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A Romanian scientist working at the University of Ohio captured the first-ever images of atoms moving within a molecule by applying a novel technique which basically turns the electrons of a molecule into flashbulbs; while this is currently only a new way to visualize molecules, researchers believe that one day it will be the key […]
Since they were first introduced more than 70 years ago, electron microscopes have aided researchers from a diverse array of fields of science reach some of the world’s greatest scientific breakthroughs – most often they’ve been considered indispensable. They’ve well reached their limits, however, and University of Sheffield researchers sought to find an alternate route for sub-atomic imaging. […]
The biggest manhunt in physics history is steadily closing in on its target. Wanted – Higgs boson, also known as the God Particle. Reason – explain why objects have mass and provide “missing link” for standard model of physics. Sketch portrait – mass around 125 GeV. Last seen – Fermilab Tevatron particle accelerator. If you […]
Xinwei Wang, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Iowa State studies thermal conductivity – and he had a funny feeling about spiders; so he ordered eight spiders — Nephila clavipes, golden silk orbweavers — and put them to work eating crickets and spinning webs in the cages he set up. Wang has been looking for organic […]
Ground robots are currently typically deployed by the US military in various explosive-ordinance-disposal missions. However, robots are currently unable to fulfill their potential across a greater range of missions mostly due to issues regarding mobility and manipulation. However, DARPA is trying hard to face those obstacles, and when they team up with Boston Dynamics, you […]
Part of a the recent slew of revolutionary technological and scientific novelties coming off IBM‘s research and development lab, the company has just announced that it has successfully managed to measure and image for the first time how charge is distributed within a single molecule. The achievement was made possible after a new technique, called Kelvin probe force microscopy […]
It looks like not all is going bad for Italian researchers, after the trial of the seismologists: physicists from Italy have discovered the first evidence of a nucleus that doesn’t exist in nature and survives only for 10-10 seconds when created in a laboratory. Strange matter Hypernuclei contain all sorts of protons and neutrons, but […]
Space offers incredibly fascinating experimental conditions for various scientific studies, otherwise very hard or practically impossible to replicate on Earth. Microgravity is something of great interest to scientists, and even simple experiments with fire are extremely insightful. Combustion in space occurs at much lower temperatures and with a lower amount of required oxygen, and to […]
In the popular TV series, Star Trek, one of the most fascinating devices featured, out of the whole myriad of blasters and tractor beams, is the tricorder, a portable medical scanner and communication device which could detect biological phenomena such as increased blood flow around tumorous growths just by sweeping a person. The closest thing […]
The much dreamed off invisibility cloak is just a few tiny steps away, after remarkable research in the field, many backed by military interests, have sparked some amazing advances. In the last few years alone, scientists have managed to successfully cloak various objects either using meta-materials that bent light around an object to conceal it or […]
University of Bristol scientists have developed a magnetic soap, which basically is a common soap only it’s filled with iron atoms that causes the targeted waste material to become magnetized. The detergent has a real potential of revolutionizing how mega clean-ups will be handled in the future. An oil spill could be cleaned a lot […]
Researchers at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used the world’s most powerful X-ray laser fired upon a neon gas capsule and thus emit an avalanche of short wavelength X-rays,creating the first atom laser. The same laser was used to heat a lump of matter at over 2 million degrees Fahrenheit – hotter than the sun’s […]
By harnessing the science of both quantum and nano physics, scientists at the Niels Bohr Institute have come up with an innovative new way of cooling semiconductor membranes by using laser light. Through this new technique, the researchers were able to cool the tiny, thin membrane from room temperature to -269 degrees Celsius. Paradoxically, the […]
Graphene is starting to show its really interesting and exciting properties; recently, scientists have managed to put together two separate properties which usually don’t go together: it is iridescent like a butterfly’s wing, and superhydrophobic, like a rose petal or this material. The engineered surface could have applications in liquid transportation and analysis, or due […]
Ever since researchers started studying the Earth’s spin, they noticed that the spin isn’t perfect. Many believe this is a result of the different elements in the Earth’s core, mantle and crust, which have different densities and generate different friction. Most researchers studying this wobble agreed that the mantle would have to respond to the […]
Black Holes are the least understood entities, so far, in the Universe. However, if there’s one thing scientists know for sure about them, it’s that they’re the most extreme environment in cosmos. Black Holes have such a powerful, relentless gravity pull that it swallows absolutely everything in its vicinity, even light gets absorbed with zero […]
A team of researchers predicted the next big thing in the world of particle physics: super symmetry, or Susy. The Higgs boson is the standing stone of modern particle physics, but it is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding our Universe, and according to Howard Baer, Homer L. Dodge Professor of […]
Moore’s law states that the processing power of computers doubles approximately every two years; as prices fall and manufacturing technology increases, researchers have now shown that wires just a few nanometres wide conduct electricity in the same way as their larger counterparts, rather than being affected by quantum mechanics – a result which surprised many […]
Cloaking used to be one of my favorite SciFi themes. James Bond supercars that would show up or disappear instantly at the flick of an alarm key, the hallow man, objects rendered completely invisible to the human eye and lost in the surroundings. I say used to be because spatial cloaking has transcended for some […]
The big news about the discovery of the Higgs boson seem farther than some might have expected, even though researchers reported ‘tantalizing hints’ of the elusive particle; physicists will have to hold their breath a little longer. About a week ago, rumors started stirring up the physics world, as the people at CERN zoomed in […]
Isaac Newton is one of the most influential figures in physics, the first to stipulate the fundamental laws of motion and gravity, among many other breakthroughs. Now, anyone can come closer to understanding how Newton first discovered planetary motion or stated his three fundamental principles by reading his own personal notes, recently digitized and released […]
The physicists over at CERN set out to determine if the Higgs Boson is real or not, and they seem poised to figure that out, as rumor spreads about the possible announcement of the elusive particle. Recently, rumors about the boson exploded, and instead of cooling down, they amplified even more; this Tuesday (tomorrow, 13th […]
Does flicking a dice really render a random face? The answer would be no. The dice is governed by large-scale conventional physics and its motion, and thus final position can be determined. You can’t tell where it lands just by looking at it thwirl, of course, but the fact remains it’s not random, and neither […]
I recently came across this interview with Prof. Dr. Siegfried Bethke, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Physics in Munich, posted at Physorg, and just had to share it, because it is incredibly interesting: Professor Bethke, particles have been colliding with each other at the LHC for two years now, the detectors have so […]
The great part of Earth’s liquid outer core comprises of molten iron, which is just swell for us and every inhabitant of our planet, because this layer generates a magnetic field which protects us from radiation which would be lethal. But common accepted theory suggests that there should also be some lighter ingredients down there, […]
An international team of researchers working in Italy recently conducted a study which concluded that the revolutionary results claimed by their colleagues at CERN may be faulty. They studied the same neutrino particles reported to travel faster than light and claim their test clearly shows this is wrong. The announcement was made in September, and […]
The idea which states that nothing can travel faster than light is a corner stone of modern day physics, upon which scientists have built up models and theories of how the world, the Universe, works. If the statement is proven to be false, than our understanding of physics becomes undermined, and as such needs to […]
The Moon still holds numerous unanswered questions, and among these, perhaps the most interesting is the one regarding its lost magnetism. Why is it that the Moon had magnetism? Now, two teams working separately seem to have found two complementary explanations. Rock magnetism It all started when the Apollo missions brought back samples of moon […]
A very intriguing theory says that the Vikings used to navigate through traitorous Arctic waters, and possibly even through the Atlatic towards North America, by using a coveted mineral called the “sunstone“. These glowing, fabled stones used to guide the northsmen by revealing the position of the sun even when it was obscured by cloud […]
Trekkies might rejoice at the news that NASA has recently decided to fund a research group employed to study how tractor beam technology might become applicable in space exploration missions. The agency has awarded a $100,000 initial grant to a team of reserachers who will study three experimental techniques involving capturing small-particle samples with lasers. […]
Developing safe, reliable, compact, and cost-effective hydrogen storage technologies is one of the most technically challenging barriers to the widespread use of hydrogen as a form of energy. Hydrogen is a great fuel, and if used in perfect conditions it can power numerous applications. However, with today’s tech a hydrogen powered car can’t even travel […]
In the aftermath of September’s highly controversial announcement, that a particle with a speed larger than that of the light was recorded, CERN has announced that it has been re-running the experiment, in order to test the validity of the first. Now of course, when you claim you have a neutrino going faster than the […]
Water is everywhere on Earth – that’s easy to see for anybody. But why and how it got here, that’s a dilemma that until now, hasn’t been fully answered. A new comet study has shown how a ring of cold water vapor can encircle a young planet, while another related one explains a hailstorm of […]
What you just saw in the video above is a perfect demonstration of the quantum levitation effect, through a fairly simple set-up made by Tel Aviv University scientists, comprised of a track and a semiconductor. The quantum levitation is actually a perfect demonstration of the Meissner effect, which describes the expulsion of a magnetic field […]
Ever since the physics experiment which recorded neutrinos traveling slightly faster than light have set the scientific world ablaze, and since then, over 80 possible explanations have emerged. While some claim that these results pave the way for a totally different set of laws of physics, many offer less revolutionary solutions to the problem. The […]
The most popular video sharing website in the world, YouTube, has teamed up with NASA and several other key figures from the scientific community to launch YouTube Space Lab, a global effort challenging students between the ages of 14 and 18 to design an experiment that can be conducted in space. I know there are […]
A whole lot of people have been closely following the developments at the Large Hadron Collider, but now, all that may become a whole lot easier, thanks to an Android based application which allows users to see the latest colliding protons, among others, at the world’s largest particle accelerator, located at the French/Swiss border. LHSee, […]
A grad student from the prestigious college has created an actual flying carpet, that moves thanks to “ripple power waves” that come from an electrical current which are driven forward from air packets. At the moment, the device moves at only 1 cm per second, but it is only the first prototype, and can be […]
If harnessed at a much greater potential than it is now, sunlight might not only become the primary source of energy on the planet, but the cheapest too. In one hour the sun sprays our planet with enough energy to power all the electrical needs of the word for an entire YEAR. Now that’s something […]
Last week, ground shattering news hit the scientific community worldwide when CERN announced that their experiments showed that neutrinos fired from the CERN laboratory in Geneva, reached their destination of Gran Sasso, Italy, 60 billionths of a second faster than they would have if they had been traveling exactly at the speed of light. CERN […]
The Slinky is one of the most popular toys in the world, being used by children in the playroom and NASA scientists trying to demonstrate physical principles, alike. Surprisingly or not, slinky springs are filled with even more secrets of physics besides simple energy and momentum releases. For example, in these two incredibly entertaining videos […]
What’s maybe the most shocking announcement for the scientific community this whole millennium came earlier today from Geneva, when scientists at CERN dropped the bomb shell according to which they’ve managed to break the speed of light barrier. If their three years study of measurements with re-checks upon re-checks proves to be valid, than the […]
Researchers have reached what can only be described as a crucial milestone that opens the way for a new class of materials with amazing electronic properties. Superconductivity is a relatively recently discovered feat, in which conducting materials oppose exactly zero resistance when electric current passes through them, below a certain temperature. Like ferromagnetism and atomic […]
Stephen Hawking may have just won the most outrageous bet in physics history, a few years ago, when he claimed that the LHC, along with every other particle accelerator won’t find the Higgs boson, the elusive ‘God particle‘, simply because it does not exist. When he addressed this bet, Peter Higgs, who proposed and supported […]
As space agencies around the world, predominantly NASA, are considering building outposts outside Earth for the most likely far distant future, various difficulties need to be cared for. One of the most bugging and precarious one is the matter of energy generation. Without energy, you don’t have electricity to power labs, green houses, you can’t […]
A team of Hong Kong scientists have proven that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum, at the same time crushing a dream concluding that time travel is simply impossible. Time travel has been a central theme for science fiction for many years, moving minds and imagination to all sort of […]
CERN researchers have announced this Friday that they may had caught a glimpse of the fabled Higgs Boson particle, also known as the “God Particle”. Scientists have the news during the 2011 Europhysics Conference on High-Energy Physics (HEP 2011), which opened Thursday in Grenoble, France. This came after two collision detector teams (Atlas and CMS), […]
Scientists at Fermilab’s Tevatron particle collider on Wednesday voiced excitement about the observation of a new particle. The new particle, called Xi-sub-b, was first theorized by the Standard Model which predicted that the neutral particle should exist. Now, through a process which involved high-speed collisions in the Fermilab Tevatron particle accelerator in Batavi, a three-story […]
The relatively new theory of plate tectonics is still uncertain about what is the driving force behind the tectonic movement; now, scientists working at the Kamioka Liquid-Scintillator Antineutrino Detector (KamLAND) and the Borexino Detector believe they are close to finding out the answer to that question, after using neutrino detectors and measuring the flow of […]
Physics is still not sure what to make of antimatter; theoretically speaking, after the Big Bang, matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts. But if this is the case, then where is all the antimatter ? Matter vs antimatter An antiparticle has exactly the same mass as a particle, but a opposite electrical charge, […]
