution and large-scale properties of the cosmos. Dark...
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A twenty-seven kilometer film →
higgsboson:
For the past two weeks, Bram Conjaerts, a Belgian filmmaker, has been touring the CERN sites and surrounding countryside conducting research for his new documentary. The film will follow the entire 27 km length of the LHC ring, but unlike most documentaries about the LHC, it will take place mostly above ground!
While working towards his film degree in 2008, Bram Conjaerts won an...
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Top 25 Movies for Physics Geeks →
There’s nothing like a movie with great physics, if you can manage to understand the subject. For all the physics geeks out there, here is a great list of movies with good and very bad examples of the many different laws of physics.
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Groove to the physics mix tape →
The likes of Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, Janis Joplin, and Mick Jagger may have forever sealed the popular notion that musicians are the hallmark of cool. On the flip side is the popular notion of a physicist as uncool. Einstein may have been beloved, but in terms of cool, he did physicists in. No matter how much the scientific community may resist, it’s hard to associate physics with the hip...
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Researcher uses 100,000 degree heat to study... →
Using one of the greatest sources of radiation energy created by man, University of Nevada, Reno researcher and faculty member Roberto Mancini is studying ultra-high temperature and non-equilibrium plasmas to mimic what happens to matter in accretion disks around black holes.
Physics department professor and chair Mancini has received a $690,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to...
Illuminating physics for students |... →
Physics teachers are fortunate (I am among friends, so I can speak frankly): ours is a subject the relevance and importance of which are beyond question, and which is intrinsically fascinating to anyone whose mind has not been corrupted by bad teaching or poisoned by dogma and superstition. I have never felt the need to “sell” physics, and efforts to do so under the banner...
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