February 2012
29 posts
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What would happen if you fired a gun in space?
itsfullofstars:
Great question, and the answer might surprise you! Believe it or not, a gun’s ability to fire doesn’t depend on the presence of atmospheric oxygen. A gun will fire just fine in the vacuum of space because the gunpowder and explosive primer contain enough oxygen to create combustion and propel a bullet. Other variables, however, will play a part, mostly temperature. Temperature...
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Faster-than-light neutrino result reportedly a... →
Since September, scientists have been scratching their head over results that appear to show neutrinos traveling between Switzerland and Italy faster than light would. As far as anyone could tell, the team behind the results had done everything they could to eliminate errors, and had even released some preliminary data that had strengthened their results. But the results remained difficult to...
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“The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic...”
– Michael Talbot, author of “Holographic Universe” (via lovedrugsetc)
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Physicists Predict The Existence of Time Crystals →
If crystals exist in spatial dimensions, then they ought to exist in the dimension of time too, says Nobel prize-winning physicist
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Cambridge scientists boost solar PV efficiency by... →
Scientists at the University of Cambridge in the UK have found a way to improve the efficiency of photovoltaic cells by as much as 25% through harnessing more of the sun’s spectrum than most traditional silicon-based solar cells can.
The new design, developed at the university’s Cavendish Laboratory in the Department of Physics, can absorb both red and blue light, and generates electrons from...
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$100K offered for proof that scaled-up quantum... →
MIT researcher Scott Aaronson has certainly riled the physics community with his offer this past Friday, of $100,000 to anyone who can prove that scaled-up quantum computing is impossible. His original reason for doing so was, as he describes in his blog, due to adding his two cents to an argument between skeptic Gil Kalai and researcher Aram Harrow about assumptions regarding the Quantum...
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A collection of quantum physics infographics! →
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Five Things to Know About Time Travel Physics →
1. Back the the Future and the Grandmother Paradox: One challenge of time travel to the past is that you could inadvertinently do something that would make your own existence impossible—like when Marty McFly threatens to keep his own parents from hooking up after he lands a DeLorean in 1955.
2. What about Bill and Ted? In the 1989 movie, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Keanu Reeves...
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Quantum Cryptography Comes to Smart Phones →
A smart phone can do pretty much anything a PC can. But, aside from password protection, phones have very littlesecurity—a real problem with more and more people using phones for online banking and shopping.
But researchers at Los Alamos National Lab hopequantum encryption can help. Quantum encryption typically requires a lot of processing power and covers only short distances. But Los Alamos...
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January 2012
40 posts
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We broke 200 followers!
Thank you all!
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How do traffic jams work?
Have you ever been driving on an interstate highway when traffic suddenly slows to a crawl? You inch along for many minutes while waiting to see the accident which must have caused the jam. At the same time you also curse the “rubberneckers” who are causing the whole problem. But then all the cars ahead of you take off at high speed. The jam is over, but no accident, no police cars,...
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Quantum physics says goodbye to reality →
Some physicists are uncomfortable with the idea that all individual quantum events are innately random. This is why many have proposed more complete theories, which suggest that events are at least partially governed by extra “hidden variables”. Now physicists from Austria claim to have performed an experiment that rules out a broad class of hidden-variables theories that focus on...