Cosmic rays
Because chemists can't top the hydrogen bomb.
Cosmic rays
Scientist Trap Antimatter for a Record Breaking 16 Minutes!!
(gizmodo) - Scientists working on the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus (ALPHA) near Geneva, Switzerland did something no other scientists have done. They stored atoms of antihydrogen for 1000 seconds (~16 minutes) which is 10,000 times longer than they’ve ever done before. By trapping and observing antimatter for that long, scientists can better understand the properties of it.
Read the whole article HERE!!
Albert Einstein explains his famous formula: E=mc²
“It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing — a somewhat unfamiliar conception for the average mind. Furthermore, the equation E is equal to m c-squared, in which energy is put equal to mass, multiplied by the square of the velocity of light, showed that very small amounts of mass may be converted into a very large amount of energy and vice versa. The mass and energy were in fact equivalent, according to the formula mentioned above. This was demonstrated by Cockcroft and Walton in 1932, experimentally.”
Fermilab’s Tevatron particle accelerator is set to shut down at the end of the year after losing out on additional federal funds to continue its operation.
An estimated 100 jobs could be lost as a result. But area officials are still hopeful about the future of the physics laboratory.
Foster believes Fermilab can continue to be on the forefront of research, even without the Tevatron.
Hotspots in fountains on the Sun’s surface help explain coronal heating mystery
Among the many constantly moving, appearing, disappearing and generally explosive events in the sun’s atmosphere, there exist giant plumes of gas — as wide as a state and as long as Earth — that zoom up from the sun’s surface at 150,000 mph. Known as spicules, these are one of several phenomena known to transfer energy and heat throughout the sun’s magnetic atmosphere, or corona.
Thanks to NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the Japanese satellite Hinode, these spicules have recently been imaged and measured better than ever before, showing them to contain hotter gas than previously observed. Thus, they may perhaps play a key role in helping to heat the sun’s corona to a staggering million degrees or more. (A number made more surprising since the sun’s surface itself is only about 10,000 °F.)
The traditional view is that all heating happens higher up in the corona. The suggestion in this research is that cool gas is ejected from the sun’s surface in spicules and gets heated on its way to the corona. This doesn’t mean the old view has been completely overturned, but this is a strong suggestion that part of the spicule material gets heated to very high temperatures and provides some coronal heating.
Image: Spicules on the sun, as observed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory. These bursts of gas jet off the surface of the sun at 150,000 miles per hour and contain gas that reaches temperatures over a million degrees.
• Source: Full story at NASA
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Particle Pings: Sounds Of The Large Hadron Collider
Asquith, like many physicists, spends a lot of time thinking about particles like the elusive Higgs boson — the subatomic particle that scientists say endows everything in the universe with mass. Proving the existence of the Higgs boson is one of the main goals of the collider.
“You tend to personify things that you think about a lot,” she says. She gives particles personalities, colors and sounds. “I think electrons, perhaps, sound like a glockenspiel to me.”
[…]
She wondered what would happen if she used music composition software to turn data from the collider into sound. So she fed in a sample of the LHC data — three columns of numbers.
“So we’ll map, for example, the first column of numbers, which may be a distance, to time,” Asquith says. “And we may map the second column of numbers to pitch, and the third, perhaps, to volume.”
What she got isn’t quite music, but sounds that are more out of this world — bells, beeps and clangs.
via NPR
audio clip of physics at the link](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_leeq0aBiCb1qzf03eo1_500.jpg)
Particle Pings: Sounds Of The Large Hadron Collider
Asquith, like many physicists, spends a lot of time thinking about particles like the elusive Higgs boson — the subatomic particle that scientists say endows everything in the universe with mass. Proving the existence of the Higgs boson is one of the main goals of the collider.
“You tend to personify things that you think about a lot,” she says. She gives particles personalities, colors and sounds. “I think electrons, perhaps, sound like a glockenspiel to me.”
[…]
She wondered what would happen if she used music composition software to turn data from the collider into sound. So she fed in a sample of the LHC data — three columns of numbers.
“So we’ll map, for example, the first column of numbers, which may be a distance, to time,” Asquith says. “And we may map the second column of numbers to pitch, and the third, perhaps, to volume.”
What she got isn’t quite music, but sounds that are more out of this world — bells, beeps and clangs.
via NPR
audio clip of physics at the link
International Space Station on the Moon?
From our vantage point on Earth, it takes just a half second for the International Space Station to fly across the face of the Moon, so catching a transit is tricky. But award-winning French astrophotographer Theirry Legault captured an amazingly sharp and detailed transit image that makes the ISS look like it is sitting on the Moon’s surface!
Legault took this image from Avranches (Normandy, France) a few hours before the eclipse, on December 20th at 21:34 UT. He used a Meade 10″ ACF on Takahashi EM400, with a Canon 5D mark II. The transit duration was just 0.55 seconds, as the ISS is traveling at 7.5km/s or 28,0000 km/h (17,500 mph).
• Source: Universe Today • View High-Res (2919×2919 px)
