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The (still debated) asteroid that slammed into the Earth 65 million years ago and played a crucial role in wiping dinosaurs out, may have actually been a binary system- 2 asteroids engaged in an orbit around each other. Double trouble The surprising claim comes from analyzing the proportion of asteroid craters on Earth that were […]
Birds may not be the smartest bunch out there, but man do they know how to navigate! Pigeons can get around towns and even continents with stunning accuracy – except for a particular spot in New York. Whenever homing pigeons were launched from that particular spot, they would always get lost. They could easily go […]
Scientists at Duke University have devised a metamaterial that uses microwaves to image objects or scenes in real time, all through a set-up no larger than a book. Currently, the same imaging is being made with robust, huge machinery – the kind you see in airports used to scan people before they board flights – […]
NASA announced in a recent statement that they have beamed an image of the legendary painting to the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft currently orbiting the Moon, to test communication abilities with the satellite, using laser technology. The image was first converted to a suitable digital format, after which it traveled just less than 400.000 […]
In an amazing breakthrough, scientists at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) have for the first time demonstrated an extremely appealing, yet still obscure concept – intelligent molecules. By definition intelligence is the ability to learn and understand or deal with new situation and the latter is exactly what the researchers’ polymer molecules can do, namely react to external stimuli and reversibly […]
A materials science researcher at MIT has devised a novel technique using nanoparticles that allows heat flow to be treated much in the same way as light. This means that like electromagnetic waves, heat was successfully focused and reflected. The findings could help spark further research which might one day aid in the development of […]
Besides being a great family time activity and an awesome display of art for some who have way too much time on their hands, dominos are also a great mathematics exercise. Although most dominos are the same size, it’s well documented that the first domino piece can topple a second larger domino piece, which in […]
Magma forms much deeper than geologists previously believed, according to a new study conducted by Rice University. Magma and Crust The group led by geologist Rajdeep Dasgupta put very small samples of peridotite under very large pressures, to find out if the rock can liquify, at least in small amounts, as deep as 250 […]
A recent study conducted by Californian and Japanese seismologists claims that stable fault areas might not be so stable, in terms of earthquake generation. The controversial findings suggest that creeping fault behavior (more on this in the next paragraph) is actually not only instable, but also capable of creating fast slipping earthquake ruptures. Faulty issues […]
A novel technique for cooling antimatter down to the point where it might become almost stationary might provide scientists with a better basis for studying one of the greatest modern mysteries today. Antimatter, as it name implies, is the total opposite of matter and when the two meet they cancel each other out. For instance […]
Well, the year really kicked off in style. This research is really next level physics, and in order to understand it (even slightly), we’re going to delve into some serious physics. Dancing around absolute zero Over the years, physicists have made significant progress in cooling objects closer to absolute zero (0 Kelvin, the temperature at […]
For the first time ever the shadow of an atom (yes, even an atom can cast a shadow) has been imaged using a complex technique which involved a laser beam and a a Fresnel lens. The culmination of their five-year work is this fantastic snapshot from above, and although this dark spot is quite tiny, the […]
Detecting a potential threat before it occurs is the first step to preventing any aggression. In today’s wars, the scales favor the party that controls the air. Dominate the battle in the air, and you’ll dominate the battlefield ground side as well. It’s no secret to anyone that impressive aircraft detection systems have been developed […]
The discovery of the Higgs boson is the most monumental find in physics of the year and possibility since the turn of the new century. Also known as the God particle, the Higgs boson is an elemental particle believed to be responsible for infusing all matter with mass. It’s been theorized for 50 years, but […]
The Geneva based Large Hadron Collider has gobbled a lot of cash and resource in order to become operational, but through the constant fantastic results that has advanced particle physics understanding greatly, which couldn’t have been possible otherwise, it has definitely shown its value. The next generation of particle smasher is apparently destined for Japan, […]
It may not be the Pandora, but James Cameron dove into one of the most fascinating environments from our planet: the Mariana trench, the deepest point on the face of the Earth. The scientists involved in the project presented the first results at the American Geophysical Union meeting (where else?) in San Francisco. They explained […]
You might not know this, but 76-year old actor Alan Alda, known for his role as Capt. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce in the longstanding television series MASH, is a dedicated science enthusiast. A visiting professor at Stony Brook University, where he also founded the Center for Communicating Science, Alda has sought for many years to increase scientific awareness as an indispensable […]
The Ebb and Flow satellites, known together as the Grail mission are mapping the slight differences in gravity across the Moon. The results show that the Moon received a much bigger battering than previous expected. A troubled past Beneath its surface, the Moon’s interior bears clues from the very early solar system – unlike the […]
Nanocrystals have always interested researchers since their electrical and thermodynamic properties show strong size dependence, which could potentially lead to some highly efficient new technologies. Scientists at University of Pennsylvania recently showed that nanocrystals of semiconductor cadmium selenide can be easily printed or layered on-top of flexible plastics to form electronic devices. This could potentially open up a […]
Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have successfully tested out the prototype for a nuclear-reactor engine, meant to serve in the future as an “a simple, reliable space power system.” Although the experiment, dubbed Demonstration Using Flattop Fissions (DUFF), rendered only 24 watts of power, barely enough to power a common household light bulb, the system […]
After the Large Hadron Collider‘s monumental find of the Higgs boson, the scientists in Geneva might have made new breakthrough finding. Scientists working with the Compact Muon Solenoid, one of the two major-magnet particle detectors in the LHC, have discovered a new form of matter known as color-glass condensate after studying proton-lead high speed collisions. The Large […]
Researchers from the US have developed a hybrid printer that is able to print cartilage which might one day be implanted into injured patients to help them re-grow lost cartilage in vulnerable areas, such as joints. The innovative 3D printer is a mix of a mix of a traditional ink jet printer and an electrospinning […]
Most physicists believe that space is not smooth, but it is rather composed of incredibly small subunits, much like a painting made of dots. This micro-landscape is believed to host numerous black holes – black holes, that is, smaller than a trillionth of a trillionth of the diameter of a hydrogen atom, popping in and […]
While current solar energy conversion technology is preoccupied with generating electricity with as much efficiency as possible, researchers at Rice University have invented a new technological set-up consisting of nanoparticles smaller than the the wavelength of light that can transform solar energy into steam almost instantly. Their findings show a registered efficiency of 24%, while current […]
We’ve all been hearing about the miracles that carbon nanostructures will provide us in the near future for several years now. One of the first steps to making its application commercially viable is making it easy to use and manufacture. Researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology at Weihai and Southeast University have made identifying the […]
While the owl is commonly associated with wisdom, make no mistake – it’s a vicious predator of the night. It’s main weapon is its stealth, as it silently dashes through pitch black catching pray off-guard. This remarkable ability of noiseless flight has intrigued scientists who are looking to develop aircraft inspired by the owl. The owl has […]
Researchers at MIT have created a new metamaterial that they used to fashion a concave lens capable of focusing radio waves with extreme precision. The result lens is extremely lightweight compared to its counterparts developed from conventional materials, and could see promising applications in satellite telecommunications and space exploration of distant stars. In many ways […]
Radioactivity is still persisting in the ocean waters near the Fukushima nuclear plant, despite researchers expectation to drop. Researchers published new data showing that radioactivity levels near the plant remain stable, instead of falling as expected; they believe this is mostly caused by run-off from the river and continued leaks from the plant. The levels […]
Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider have detected one of the rarest decay particle found in nature, dealing a big blow to the supersymmetry theory in the process. SUperSYmmetry “Supersymmetry may not be dead but these latest results have certainly put it into hospital.”, explained Prof Chris Parkes, who is the spokesperson for the UK […]
Is light a wave, or is it made of particles? This question has puzzled since the dawn of modern physics, because somehow, light seemed to behave preferentially, depending on the situation – it was either a wave or a particle, but never both at the same time. This new quantum experiment seems to show that […]
Your ear is a fascinating place – seriously, that’s not some psychotic pick up line. Deep in the inner ear of mammals lies a natural battery, a place filled with ions that produces an electrical potential which drives your neural impulses. Now, a team of researchers have shown this battery can power a device without […]
A team of international physicists have made a nano-sized device which can allow the phase velocities of certain wave of visible light travel infinitely fast. No, this doesn’t translate into instant communication, nor does it mean that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity has been broken. It’s safe and sound. Read on, however, about the potential uses […]
Photons are slippery fellas. Since they don’t have any electrons, they’re free to run through any matter, no matter how intense an electric field may be. Scientists at Stanford, however, have come by a monumental breakthrough after they devised a way to exert virtual force on photons using synthetic magnetism similar to the effect of […]
In 1989, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann made a sensational claim that would have forever changed the world we live in – if it had been true. They claimed to achieve nuclear cold fusion at room temperature using a relatively simple device, thus creating a safe, clean source of energy. The cold fusion dream, revisited […]
In 2011, a 5.1 magnitude earthquake struck the Spanish city of Lorca, resulting in the loss of 9 lives and the injury of over 100 people. Now, researchers studying the case believe groundwater extraction played a crucial role in triggering this earthquake. A fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock, across which […]
When last year scientists at CERN reported how neutrinos traveled a few tens of nanoseconds faster than the speed of light, the whole scientific community was left in shock, since it defied even the most elemental restriction of modern-day physics, a cornerstone without which physicists would have to rebuild the Standard Model. Still, some researchers, […]
Graphene is the strongest material ever discovered by man, and naturally its applications has been extended to a variety of fields – most recently genetics. University of Texas at Dallas scientists have used advanced manipulation techniques to shrink a sheet of graphene to the point that it’s small enough to read DNA. This successful attempt now opens […]
Dissolvable electronic materials could be extremely useful in medical procedures and environmentally friendly gadgets – and they’re almost here. Dissolving electronics A team of researchers has created flexible electronic circuits which dissolve in water or inside your own body; the project is led by John Rogers, a materials scientist at the University of Illinois at […]
I sometimes found myself shocked when I see just how brightly colored some flowers, insects, or even grass can get. But this little, relatively obscure plant has managed to find a fantastic way to send out a signal to every bird out there – and it has done so without using any pigment. Most of […]
In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, and as always Chernobyl, as anti-nuclear manifestos are quick to remind every time nuclear powered energy is concerned, there seems to be a sort of stigma applied to nuclear power. Countries are revising their policies – some for the better, being long overdue, while other […]
Fantastic news for physics lovers: pretty much all particle physics articles will now be open-source, thanks to a deal between a consortium and 12 journals. In the most remarkable attempt to make hard, peer-reviewed science available to readers, the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3) is close to securing all particle-physics […]
We often like to think us humans have achieved a remarkable standard of efficiency and development – but a look at the animal life around us is often enough to humble us. Replicating bacteria and physics The common gut bacteria, Escherichia coli (E. coli, in short) typically takes about 20 minutes to duplicate itself in […]
Known for its sobriety and cumbersome bureaucracy, the European Commission rarely gives good news, especially lately; to bring even more surprise to the table, the announcement was centered around Romania, a country not so well known for its high tech facilities: a new state of the art nuclear physics research facility will be built near […]
By doping graphite, researchers in Germany have reported that they found tantalizing hints of superconductivity at room-temperatures and far above, like water boiling point (100°C.). Superconductivity is a property which describes zero resistance electrical conductivity, however this property has only been observed at temperatures lower than -100°C. Graphite has been found to exhibit superconductivity in […]
Last May, European scientists managed to teleport photons using quantum phenomena over a distance of 143 kilometers, across two Canary islands; however, it is only now that their paper was accepted in a peer reviewed magazine. Beam me up, Scotty While the technology used in Star Trek is still only science-fiction, the quantum teleportation of […]
If you did intermediate math in school, then you’ll most likely remember how to split numbers into prime factors; basically, any number can be written out by multiplying prime factors. Now, a group of researchers from UC Santa Barbara has designed and fabricated a quantum processor capable of factoring a composite number. Don’t get overexcited […]
Not one, but two independent high-energy particle physics laboratories in New York (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider – RHIC) and Geneva ( Large Hadron Collider – LHC) have managed to create quark-gluon plasma after smashing particles into another at very high speeds. The resulting plasma, which only lasted for a fraction of a moment, is the hottest […]
Spintronics, or spin transport electronics, is a sort of emerging technology that scientists have been studying for a while in an attempt to leverage the encoding posibilities in an electron’s spin, in addition to its electrical charge. Recently, researchers at IBM Zurich have made a huge leap forward in turning spintronics into a viable technology […]
Heartened by a glimpse of what may have been the Higgs boson, researchers at the CERN physics lab continue to smash particles in a quest to understand how the Universe works at a submolecular level, why do particles have mass, and many other such cosmic riddles. But rather than the end of the line, the […]
Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with colleagues in Taiwan and China, have developed what’s considered to be the world’s smallest laser; a device so tiny, that it’s invisible to the naked eye. The laser is heralded as a breakthrough in the emerging photonic technology with applications from computing to medicine. […]
