 Physics & Chemistry
A group of groundbreaking, international scientists called the ALPHA team successfully manipulated antimatter and measured it for the first time in history. The team nudged anti-hydrogen atoms using a tool that emitted a microwave stream.
Scientific first: Successful manipulation of antimatter, 3/13/12
Scientific breakthroughs seem to be coming faster and from younger people. The latest advance to rock the world of science—molecular research to be exact—comes from Clara Lazen a 10-year-old student at the Border Star Montessori School in Kansas City.
Lazen, after being shown the function of snap together molecular modeling, picked up some modeling pieces representing various atoms and created a model of a completely new molecule that some experts predict could lead to the creation of new batteries, pharmaceutical drugs, material science technology or even—as Lazen mused—explosives.
10-year-old girl creates new molecule, 2/6/12
Here at PopSci we love super-fast cameras and super slow-mo video, so you can imagine our glee when we heard that MIT researchers have built a camera with a visual capture rate of one trillion frames per second. That’s fast enough to watch photons travel the length of a one-liter bottle in the video below. In other words, absolutely nothing in the universe looks fast to this camera.
Trillion-Frame-Per-Second Camera Captures Individual Photons Moving Through Space, 12/13/11
The largest collection of Isaac Newton's papers has gone digital, committing to open-access posterity the works of one of history's greatest scientist.
Among the works shared online by the Cambridge Digital Library are Newton's own annotated copy of Principia Mathematica and the 'Waste Book,' the notebook in which a young Newton worked out the principles of calculus.
Other of his myriad accomplishments include the laws of gravity and motion, a theory of light -- pictured above are notes on optics -- and his construction of the first reflecting telescope.
Isaac Newton’s Personal Notebooks Go Digital, 12/12/11
A second experiment at the European facility that reported subatomic particles zooming faster than the speed of light — stunning the world of physics — has reached the same result, scientists said late Thursday.
Second experiment confirms faster-than-light particles, 11/17/11
Strange, stranger, strangest! To the weird nature of one of the simplest chemical compounds - the stuff so familiar that even non-scientists know its chemical formula - add another odd twist. Scientists are reporting that good old H2O, when chilled below the freezing point, can shift into a new type of liquid.
Weird world of water gets a little weirder, 11/11/11
Today, November 4, 2011, the General Assembly of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) is meeting at the Institute of Physics in London, to approve the names of three new elements… one of which will honor the great Copernicus. Their names are: Element 110, darmstadtium (Ds), Element111, roentgenium (Rg) and Element 112. copernicium (Cn).
Are these new elements? Probably not. All the new ones were discovered long ago, but groups like IUPAC elect names to be used in scientific endeavors. Not only does this include the element, but new molecules which belong to it. As a general rule, these “new elements” are given names by their discoverer – which also leads to international debate. The elements can be named after a mythological concept, a mineral, a place or a country, a property or a very known scientist… even an astronomer!
Three New Elements Added To The Periodic Table, 11/4/11
Physicists on the team that measured particles traveling faster than light said Friday they were as surprised as their skeptics about the results, which appear to violate the laws of nature as we know them.
Hundreds of scientists packed an auditorium at one of the world's foremost laboratories on the Swiss-French border to hear how a subatomic particle, the neutrino, was found to have outrun light and confounded the theories of Albert Einstein.
"To our great surprise we found an anomaly," said Antonio Ereditato, who participated in the experiment and speaks on behalf of the team.
An anomaly is a mild way of putting it.
Going faster than light is something that is just not supposed to happen, according to Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity. The speed of light — 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second) — has long been considered a cosmic speed limit.
Physicists Wary of Junking Light Speed Limit Yet, 9/23/11
Hong Kong physicists say they have proved that a single photon obeys Einstein's theory that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light -- demonstrating that outside science fiction, time travel is impossible.
Hong Kong scientists 'show time travel is impossible', 7/24/11
It's easy to imagine that water must be one of best understood materials in science. After all, this liquid is possibly the best studied substance on Earth. But the truth is that many of its properties still mystify scientists.
One unsolved puzzle is its freezing point. Scientists have known for many years that you can cool liquid water well below zero degrees centigrade without it freezing. That's because water needs some nucleation event to trigger the process of ice formation. Without ice nucleation, it remains liquid.
But how low can you go?
Today, we have an answer of sorts thanks to the work of Emily Moore and Valeria Molinero at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
Chemists Discover Freezing Point of Supercooled Water, 7/11/11
Instead of determining a target line for a single putt, golfers should determine the target line for several equidistant putts along a 30 degree arc around the ball. The point (or small area) where these target lines coincide, is the place to aim for.
As Grober puts it: "By considering a family of putts all known to share the same target point, the golfer increases the probability of correctly identifying the target point, and thus the correct target line."
Simple really. From now on, it'll be impossible to miss.
Mathematics Reveals New Approach To The Perfect Putt, 6/13/11
Antimatter, an elusive type of matter that's rare in the universe, has now been trapped for more than 16 minutes — an eternity in particle physics.
In fact, scientists who've been trapping antihydrogen atoms at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva say isolating the exotic particles has become so routine that they expect to soon begin experiments on this rare substance.
Ephemeral Antimatter Trapped for Amazingly Long 16 Minutes, 6/5/11
Scientists working on the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus (ALPHA) at Cern’s particle physics laboratory had very exciting quarter hour recently. The team conjured and contained atoms of antihydrogen for a full 1,000 seconds--that’s nearly 17 minutes and 10,000 times longer than they were previously able to keep antimatter around before it disappeared in burst of particle-on-particle annihilations.
CERN Physicists Trap Antimatter for a Record-Breaking Quarter Hour, Observe It, 5/3/11
Physicists at the University of Geneva in Switzerland have devised a new kind of quantum experiment using humans as photon detectors, and in doing so have made the quantum phenomenon of entanglement visible to the naked eye for the first time.
For the First Time, Humans See Quantum Entanglement With the Naked Eye, 4/29/11
One of the most promising materials in science could answer some questions about one of the most elusive particles in the universe, according to a new paper. A trio of Spanish physicists believes that graphene, that simple, special Nobel-winning stuff, could provide some key insights into the behavior of the Higgs boson.
Graphene Could Help Physicists Probe the Higgs Boson's Secrets, 2/07/11
This is a report from a news conference held to demonstrate a successful heat engine that appears to work by using hydrogen, or more properly, an electron stripped hydrogen atom that finds its way into the crystalline matrix of the nickel to induce transmutation of some sort.
As with all experiments on what is called cold fusion, theory is a long way behind, but experimenters know that it is necessary to pack as much in there as possible to obtain occasional results. The hope of course, is that theory will catch up and we can improve efficiency
Cold Fusion Breakthrough Announced, 1/18/11
It’s official, thunderstorms create antimatter! NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope recently found evidence that thunderstorms on Earth actually shoot antimatter particles into space.
“These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams,” said Michael Briggs, who presented his team’s findings on January 10 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Scientist Say Thunderstorms Create Antimatter, 1/13/11
For the first time in history, a change will be made to the atomic weights of some elements listed on the Periodic table of the chemical elements posted on walls of chemistry classrooms and on the inside covers of chemistry textbooks worldwide.
Atomic weights of 10 elements on periodic table about to make an historic change, 12/15/10
The results achieved by this research team headed by Prof. Kurt Westerholt and Prof. Hartmut Zabel (Department of Physics and Astronomy at RUB) could contribute to new, power saving components in the future. The researchers reported on their findings in the American Physical Society's noted journal "The Physical Review".
Triplet Superconductivity Proven For First Time, 12/2/10
Physicists working with a Fermilab neutrino experiment may have found a new elementary particle whose behavior breaks the known laws of physics. If correct, their results poke holes in the accepted Standard Model of particles and forces, and raise some interesting questions for the Large Hadron Collider and Tevatron experiments. The new particle could even explain the existence of dark matter.
Fermilab Experiment Hints At Existence of Brand-New Elementary Particle, 11/4/10
According to those internal documents CERN has been lying for years to the press and in the suits, since it always affirmed that it won’t produce the ultra-dangerous, ultradense ‘strangelets’, the liquid explosive made of up, down and strange quarks, responsible of the ice-9 reactions that cause supernovas.
CERN affirms 70% chances of strangelets. 9/11/10
New evidence supports the idea that we live in an area of the universe that is "just right" for our existence. The controversial finding comes from an observation that one of the constants of nature appears to be different in different parts of the cosmos.
If correct, this result stands against Einstein's equivalence principle, which states that the laws of physics are the same everywhere. "This finding was a real surprise to everyone," says John Webb of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Webb is lead author on the new paper, which has been submitted to Physical Review Letters.
Laws of physics may change across the universe, 9/8/10
3-slit experiment has confirmed a basic rule of quantum mechanics but failed to help physicists to reconcile the theory with relativity.Science/ AAAS
If you ever want to get your head around the riddle that is quantum mechanics, look no further than the double-slit experiment. This shows, with perfect simplicity, how just watching a wave or a particle can change its behaviour. The idea is so unpalatable to physicists that they have spent decades trying to find new ways to test it. The latest such attempt, by physicists in Europe and Canada, used a three-slit version — but quantum mechanics won out again.
Quantum Mechanics Flummoxes Physicists Again, 8/4/10
Posters of the periodic table on the walls of science labs in schools around the world will need to be updated after the discovery of the newest superheavy element, element 117. With the temporary name of ununseptium, the temporary symbol Uus and the atomic number 117, it was the only missing element in row seven of the periodic table until its discovery by an international team of scientists from Russia and the U.S.
Scientists Discover New Superheavy Element 117, 6/25/10
Scientists have created a never-before seen type of exotic matter that is thought to have been present at the earliest stages of the universe, right after the Big Bang.
The new matter is a particularly weird form of antimatter, which is like a mirror-image of regular matter. Every normal particle is thought to have an antimatter partner, and if the two come into contact, they annihilate.
Exotic Antimatter Created on Earth, 3/5/10
When physicist Vitaly Efimov heard his theory had finally been proven, he ran up to the younger scientist who had verified it and gave him a high five.
Efimov had predicted a quantum-mechanical version of Borromean rings, a symbol that first showed up in Afghan Buddhist art from around the second century. The symbol depicts three rings linked together; if any ring were removed, they would all come apart.
Efimov theorized an analog to the rings using particles: Three particles (such as atoms or protons or even quarks) could be bound together in a stable state, even though any two of them could not bind without the third. The physicist first proposed the idea, based on a mathematical proof, in 1970. Since then, no one has been able to demonstrate the phenomenon in the lab — until recently.
Strange Physical Theory Proved After Nearly 40 Years, 12/16/09
Chemistry textbooks typically include illustrations of atoms, but with caveats. The drawings depict atomic nuclei surrounded by electron orbitals—fuzzy spheres, barbells, tripods, and so on—but those figures represent the probability of finding an electron at a certain place around the nucleus rather than an actual “shape.” Researchers have now managed to image the electron orbitals and show for the first time that, in a sense, atoms really look like those textbook images.
New Microscope Images Atoms, 10/18/09
Nassim Haramein has been turning heads for years with his very radical yet sensible thoughts on the grand unified field theory, seamlessly tying the macrocosm to the microcosm.
Nassim Haramein's Resonance Project Foundation, 10/04/09
It may look like a piece of honeycomb, but this lattice-shaped image is the first ever close-up view of a single molecule.
Scientists from IBM used an atomic force microscope (AFM) to reveal the chemical bonds within a molecule.
Single molecule, one million times smaller than a grain of sand, pictured for first time, 8/31/09
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