Physics posts
- January 4, 2012
- 12:25 AM
- 368 views
A camera fast enough to watch light move?
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
A few weeks ago, a new optical imaging system grabbed headlines throughout the world. This system, labeled a “picosecond camera”, can seemingly record images so fast that it can actually track the motion of light itself! Consider the following video … Continue reading →... Read more »
Andreas Velten, Moungi Bawendi, & Ramesh Raskar. (2011) Picosecond camera for time-of-flight imaging. Imaging Systems Applications, OSA Technical Digest. info:/
- January 3, 2012
- 09:16 AM
- 462 views
A new year full of promises
by Marco Frasca in The Gauge Connection
We have left 2011 with a lot of exciting results from experiments. Neutrinos appear to move a bit faster than expected and Higgs provided some glimpses at CERN. Of course, this kind of Higgs appears somewhat boring at first being in the range of what Standard Model expected. But it is really too early to [...]... Read more »
Nuno Cardoso, & Pedro Bicudo. (2011) Generating SU(Nc) pure gauge lattice QCD configurations on GPUs with CUDA and OpenMP. arXiv. arXiv: 1112.4533v1
Axel Maas. (2011) Describing gauge bosons at zero and finite temperature. arXiv. arXiv: 1106.3942v2
- January 1, 2012
- 09:41 AM
- 682 views
Copyright vs Medicine: If this topic isn’t covered in your newspaper this weekend, get a new newspaper
by Neurobonkers in Neurobonkers
According to the New England Journal of Medicine, after thirty years of silence, authors of a standard clinical psychiatric bedside test have issued take down orders of new medical research.... Read more »
Newman, J., & Feldman, R. (2011) Copyright and Open Access at the Bedside. New England Journal of Medicine, 365(26), 2447-2449. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1110652
- December 30, 2011
- 06:51 PM
- 348 views
Stars that go out with a bang
by Kelly Oakes in Basic Space
When a star becomes a white dwarf — an old, extremely dense star that would have once been similar to our own Sun — the eventful part of its life is over. It releases what heat and light it has left over billions of years, slowly cooling until it no longer shines. Usually. Some white dwarfs, however, are not content with this ending....... Read more »
Li W, Bloom JS, Podsiadlowski P, Miller AA, Cenko SB, Jha SW, Sullivan M, Howell DA, Nugent PE, Butler NR.... (2011) Exclusion of a luminous red giant as a companion star to the progenitor of supernova SN 2011fe. Nature, 480(7377), 348-50. PMID: 22170681
Nugent PE, Sullivan M, Cenko SB, Thomas RC, Kasen D, Howell DA, Bersier D, Bloom JS, Kulkarni SR, Kandrashoff MT.... (2011) Supernova SN 2011fe from an exploding carbon-oxygen white dwarf star. Nature, 480(7377), 344-7. PMID: 22170680
- December 27, 2011
- 11:00 AM
- 487 views
Optics research and the eye in Spain during the XX century: a brief history
by Pablo Artal in Optics confidential
A brief historical account on optical and vision research in Spain in the XX century... Read more »
Marcos, Artal, Santamaría, Aguilar, Plaza. (2006) Research in Physiological Optics in Spain: A historical revision. Opt. Pura Apl. 39 (3) 189-197 . info:/
- December 26, 2011
- 11:33 PM
- 719 views
Science that’ll warm your hands
by Cath in Basal Science (BS) Clarified
After trying the hand-warmer my friend gave me for Christmas I thought, “cool, I wonder how this works?” Here’s the hand-warmer in action: So what’s going on? The hand-warmer heats up when you bend the metal disk that’s inside the pouch. Bending the disk causes the liquid inside the hand-warmer to solidify. This change [...]... Read more »
Sandnes, B. (2008) The physics and the chemistry of the heat pad. American Journal of Physics, 76(6), 546. DOI: 10.1119/1.2830533
- December 22, 2011
- 03:46 AM
- 623 views
The science behind Santa [video]
by GrrlScientist in Maniraptora
How does Santa visit billions of homes all around the globe in just one night? The last important scientific question in the world has been solved! ... Read more »
Billing, R. (2008) Harnessing the brane-deer. Nature, 456(7224), 1007-1008. DOI: 10.1038/4561007a
- December 22, 2011
- 03:00 AM
- 965 views
The science behind Santa [video] | GrrlScientist
by GrrlScientist in GrrlScientist
How does Santa visit billions of homes all around the globe in just one night? The last important scientific question in the world has been solved!... Read more »
Billing, R. (2008) Harnessing the brane-deer. Nature, 456(7224), 1007-1008. DOI: 10.1038/4561007a
- December 16, 2011
- 12:17 PM
- 3,231 views
Aesop's Crows Understand Physics, Literature
by Elizabeth Preston in Inkfish
Aesop told the fable of a thirsty crow that came upon a nearly empty pitcher of water and discovered that by dropping pebbles in, he could raise the water to a drinkable level. The moral is "Little by little does the trick"--or was that "Necessity is the mother of invention"? Either way, scientists have enjoyed testing non-fictional members of the clever corvid family with this puzzle. Most recently, wild crows showed scientists they're smart enough for a whole barr........ Read more »
Taylor, A., Elliffe, D., Hunt, G., Emery, N., Clayton, N., & Gray, R. (2011) New Caledonian Crows Learn the Functional Properties of Novel Tool Types. PLoS ONE, 6(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0026887
- December 15, 2011
- 05:10 PM
- 2,832 views
Sir Edmond Halley takes a dive! (1714)
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
If you study enough history of science, you learn that the things that scientists are most famous for are often not their only work of interest — or even the most fascinating thing they’ve done! The significance of a scientist’s … Continue reading →... Read more »
Edmond Halley. (1714) The Art of Living under Water: Or, a Discourse concerning the Means of furnishing Air at the Bottom of the Sea, in any ordinary Depths. Philosophical Transactions, 492-499. info:/
- December 15, 2011
- 10:42 AM
- 554 views
Take that, Larry Summers!
by Cherish in Faraday's Cage Is Where You Put Schroedinger's Cat
I came across an article on the new research by Kane and Mertz which supposedly disproves the “greater male variability” hypothesis. That is, while averages for both genders are approximately the same, males have more variance in their intelligence. Thus, when intelligence tested, you’ll see more males at both the upper and lower tails of the [...]... Read more »
Jonathan M. Kane and Janet E. Mertz. (2011) Debunking Myths about Gender and Mathematics Performance. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 10. info:/
- December 13, 2011
- 04:05 PM
- 3,470 views
eliminating dark matter with an intuitive culprit
by Greg Fish in weird things
Few things are as reviled on popular science and physics comment sections as dark matter and dark energy because aside from indirect observations, we’ve never actually detected either. We can see that something is pushing galaxies apart from each other while another invisible force holds these galaxies together, but there have been many attempts to do away with both in a theoretical sense. [...]... Read more »
Carati A. (2011) Gravitational effects of the faraway matter on the rotation curves of spiral galaxies. n/a. arXiv: 1111.5793v1
- December 12, 2011
- 03:51 PM
- 3,253 views
Unified Theory BS: I Debunk "The Schwarzschild Proton" by Nassim Haramein
by DJ Busby in Astronasty
The unification of forces, sought after for a long time, and the incompatibility of standard mechanics of gravity on the quantum scale has been a holy grail of sorts for physicists to resolve. Now if we look at the nature of standard black holes, not protons, we can't forget that they exist as a singularity on a quantum level. All we know of black holes then should apply to these schwarzschild protons. This new theory debunks black hole evaporation. Stephen Hawking will be angered.
Stro........ Read more »
Nassim Haramein. (2010) The Schwarzschild Proton . AIP. info:other/
- December 12, 2011
- 03:10 PM
- 3,380 views
The First Quantum Computer
by The Astronomist in The Astronomist.
In a nondescript office park outside Vancouver with views of snow capped mountains in the distance is a mirrored business park where very special work is being done. The company is D-Wave, the quantum computing company. D-Wave's mission is to build a computer which will solve humanity's grandest challenges.D-Wave aims to develop the first quantum computer in the world, perhaps they already have. The advent of quantum computers would be a sea change in the world that would allow for breaking of c........ Read more »
Harris, R., Johansson, J., Berkley, A., Johnson, M., Lanting, T., Han, S., Bunyk, P., Ladizinsky, E., Oh, T., Perminov, I.... (2010) Experimental demonstration of a robust and scalable flux qubit. Physical Review B, 81(13). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.81.134510
Harris, R., Johnson, M., Han, S., Berkley, A., Johansson, J., Bunyk, P., Ladizinsky, E., Govorkov, S., Thom, M., Uchaikin, S.... (2008) Probing Noise in Flux Qubits via Macroscopic Resonant Tunneling. Physical Review Letters, 101(11). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.117003
- December 12, 2011
- 10:09 AM
- 3,687 views
The Beethoven connection
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
Symphonies are some of the most complex musical pieces. They involve different instruments, each with their own unique sound, and each instruments section playing their own tunes. Yet, what are symphonies in comparison to the complexity of life? Proteins for example, they are made of a limited number of building blocks, amino acids, but take [...]... Read more »
Spivak, D., Giesa, T., Wood, E., & Buehler, M. (2011) Category Theoretic Analysis of Hierarchical Protein Materials and Social Networks. PLoS ONE, 6(9). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0023911
Giesa, T., Spivak, D., & Buehler, M. (2011) Reoccurring Patterns in Hierarchical Protein Materials and Music: The Power of Analogies. BioNanoScience, 1(4), 153-161. DOI: 10.1007/s12668-011-0022-5
- December 12, 2011
- 06:15 AM
- 2,786 views
Yang-Mills scenario: Yet a confirmation
by Marco Frasca in The Gauge Connection
While CERN is calming down rumors (see here), research activity on Yang-Mills theories keeps on going on. A few days ago, a paper by Axel Weber appeared on arxiv (see here). As my readers know, having discussed this at length, in these last years there has been a hot debate between the proponents of the [...]... Read more »
Axel Weber. (2011) Epsilon expansion for infrared Yang-Mills theory in Landau gauge. arXiv. arXiv: 1112.1157v1
Marco Frasca. (2007) Infrared Gluon and Ghost Propagators. Phys.Lett.B670:73-77,2008. arXiv: 0709.2042v6
- December 9, 2011
- 05:16 AM
- 1,138 views
Sword Swallowers, Belly Buttons and Flatulent Fish: the Ig Nobel prizes
by thesoftanonymous in the.soft.anonymous
In a world where high-speed neutrinos and melting ice caps hog the limelight, it’s sometimes nice to pay tribute to the sillier side of science. Because for every Einstein there’s a physicist trying to understand why toast always lands butter-side down; for every Darwin, a biologist who studies fish farts.... Read more »
Bubier NE, Paxton CG, Bowers P, & Deeming DC. (1998) Courtship behaviour of ostriches (Struthio camelus) towards humans under farming conditions in Britain. British Poultry Science, 39(4), 477-81. PMID: 9800029
Edgeworth R, Dalton BJ, & Parnell T. (1984) The Pitch Drop Experiment. European Journal of Physics, 198-200. info:/
Maguire EA, Gadian DG, Johnsrude IS, Good CD, Ashburner J, Frackowiak RS, & Frith CD. (2000) Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 97(8), 4398-403. PMID: 10716738
Stack, S., & Gundlach, J. (1992) The Effect of Country Music on Suicide. Social Forces, 71(1), 211. DOI: 10.2307/2579974
Wilson B, Batty RS, & Dill LM. (2004) Pacific and Atlantic herring produce burst pulse sounds. Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society. PMID: 15101430
Witcombe B, & Meyer D. (2006) Sword swallowing and its side effects. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 333(7582), 1285-7. PMID: 17185708
- December 5, 2011
- 11:47 AM
- 571 views
Techie Ecstasy: Preview of SIGGRAPH Asia 2011
by Nsikan Akpan in That's Basic Science
Highlights from the forthcoming tech fest SIGGRAPH Asia 2011
1) An Iphone app that writes your autobiography from internet posts
2) A Cartography graphics tool for cardiologists
3) A Renaissance collage generator.
Plus a video of some great rendering software innovations.... Read more »
Zhu, B., Iwata, M., Haraguchi, R., Ashihara, T., Umetani, N., Igarashi, T., & Nakazawa, K. (2011) Sketch-based Dynamic Illustration of Fluid Systems. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 30(6), 1. DOI: 10.1145/2070781.2024168
Huang, H., Zhang, L., & Zhang, H. (2011) Arcimboldo-like collage using internet images. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 30(6), 1. DOI: 10.1145/2070781.2024189
- December 2, 2011
- 07:22 AM
- 651 views
Whither organic solar cells?
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
This week I am attending the Materials Research Society Fall meeting in Boston, where there is a big focus on energy. Catalysis, fuel cells, batteries, solar cells, solar fuel, you name it. And I had a discussion with some researchers from the inorganic solar cell community, who asked me what is with the organic solar cells? [...]... Read more »
Green, M., Emery, K., Hishikawa, Y., Warta, W., & Dunlop, E. (2011) Solar cell efficiency tables (Version 38). Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications, 19(5), 565-572. DOI: 10.1002/pip.1150
- December 1, 2011
- 07:07 AM
- 871 views
so what’s the fine for breaking relativity?
by Greg Fish in weird things
Since the science world is abuzz with news of experiments detecting neutrinos making a 732 kilometer trip in record time, 60 nanoseconds ahead of light itself, I have two questions. First is how big of a speeding ticket to give the neutrinos in question, and second is whether these neutrinos could now go back in [...]... Read more »
Cohen, A., & Glashow, S. (2011) Pair Creation Constrains Superluminal Neutrino Propagation. Physical Review Letters, 107(18). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.181803
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