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POPSCold Fusion is Hot again (CBS) 60 Minutes wondered what Richard Garwin would think of the Defense Department's appraisal. "The experiments leave 'no doubt that anomalous, excess heat is produced,'" Pelley told Garwin. Watch the video !
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POPSBlurring the Boundary Between Perception and Memory
Memory itself is not like a video-recording, with a moment-by-moment sensory image. In fact, it’s more like a puzzle: we piece together our memories, based on both what we actually remember and what seems most likely given our knowledge of the world. Just as we make educated guesses in perception, our minds’ best educated guesses help “fill in the gaps” of memory, reconstructing the most plausible picture of what happened in our past. The most striking demonstration of the minds’ guessing game occurs when we find ways to fool the system into guessing wrong. When we trick the visual system, we see a “visual illusion”—a static image might appear as if it’s moving, or a concave surface will look convex. When we fool the memory system, we form a false memory—a phenomenon made famous by researcher Elizabeth Loftus, who showed that it is relatively easy to make people remember events that never occurred. As long as the falsely remembered event could plausibly have occurred, all it takes
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POPSComputing In A Molecule They are focusing on two architectures: one that mimics the classical design of a logic gate but in atomic form, including nodes, loops, meshes etc., and another, more complex, process that relies on changes to the molecule’s conformation to carry out the logic gate inputs and quantum mechanics to perform the computation. The logic gates are interconnected using scanning-tunnelling microscopes and atomic-force microscopes – devices that can measure and move individual atoms with resolutions down to 1/100 of a nanometre (that is one hundred millionth of a millimetre!). As a side project, partly for fun but partly to stimulate new lines of research, Joachim and his team have used the technique to build tiny nano-machines, such as wheels, gears, motors and nano-vehicles each consisting of a single molecule. “Put logic gates on it and it could decide where to go,” Joachim notes, pointing to what would be one of the world’s first implementations of atomic-scale robotics.
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POPSScientists Warn Large Earth Collider May Destroy Earth Physicists at CERN and Brookhaven National Laboratory, who underwrote the VLEC's construction with donations from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, agree that there are "some troubling variables" whenever attempting to launch Earth through the vacuum of space into a massive body of solid matter. Yet, they insist, the academic benefits of a planetary collision outweigh any risk of annihilating the Earth. While the project remains controversial, physicists agreed in late November to reconvene and evaluate the risk factor of the project after a small-scale field test, during which the Very Large Earth Collider will be turned on at 10 percent capacity, catapulting Earth into the moon at only half the speed of light.
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POPSScience's Alternative to an Intelligent Creator: the Multiverse Theory The idea that the universe was made just for us—known as the anthropic principle—debuted in 1973 when Brandon Carter, then a physicist at Cambridge University, spoke at a conference in Poland honoring Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer who said that the sun, not Earth, was the hub of the universe. Carter proposed that a purely random assortment of laws would have left the universe dead and dark, and that life limits the values that physical constants can have. By placing life in the cosmic spotlight—at a meeting dedicated to Copernicus, no less—Carter was flying in the face of a scientific worldview that began nearly 500 years ago when the Polish astronomer dislodged Earth and humanity from center stage in the grand scheme of things. Carter proposed two interpretations of the anthropic principle. The “weak” anthropic principle simply says that we are living in a special time and place in the universe where life is possible. Life couldn’t have survived in the very early universe
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POPSTime to test time Yet if Hogan's ideas are right, noise associated with this fundamental fuzziness should be prominent at GEO600, a joint British and German machine operating near Hannover, Germany, that is searching for gravitational waves. These waves are thought to arise during events such as the massive cosmic collisions of black holes and neutron stars. Confirmation of the idea — which could come as experimental upgrades to GEO600 are put in place over the coming year — would be a big step towards a verifiable quantum theory of gravity, a long-sought unification of quantum mechanics (the physics of the very small) with general relativity (the physics of the very big). Hogan outlines his predictions in a paper published on 30 October in Physical Review D1.
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POPSHas new physics been found at the ageing Tevatron? The CDF muons appear to have come from the decay of a particle with a mass of about 1 GeV. So could they be a signature of dark matter? "We are trying to figure that out," says Weiner. "But I would be excited by the CDF data regardless."
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POPSNew spaceship force field makes Mars trip possible Now this has been confirmed in the laboratory in the UK using apparatus originally built to work on fusion. By recreating in miniature a tiny piece of the Solar Wind, scientists working in the laboratory were able to confirm that a small "hole" in the Solar Wind is all that would be needed to keep the astronauts safe on their journey to our nearest neighbours. Dr. Ruth Bamford, one of the lead researchers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, said, "These initial experiments have shown promise and that it may be possible to shield astronauts from deadly space weather".
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POPSBlackLight Power: A new energy breakthrough ? This seems to be a conceptual breakthrough in energy production, as it yields an energy from a process just between chemical and nuclear. If this method carries any water, it is about to change the world as we know it. I do not have enough physics to fully understand the process, but the guys seem to know what they are talking about. If anybody with enough physics degrees to understand it, can say a word about the process' plausibility I would be thankful
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POPSDiscovery Of 'Broken Symmetry' At Subatomic Level Earns 2008 Nobel Prize In Physics It has proved to be extremely useful, and Nambu’s theories permeate the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. The Model unifies the smallest building blocks of all matter and three of nature’s four forces in one single theory. The spontaneous broken symmetries that Nambu studied, differ from the broken symmetries described by Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa. These spontaneous occurrences seem to have existed in nature since the very beginning of the universe and came as a complete surprise when they first appeared in particle experiments in 1964. It is only in recent years that scientists have come to fully confirm the explanations that Kobayashi and Maskawa made in 1972. It is for this work that they are now awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. They explained broken symmetry within the framework of the Standard Model, but required that the Model be extended to three families of quarks. These predicted, hypothetical new quarks have recently appeared in physics expe
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POPS Invisibility cloaks could take sting out of tsunamis "I think that this is a great idea with much potential," says Ulf Leonhardt at the University of St Andrews, UK. "One could really imagine protecting coastlines by arrays of cleverly designed concrete poles." Such structures act like metamaterials, materials whose properties result from their structure not composition, and can be used to make invisibility cloaks for light, he says. But Guenneau cautions that large structures like islands and coastlines are unlikely to become invisible anytime soon, because building the many small islands needed to protect one is such a big job. "It's crazy – maybe only people in Dubai could do this," he adds, referring to the spectacular artificial islands built there. Smaller structures such as offshore oil platforms would be easier to protect, he says.
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POPSForget black holes, could the LHC trigger a “Bose supernova”? Nobody is exactly sure how these explosions proceed which is a tad worrying for the following reason: some clever clogs has pointed out that superfluid helium is a BEC and that the LHC is swimming in 700,000 litres of the stuff. Not only that but the entire thing is bathed in some of the most powerful magnetic fields on the planet. If not for anything else, the LHC has become a modern doom spelling myth. The universe is about to punish us for prying on its privacy... These modern myths are truly fascinating. After Bose Nova? Bose Supernova! :-)
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POPSCounterintuitive physics may help everyone drive home quicker The second concept, the Nash equilibrium, occurs when an individual cannot choose a better strategy for himself if other individuals keep their strategies unchanged (i.e. an individual can not improve his situation by changing unilaterally). In the traffic situation, say you know which routes the other drivers take, maybe because you’ve tried different routes to find out which is the fastest way to get home from work. After trying different routes, you choose the route that is fastest for yourself. Then you cannot find a faster route as long as the other drivers stick to their same routes (which they do, because they cannot find faster routes, either). But if many drivers could change their routes simultaneously, then the effect might be a decrease in everyone’s travel time, and society would come closer to the social optimum rather than languishing in the Nash equilibrium. The scientists found that modifying the network structure can sometimes lead to faster overall travel times,
15
POPSFermilab Looks for Visitors from Another Dimension The prospect of extra dimensions is fascinating. ET might already be here in a neighbour dimension. :-) Estimated to cost about $15 million, the MicroBooNE tank would be located near the MiniBooNE detector at Fermilab so that it could observe the same beam of neutrinos. This past June the lab’s physics advisory committee approved the design phase for the project; if all goes well, the detector could begin operating as soon as 2011.
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POPSPhysicists investigate how time moves forward This provides an orientation, or arrow of time, and it is generally believed that all other time asymmetries, such as our sense that future and past are different, are a direct consequence of this thermodynamic arrow.” In their study, Feng and Crooks have developed a method to accurately measure “time asymmetry” (which refers to our intuitive concept of time, that the past differs from the future, in contrast with time symmetry, where there is no distinction between past and future). They began by investigating the increase in energy dissipation, or entropy, in various arrangements. While time blatantly moves forward in the macroscopic world, the direction of time becomes confusing on the scale of a single molecule
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POPSExploding chromosomes fuel research about evolution of genetic storage Dinoflagellates are stuffed at the core with tightly compacted chromosomes, yet these organisms contain neither histones nor nucleosomes. "What takes care of neutralizing DNA, to allow chromosomes to condense?" Levi-Setti asked. "Most biology books do not tell you." Other scientists had already identified positively charged atoms called cations as neutralizing factors. They found that dinoflagellate chromosomes explode upon the removal of calcium and magnesium cations. Levi-Setti has produced the first images of the distribution of these cations in dinoflagellate chromosomes. These images verify that cations, mainly of calcium and magnesium, neutralize DNA's enormous negative charge, and further suggest a critical role in folding the protein as well. The finding raises questions about the evolution of chromosomes, Rizzo said. "Did dinoflagellates once have histones and then lost them? Or did dinoflagellates never have histones and just 'figured out' a different way to fold lar
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POPSTransformers - The Nature of Alien Life The driving factor is a pragmatic desire to improve mental capacity. Alien beings may have already reached a point in their evolution where, having exhausted the potential of their biological brains, they have taken the next logical step and opted for robotic brains equipped with artificial intelligence. This brain swap may not be as far off for humans as one might think. In only a few decades, the computer revolution here on Earth has produced supercomputers capable of performing more than a quadrillion calculations per second. According to research by Hans Moravec, an artificial-intelligence expert at Carnegie Mellon University, that rate trumps the human brain’s estimated top speed of 100 trillion calculations per second. Some scientists speculate that in a few decades, an event called the technological singularity will occur, and machines armed with computer brains will become sentient and surpass human intelligence. Civilizations equipped with technology light-years ahead
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POPSPhysicists Seek Answers to Quantum Correlations The physicists ruled out several possible classical explanations for the instantaneous communication. For one thing, they showed that the photons did not share information before leaving Geneva, and so they didn´t travel knowing about each other´s properties. In another test, the scientists showed that no communication could have occurred through a different reference frame, as might happen because of the photons´ high speeds. According to Einstein´s theory of relativity, observers moving at high speeds can get different measurements of the same event because they have different reference frames. But, by performing tests over a complete rotation of the Earth, the researchers ruled out this possibility. "We think space and time are important because that´s the kind of monkeys we are,"
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POPSString Theory Faster-Than-Light Drive Proposed Dreams of interstellar travel may need to be put on hold for the moment, however. Cleaver and Obousy estimate that the amount of energy needed to influence the extra dimension is equivalent to the entire mass of Jupiter being converted into pure energy for a ship measuring roughly 10 meters by 10 meters by 10 meters. "That is an enormous amount of energy," Cleaver said. "We are still a very long ways off before we could create something to harness that type of energy." But what if we could make ourselves very very small??? I am ready to squeeze myself quite a bit to get really far... :-)
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POPSIs our universe fine-tuned for life? The Anthropic Principle Under Scrutiny Adams selected a range of possible values for each of these constants, then put them into a computer model that created a multitude of universes, or a virtual "multiverse". Each universe within the multiverse used different values for the three constants and was subject to slightly different laws of physics. About a quarter of the resulting universes turned out to be populated by energy-generating stars. "You can change alpha or the gravitational constant by a factor of 100 and stars still form," Adams says, suggesting that stars can exist in universes in which at least some fundamental constants are wildly different than in our universe.
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POPSLarge Hadron Collider: The Biggest Human Experiment Ever Yet Some of those particles could help us to understand the nature of mass, including the as-yet-undetectable dark matter that accounts for so much of the universe’s mass. Other particles might prove the existence of extra dimensions, or lead to entirely new theories or physical laws
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POPSPrelude to the Higgs: A work for 2 bosons in the key of Z You might rightly ask yourselves why would I bother to clip this scientific gibberish. Actually this experiment, makes science a step closer to a critical junction, the discovery of the Higgs Boson, a.k.a the 'God' particle. A very substantial part of our understanding of the physical universe is put to a critical test. It worth a clip...
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POPSRevolutionary materials reflect ancient forms Because crystals and quasicrystals comprise different material classes with differing physical and chemical properties, the observed intermediate structure is striking. "The combination of crystalline and quasicrystalline structural elements will likely lead to novel material properties"
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POPSIs a 'Dark Force' Pushing the Universe Apart? Astronomers now recognize that the eventual fate of the universe is inextricably tied to the presence of dark energy and dark matter.The current standard model for cosmology describes a universe that is 70 percent dark energy, 25 percent dark matter, and only 5 percent normal matter.
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POPSMore Evidence for a Revolutionary Theory of Water The current study is the most recent addition to a growing body of evidence for a new theory about the structure of liquid water. In 2004, Nilsson and colleagues sparked controversy with a paper published in Science that suggested the tetrahedral model of water was incorrect. Nilsson agrees that the debate is far from settled and that much work remains before a clear picture of liquid water emerges. "Over the last decade or so we have discovered that materials once considered homogeneous exhibit complex nanoscale order," said Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory director Jo Stöhr. "In my view, the work on water is yet another example of the actual complexity of matter, this time within a simple liquid. Modern X-ray work appears to be triggering a new understanding of liquids and we may have only seen the beginning of a paradigm shift in our understanding."
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POPSRight and wrong lessons from biology The opposite view stresses that evolution is an extremely effective way of searching parameter space, and that in consequence is that we should assume that biological design solutions are likely to be close to optimal for the environment for which they’ve evolved. Where these design solutions seem odd from our point of view, their unfamiliarity is to be ascribed to the different ways in which physics works at the nanoscale. At its most extreme, this view regards biological nanotechnology, not just as the existence proof for nanotechnology, but as an upper limit on its capabilities.
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POPSThe Planet's Most Massively Awesome Computer -The Large Hadron By some, it certainly seems to be one of the most outrageously wasteful projects upon the earth. Perhaps it is. I, for one do not think so. I think that understanding the universe as far as we can understand it justifies almost any economical price. Because this is part of what makes us human; the desire to uncover the mysteries of the universe. All this to capture one tiny hypothetical particle. Is it not amazing?
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