Physics posts
- July 16, 2010
- 04:23 AM
- 1,089 views
‘Gravity doesn’t exist’, says philosophically naive scientist/journalist
by Michael Slezak in Good, Bad, and Bogus
Reports of a physicist “taking on gravity” have recieved a bit of attention recently, with a New York Times article outlining Erik Verlinde’s idea that gravity is an emergent property of thermodynamics.
I think it’s great that the piece was written — even though apparently it hasn’t excited any physicists since the start of the year. Regardless [...]... Read more »
Erik P. Verlinde. (2010) On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton. arxiv.org. arXiv: 1001.0785v1
Bertrand Russell. (1912) On the notion of cause. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. info:other/
- July 15, 2010
- 12:13 PM
- 1,192 views
Thousand light year long bubble surrounds black hole in nearby galaxy
by Kelly Oakes in Basic Space
The Eddington luminosity is the exact brightness a black hole has when the outwards and inwards forces on it balance. It may seem strange to talk about the brightness of a black hole, as usually we think of them as not letting anything – including light – escape their gravitational pull, but in reality this [...]... Read more »
Pakull, M., Soria, R., & Motch, C. (2010) A 300-parsec-long jet-inflated bubble around a powerful microquasar in the galaxy NGC 7793. Nature, 466(7303), 209-212. DOI: 10.1038/nature09168
- July 13, 2010
- 08:50 PM
- 733 views
This Week in the Universe: July 6th – July 12th
by S.C. Kavassalis in The Language of Bad Physics
What have people been talking about this week in high energy physics, astrophysics, gravitation, general relativity and quantum gravity?... Read more »
Pakull, M., Soria, R., & Motch, C. (2010) A 300-parsec-long jet-inflated bubble around a powerful microquasar in the galaxy NGC 7793. Nature, 466(7303), 209-212. DOI: 10.1038/nature09168
Pohl, R., Antognini, A., Nez, F., Amaro, F., Biraben, F., Cardoso, J., Covita, D., Dax, A., Dhawan, S., Fernandes, L.... (2010) The size of the proton. Nature, 466(7303), 213-216. DOI: 10.1038/nature09250
John Swain. (2010) Black Holes and the Strong CP Problem. arXiv. arXiv: 1005.1097v2
- July 13, 2010
- 12:22 AM
- 713 views
Freaks & geeks: optical freak waves in the laboratory
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
One of the most fruitful and intriguing avenues for developing novel scientific research is through cross-pollination with other fields of study. This is one of the reasons I’m proud of my excessively liberal arts-focused education, as well as one of the reasons I like reading blogs on diverse subjects outside of my field: interesting ideas [...]... Read more »
Höhmann, R., Kuhl, U., Stöckmann, H., Kaplan, L., & Heller, E. (2010) Freak Waves in the Linear Regime: A Microwave Study. Physical Review Letters, 104(9). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.093901
- July 12, 2010
- 03:39 PM
- 727 views
More Vodka!
by Torah Kachur in Science in Seconds
Molecular differences between vodka brands might confirm what vodka drinkers have long suspected.... Read more »
Hu, N., Wu, D., Cross, K., Burikov, S., Dolenko, T., Patsaeva, S., & Schaefer, D. (2010) Structurability: A Collective Measure of the Structural Differences in Vodkas. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 58(12), 7394-7401. DOI: 10.1021/jf100609c
- July 11, 2010
- 07:00 PM
- 1,724 views
The Size of the Proton Measured with Lasers
by Alexander in The Astronomist.
A little over a week ago in Lindau, Germany Theordor Hanch hinted at new measurements of the size of the proton which may impact the fundamental theory of quantum electrodynamics. Hansch's lecture was an overview of the history of lasers progressing from our realization of the wave/particle duality nature of light to new research published in Nature on the size of the proton.... Read more »
Pohl R, Antognini A, Nez F, Amaro FD, Biraben F, Cardoso JM, Covita DS, Dax A, Dhawan S, Fernandes LM.... (2010) The size of the proton. Nature, 466(7303), 213-6. PMID: 20613837
- July 11, 2010
- 07:42 AM
- 834 views
The Science of Double Rainbows (OMG, what does this mean?)
by westius in Mr Science Show
This question came in from @holabendez for Science Week. What causes a double rainbow? The question is inspired by, in my opinion, the best youtube video since Keyboard Cat met Hall and Oates. Check out the Double Rainbow video below - if I'm this happy for just one day in my life, it will have been a happy life:
And now you'd better check out the Double Rainbow Song....
Rainbows are the result of the reflection and refraction of light by water droplets. They can be seen when there are wa........ Read more »
G., T. (1938) Descartes' Discourse on Method. Nature, 141(3574), 769-769. DOI: 10.1038/141769c0
- July 10, 2010
- 12:22 AM
- 1,438 views
hold on to your protons. this could be huge…
by Greg Fish in weird things
As Professor Farnsworth would say, shocking news everyone! A new experiment says that we’ve consistently been overestimating the size of protons by about 3 × 10^-14 millimeters, and the physicists who measured this discrepancy by tracking the motions of electrons’ much heavier siblings, are clutching their chests in fear that they might’ve broken a law [...]... Read more »
Randolf Pohl, Aldo Antognini, François Nez, Fernando D. Amaro, François Biraben, João M. R. Cardoso, Daniel S. Covita, Andreas Dax, Satish Dhawan, Luis M. P. Fernandes, Adolf Giesen, Thomas Graf, Theodor W. Hänsch, Paul Indelicato, Lucile Julien, Chen. (2010) The size of the proton. Nature, 466(8 July 2010), 213-216. info:/10.1038/nature09250
- July 9, 2010
- 11:18 AM
- 1,156 views
Protons: Even Smaller Than We Thought
by Chad Orzel in Uncertain Principles
The big physics story at the moment is probably the new measurement of the size of the proton, which is reported in this Nature paper (which does not seem to be on the arxiv, alas). This is kind of a hybrid of nuclear and atomic physics, as it's a spectroscopic measurement of a quasi-atom involving an exotic particle produced in an accelerator. In a technical sense, it's a really impressive piece of work, and as a bonus, the result is surprising.
This is worth a little explanation, in the usual........ Read more »
Pohl, R., Antognini, A., Nez, F., Amaro, F., Biraben, F., Cardoso, J., Covita, D., Dax, A., Dhawan, S., Fernandes, L.... (2010) The size of the proton. Nature, 466(7303), 213-216. DOI: 10.1038/nature09250
- July 8, 2010
- 10:56 AM
- 1,656 views
Kids These Days: Is Our Learning Measure Valid?
by Chad Orzel in Uncertain Principles
Kevin Drum has done a couple of education-related posts recently, first noting a story claiming that college kids study less than they used to, and following that up with an anecdotal report on kids these days, from an email correspondent who teaches physics. Kevin's emailer writes of his recent experiences with two different groups of students:
Since the early 1990's, I have pre and post tested all of my introductory mechanics classes using a research based diagnostic instrument, the Force and........ Read more »
Hake, R. (1998) Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses. American Journal of Physics, 66(1), 64. DOI: 10.1119/1.18809
Coletta, V., & Phillips, J. (2005) Interpreting FCI scores: Normalized gain, preinstruction scores, and scientific reasoning ability. American Journal of Physics, 73(12), 1172. DOI: 10.1119/1.2117109
- July 7, 2010
- 12:46 PM
- 2,831 views
Massive Early Stars And Molecular Hydrogen Cooling
by Joseph Smidt in The Eternal Universe
The big bang produced only Hydrogen and Helium with trace amounts of Lithium. (For the most part.) This is a problem for star formation because stars need to be "cool" to form and typically you need heavier elements to help the star cool off. This is why:
Gravity pulls mass together. However, as matter gets pulled together it heats up and this heat causes the matter to want to expend again.
... Read more »
Kreckel, H., Bruhns, H., Cizek, M., Glover, S., Miller, K., Urbain, X., & Savin, D. (2010) Experimental Results for H2 Formation from H- and H and Implications for First Star Formation. Science, 329(5987), 69-71. DOI: 10.1126/science.1187191
- July 7, 2010
- 03:30 AM
- 1,356 views
Top Ten Excuses for World Cup Football Failures (with citations)
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
Football fever grips the globe as we reach the final stages of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Alongside the traditional game where one winning team takes all, leaving 31 losing teams to go home earlier than expected, there is another competition running in parallel. Which losing team can come up with the [...]... Read more »
Travis, K. (2010) Scoring a Career in Sports Science. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.caredit.a1000067
Lucifora, C., & Simmons, R. (2003) Superstar Effects in Sport: Evidence From Italian Soccer. Journal Of Sports Economics, 4(1), 35-55. DOI: 10.1177/1527002502239657
Zak, P., Kurzban, R., Ahmadi, S., Swerdloff, R., Park, J., Efremidze, L., Redwine, K., Morgan, K., & Matzner, W. (2009) Testosterone Administration Decreases Generosity in the Ultimatum Game. PLoS ONE, 4(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008330
Elmar Bittner, Andreas Nussbaumer, Wolfhard Janke, & Martin Weigel. (2006) Football fever: goal distributions and non-Gaussian statistics. Eur. Phys. J. B 67, 459 (2009). arXiv: physics/0606016v1
Goff, J., & Carré, M. (2010) Soccer ball lift coefficients via trajectory analysis. European Journal of Physics, 31(4), 775-784. DOI: 10.1088/0143-0807/31/4/007
Kranjec, A., Lehet, M., Bromberger, B., & Chatterjee, A. (2010) A Sinister Bias for Calling Fouls in Soccer. PLoS ONE, 5(7). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0011667
Abell, J. (2010) ‘They seem to think “We're better than you”’: Framing football support as a matter of ‘national identity’ in Scotland and England. British Journal of Social Psychology. DOI: 10.1348/014466610X514200
Wayne C. Naidoo, & Jules R. Tapamo. (2006) Soccer video analysis by ball, player and referee tracking. SAICSIT '06: Proceedings of the 2006 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on IT research in developing countries. DOI: 10.1145/1216262.1216268
- July 6, 2010
- 01:30 AM
- 711 views
This Week in the Universe: June 29th – July 5th
by S.C. Kavassalis in The Language of Bad Physics
What have people been talking about this week in high energy physics, astrophysics, gravitation, general relativity and quantum gravity?
Sorry for the very half-assed post, it’s midnight in Mexico City and it was a long day at GR19.... Read more »
Eugenio J. Rivera, Gregory Laughlin, R. Paul Butler, Steven S. Vogt, Nader Haghighipour, & Stefano Meschiari. (2010) The Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey: A Uranus-mass Fourth Planet for GJ 876 in an Extrasolar Laplace Configuration. arXiv. arXiv: 1006.4244v1
Kreckel, H., Bruhns, H., Cizek, M., Glover, S., Miller, K., Urbain, X., & Savin, D. (2010) Experimental Results for H2 Formation from H- and H and Implications for First Star Formation. Science, 329(5987), 69-71. DOI: 10.1126/science.1187191
Michel-Dansac, L., Duc, P., Bournaud, F., Cuillandre, J., Emsellem, E., Oosterloo, T., Morganti, R., Serra, P., & Ibata, R. (2010) A COLLISIONAL ORIGIN FOR THE LEO RING. The Astrophysical Journal, 717(2). DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/717/2/L143
Eisenhardt, P., Griffith, R., Stern, D., Wright, E., Ashby, M., Brodwin, M., Brown, M., Bussmann, R., Dey, A., Ghez, A.... (2010) ULTRACOOL FIELD BROWN DWARF CANDIDATES SELECTED AT 4.5 μm. The Astronomical Journal, 139(6), 2455-2464. DOI: 10.1088/0004-6256/139/6/2455
Hüdepohl, L., Müller, B., Janka, H., Marek, A., & Raffelt, G. (2010) Neutrino Signal of Electron-Capture Supernovae from Core Collapse to Cooling. Physical Review Letters, 104(25). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.251101
Andersson, N. (2010) Gravity: Trying to catch the wave. Nature Physics, 6(7), 484-485. DOI: 10.1038/nphys1723
Pfrommer, C., & Jonathan Dursi, L. (2010) Detecting the orientation of magnetic fields in galaxy clusters. Nature Physics, 6(7), 520-526. DOI: 10.1038/nphys1657
Mendoza, M., Boghosian, B., Herrmann, H., & Succi, S. (2010) Fast Lattice Boltzmann Solver for Relativistic Hydrodynamics. Physical Review Letters, 105(1). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.014502
Luis Lehner, & Frans Pretorius. (2010) Black Strings, Low Viscosity Fluids, and Violation of Cosmic Censorship. arXiv. arXiv: 1006.5960v1
Jonathan J. Heckman, & Cumrun Vafa. (2010) An Exceptional Sector for F-theory GUTs. arXiv. arXiv: 1006.5459v1
- July 1, 2010
- 08:05 AM
- 559 views
Eclipse in The Odyssey: Science Meets Mythology
by agoldstein in WiSci
In The Odyssey, the oracle Theoclymenus delivers a speech portending the suitors’ deaths at the hand of Odysseus. However, some scholars believe that Homer, the poem’s author, was also describing a total solar eclipse.... Read more »
Baikouzis, C., & Magnasco, M. (2008) From the Cover: Is an eclipse described in the Odyssey?. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(26), 8823-8828. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0803317105
- July 1, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 847 views
The elephant and the shrew, an axonal story
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
The world is different for small animals and big animals. J.B.S. Haldane said it best:
To the mouse and any smaller animal (gravity) presents practically no dangers. You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes.
What does scale mean for neurons? As an animal gets bigger, it’s going to take longer for neural signals to get f........ Read more »
More, Heather L., Hutchinson, John R., Collins, David F., Weber, Douglas J., Aung, Steven K. H., & Donelan, J. Maxwell. (2010) Scaling of sensorimotor control in terrestrial mammals. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. info:/10.1098/rspb.2010.0898
- June 30, 2010
- 10:13 AM
- 933 views
The exploration of the eye as an optical instrument: the last 400 years
by Pablo Artal in Optics confidential
A brief summary of how the optics of the eye was explored since Galileo's time. An exciting journey...... Read more »
Artal, P., & Tabernero, J. (2010) Optics of human eye: 400 years of exploration from Galileo’s time. Applied Optics, 49(16). DOI: 10.1364/AO.49.00D123
- June 30, 2010
- 09:00 AM
- 643 views
Jumping Genes, Taking Names
by Brit Trogen in Science in Seconds
Everyone wants to stand out in the crowd. And thanks to new findings independently reported by three labs in this week’s Cell, we all might be a lot more unique than we thought.
The identity-inducing culprit? Everyone’s favorite jumping genes: transposons. Yes, the genes that just can’t sit still—the same ones Barbara McClintock owes a large part of her fame to—are making a comeback in a major way. Because what self-respecting gene wants to wait for that lumberi........ Read more »
Iskow, R., McCabe, M., Mills, R., Torene, S., Pittard, W., Neuwald, A., Van Meir, E., Vertino, P., & Devine, S. (2010) Natural Mutagenesis of Human Genomes by Endogenous Retrotransposons. Cell, 141(7), 1253-1261. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2010.05.020
Lupski, J. (2010) Retrotransposition and Structural Variation in the Human Genome. Cell, 141(7), 1110-1112. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2010.06.014
Beck, C., Collier, P., Macfarlane, C., Malig, M., Kidd, J., Eichler, E., Badge, R., & Moran, J. (2010) LINE-1 Retrotransposition Activity in Human Genomes. Cell, 141(7), 1159-1170. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2010.05.021
- June 28, 2010
- 06:18 PM
- 782 views
This Week in the Universe: June 22nd – June 28th
by S.C. Kavassalis in The Language of Bad Physics
What have people been talking about this week in high energy physics, astrophysics, gravitation, general relativity and quantum gravity, and a little bit of quantum mechanics?... Read more »
Lyne, A., Hobbs, G., Kramer, M., Stairs, I., & Stappers, B. (2010) Switched Magnetospheric Regulation of Pulsar Spin-Down. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.1186683
H. Rampadarath, M. A. Garrett, G. I. G. Józsa, T. Muxlow, T. A. Oosterloo, Z. Paragi1, R. Beswick, H. van Arkel, W. C. Keel, & K. Schawinski. (2010) Hanny's Voorwerp: Evidence of AGN activity and a nuclear starburst in the central regions of IC 2497. arXiv. arXiv: 1006.4096v1
Norbert Przybilla, Alfred Tillich, Ulrich Heber, & Ralf-Dieter Scholz. (2010) Weighing the Galactic dark matter halo: a lower mass limit from the fastest halo star known. arXiv. arXiv: 1005.5026v1
Andresen, G., Bertsche, W., Bowe, P., Bray, C., Butler, E., Cesar, C., Chapman, S., Charlton, M., Fajans, J., & Fujiwara, M. (2010) Antihydrogen formation dynamics in a multipolar neutral anti-atom trap. Physics Letters B, 685(2-3), 141-145. DOI: 10.1016/j.physletb.2010.01.066
Shaun A. Thomas, Filipe B. Abdalla, & Ofer Lahav. (2010) Upper bound of 0.28 eV on neutrino masses from the largest photometric redshift survey. |Physical Review Letters. info:/
The CDMS II Collaboration. (2010) Dark Matter Search Results from the CDMS II Experiment. Science, 327(5973), 1619-1621. DOI: 10.1126/science.1186112
Tarun Biswas. (2010) Through the Black Hole -- On Not Breaking Time Reversal Symmetry. arXiv. arXiv: 1006.4185v1
A. Garrett Lisi. (2010) An Explicit Embedding of Gravity and the Standard Model in E8. arXiv. arXiv: 1006.4908v1
Ian D. Leroux, Monika H. Schleier-Smith, & Vladan Vuletić. (2010) Orientation-Dependent Entanglement Lifetime in a Squeezed Atomic Clock. Physical Review Letters. info:/10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.250801
Schultze, M., Fiess, M., Karpowicz, N., Gagnon, J., Korbman, M., Hofstetter, M., Neppl, S., Cavalieri, A., Komninos, Y., Mercouris, T.... (2010) Delay in Photoemission. Science, 328(5986), 1658-1662. DOI: 10.1126/science.1189401
- June 28, 2010
- 05:29 PM
- 1,429 views
Photons: Still Bosons
by Chad Orzel in Uncertain Principles
Last week, Dmitry Budker's group at Berkeley published a paper in Physical Review Letters (also free on the arxiv) with the somewhat drab title "Spectroscopic Test of Bose-Einsten Statistics for Photons." Honestly, I probably wouldn't've noticed it, even though this is the sort of precision AMO test of physics that I love, had it not been for the awesome press release Berkeley put together, and this image in particular (grabbed with its caption):
This is a nifty paper, and deserves a little e........ Read more »
English, D., Yashchuk, V., & Budker, D. (2010) Spectroscopic Test of Bose-Einstein Statistics for Photons. Physical Review Letters, 104(25). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.253604
- June 27, 2010
- 01:15 PM
- 1,187 views
How did the victims of the Plinean Eruption of Vesuvius die?
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
Even at the most extreme edges of the flow of stuff out of the volcano Pompeii, at the far edge of the mud and ash that came from the volcano's explosion, the heat was sufficient to instantly kill everyone, even those inside their homes.
And that is how the people at Pompeii, who's remains were found trapped and partly preserved within ghostly body-shaped tombs within that pyroclastic flow, died. They did not suffocate. They did not get blown apart by force. They did not die of gas poisoning........ Read more »
Mastrolorenzo, G., Petrone, P., Pappalardo, L., & Guarino, F. (2010) Lethal Thermal Impact at Periphery of Pyroclastic Surges: Evidences at Pompeii. PLoS ONE, 5(6). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0011127
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