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God particle is ‘found’: Scientists at Cern expected to announce on Wednesday Higgs boson particle has been discovered
July 2, 2012
- Scientists ‘will say they are 99.99% certain’ the particle has been found
- Leading physicists have been invited to event – sparking speculation that Higgs Boson particle has been found
- ‘God Particle’ gives particles that make up atoms their mass
PUBLISHED: 14:00, 1 July 2012 | UPDATED: 14:41, 1 July 2012
Scientists at Cern will announce that the elusive Higgs boson ‘God Particle’ has been found at a press conference next week, it is believed.
Five leading theoretical physicists have been invited to the event on Wednesday – sparking speculation that the particle has been discovered.
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider are expected to say they are 99.99 per cent certain it has been found – which is known as ‘four sigma’ level.
The particle accelerator: It is within these tubes that physicists are hunting for the ‘God’ particle
Quantum Researchers Able to Stop and Restart Light
Wednesday, 27 June 2012
‘In two independent experiments that defy the notions of Einstein, researchers have been able to stop, then restart a beam of light.
Ordinarily, light travels at the speed of 186,282 miles per second, but the research team of Lene Hau, a professor of physics at Harvard, who in 1999 was able to slow light down to 38 miles per hour, has been able to trap light in a cloud of sodium atoms super-cooled to near ‘absolute zero.’’
Read more: Quantum Researchers Able to Stop and Restart Light
Geoflow: Space Station Experiments Shed Light On Conditions Deep Inside Earth
ScienceDaily (June 25, 2012) — ESA astronaut André Kuipers is running experiments on the International Space Station that are shedding light on conditions deep inside Earth. Orbiting some 400 km above us, Geoflow is offering insights into the inner workings of our planet.
Descending 3000 km under our feet, Earth’s mantle is a semi-solid fluid under our thin outer crust. The highly viscous layers vary with temperature, pressure and depth.
Understanding how the mantle flows is a major interest for geophysics because it could help to explain earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. Computers can model it, but how can scientists be sure they are correct?
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120625192522.htm
Robots Get a Feel for the World: Touch More Sensitve Than a Human’s
ScienceDaily (June 18, 2012) — What does a robot feel when it touches something? Little or nothing until now. But with the right sensors, actuators and software, robots can be given the sense of feel — or at least the ability to identify different materials by touch.
Researchers at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering published a study June 18 in Frontiers in Neurorobotics showing that a specially designed robot can outperform humans in identifying a wide range of natural materials according to their textures, paving the way for advancements in prostheses, personal assistive robots and consumer product testing.
The robot was equipped with a new type of tactile sensor built to mimic the human fingertip. It also used a newly designed algorithm to make decisions about how to explore the outside world by imitating human strategies. Capable of other human sensations, the sensor can also tell where and in which direction forces are applied to the fingertip and even the thermal properties of an object being touched.
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120618194952.htm
Neutrons Escaping to a Parallel World?
ScienceDaily (June 15, 2012) — In a paper recently published in European Physical Journal (EPJ) C, researchers hypothesised the existence of mirror particles to explain the anomalous loss of neutrons observed experimentally. The existence of such mirror matter had been suggested in various scientific contexts some time ago, including the search for suitable dark matter candidates.
Theoretical physicists Zurab Berezhiani and Fabrizio Nesti from the University of l’Aquila, Italy, reanalysed the experimental data obtained by the research group of Anatoly Serebrov at the Institut Laue-Langevin, France. It showed that the loss rate of very slow free neutrons appeared to depend on the direction and strength of the magnetic field applied. This anomaly could not be explained by known physics.
Berezhiani believes it could be interpreted in the light of a hypothetical parallel world consisting of mirror particles. Each neutron would have the ability to transition into its invisible mirror twin, and back, oscillating from one world to the other. The probability of such a transition happening was predicted to be sensitive to the presence of magnetic fields, and could therefore be detected experimentally.
Read more : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120615104347.htm
Chinese Physicists Teleport Photons Over 100 Kilometers
Teleportation is the extraordinary ability to transfer objects from one location to another without travelling through the intervening space.
The idea is not that the physical object is teleported but the information that describes it. This can then be applied to a similar object in a new location which effectively takes on the new identity.
And it is by no means science fiction. Physicists have been teleporting photons since 1997 and the technique is now standard in optics laboratories all over the world.
The phenomenon that makes this possible is known as quantum entanglement, the deep and mysterious link that occurs when two quantum objects share the same existence and yet are separated in space.
Teleportation turns out to be extremely useful. Because teleported information does not travel through the intervening space, it cannot be secretly accessed by an eavesdropper.
For that reason, teleportation is the enabling technology behind quantum cryptography, a way of sending information with close-to-perfect secrecy.
Unfortunately, entangled photons are fragile objects. They cannot travel further than a kilometre or so down optical fibres because the photons end up interacting with the glass breaking the entanglement. That severely limits quantum cryptography’s usefulness.
However, physicists have had more success teleporting photons through the atmosphere. In 2010, a Chinese team announced that it had teleported single photons over a distance of 16 kilometres. Handy but not exactly Earth-shattering.
Now the same team says it has smashed this record. Juan Yin at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai, and a bunch of mates say they have teleported entangled photons over a distance of 97 kilometres across a lake in China.
Read more: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27843/
The Biggest Supermoon in Years is Coming Tonight
Saturday, 05 May 2012 11:28
‘This Saturday evening, take a look at the night sky and you might see something special. The moon will make its largest, most stunning appearance of the year—an event known to scientists as “the perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system” and to the popular skywatching public simply as the “supermoon.” As one of the most spectacular supermoons in years, the moon will appear 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than when it is on the far side of its orbit.
Why does the moon sometimes appear larger, and sometimes smaller? The answer lies in the fact that its orbit around Earth is elliptical, so its distance from us varies—it ranges from roughly 222,000 to 252,000 miles away each month. On Saturday, the moon will reach what is known as the perigee, coming as close as it ever does to the Earth, just 221,802 miles away. At the same time, it will be a full moon, with the entirety of its Earth-facing surface illuminated by the light of the sun.’
Omnivorous Black Holes Like This One Are Pretty Much the Sharks of Space
By Dan Nosowitz Posted 05.03.2012 at 12:57 pm
A black hole at the center of a galaxy about 2.7 billion light-years away, one about the same size as the black hole at the center of our own Milky Way, was observed sucking the life out of a star.
Fed Up With Sluggish Neutrinos, Scientists Force Light To Move Faster Than Its Own Speed Limit
By Rebecca Boyle Posted 05.03.2012 at 3:07 pm
Venus to Appear in Once-In-A-Lifetime Event
ScienceDaily (May 1, 2012)
On 5 and 6 June this year, millions of people around the world will be able to see Venus pass across the face of the Sun in what will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
It will take Venus about six hours to complete its transit, appearing as a small black dot on the Sun’s surface, in an event that will not happen again until 2117.
In this month’s Physics World, Jay M Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College, Massachusetts, explores the science behind Venus’s transit and gives an account of its fascinating history.
Read full story: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120501085556.htm
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