RADIOACTIVE DECAYS

(Source: atomstargazer)

Must Watch: Neil deGrasse Tyson Moderates a Debate on Nothingness

Its been said that something cannot come from nothing, but is “nothing” even conceivable?

If you’ve got two hours to kill on nothing, this is the video for you.

(Source: divineirony, via fyeah-degrasse-tyson)

New principle may help explain why nature is quantum

Like small children, scientists are always asking the question ‘why?’. One question they’ve yet to answer is why nature picked quantum physics, in all its weird glory, as a sensible way to behave. Researchers Corsin Pfister and Stephanie Wehner at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore tackle this perennial question in a paper published today in Nature Communications.

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(Source: thenewenlightenmentage, via thenewenlightenmentage)

What Matters About Antimatter

Just like the dog that didn’t bark in the night time, the absence of antimatter in the universe worries us. Why there isn’t more of it is one of the biggest mysteries in particle physics, and one which my experiment (LHCb, at Cern’s Large Hadron Collider) was built to explore. On April 24 this year the LHCb experiment unveiled its latest findings. I want to explain here why these results matter, why they are a triumph, and why, despite them, we are little nearer that precious understanding of why and how this has happened.

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(Source: christinetheastrophysicist)

Happy birthday, (May 11th) to my literal favorite person in the history of humans, Richard P. Feynman.

(Source: neuronsandneutrons, via likeaphysicist)

astrodidact:

A truly giant neutrino detector recently began full operation in Antarctica. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory uses a cubic kilometer of ice as its detector material; a network of sensor chains has been embedded in the ice. The colored dots on the photo above mark the location of a vertical string of sensors. A neutrino interacting with the ice produces a charged particle called a muon that in turn gives off blue light as it traverses the detector. IceCube’s chains of sensors register that light and allow physicists to track the arrival direction of the neutrino.

staceythinx:

Alejandro Guijarro photographs the chalkboards of some of the brightest minds in quantum physics for his continuing series Momentum. He went to research facilities like CERN and many of the top universities in the world to find them.

(Source: facebook.com)

Exotic Atoms Shed Light on Physics Puzzle from Dawn of Universe

An international team of physicists has found the first direct evidence of pear shaped nuclei in exotic atoms.

The findings could advance the search for a new fundamental force in nature that could explain why the Big Bang created more matter than antimatter—a pivotal imbalance in the history of everything.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/exotic-atoms-shed-light-physics-puzzle-dawn-universe

(Source: laboratoryequipment, via laboratoryequipment)

A ‘Fifth Force’ May Alter Gravity at Cosmic Scales

Radical new research is attempting to characterize the properties of a fifth force that disrupts the predictions general relativity makes outside our own galaxy, on cosmic-length scales. University of Pennsylvania astrophysicist Bhuvnesh Jain, says the nature of gravity is the question of a lifetime. As scientists have been able to see farther and deeper into the universe, the laws of gravity have been revealed to be under the influence of an unexplained force.

Continue reading “A ‘Fifth Force’ May Alter Gravity at Cosmic Scales” »

(Source: thenewenlightenmentage, via thenewenlightenmentage)

How much does antimatter weigh?

Antimatter is mysterious, dangerous, and rare. In fiction, it’s at the core of Isaac Asimov’s positronic brains, the engines on the Enterprise, and the bomb in Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. But in the real world, antimatter is fairly mundane stuff. If the entire universe turned into antimatter, we’d barely notice. Or would we?

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(Source: thenewenlightenmentage, via thenewenlightenmentage)

Milky Way’s Black Hole Munches On Supercooked Gas

It’s a simple menu, but smoking hot. The black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy is sucking in ultra-hot molecular gas, as seen through the eyes of the Herschel space telescope.

“The biggest surprise was quite how hot the molecular gas in the innermost central region of the galaxy gets. At least some of it is around 1000ºC [1832º F], much hotter than typical interstellar clouds, which are usually only a few tens of degrees above the –273ºC [-460ºF] of absolute zero,” stated the European Space Agency.

Herschel, which is out of coolant and winding down its scientific operations, will continue producing results in the next few years as scientists crunch the results. The telescope has found a bunch of basic molecules in the Milky Way that include water vapour and carbon monoxide, and has been engaged in looking to learn more about the gas that surrounds the massive black hole at our galaxy’s center.

In a region called Sagittarius* (Sgr A*), this huge black hole — four million times the mass of the sun — is thankfully a safe distance from Earth. It’s 26,000 light years away from the solar system.

Trouble is, there’s a heckuva lot of dust blocking our view to the center of the galaxy. Herschel got around that problem by taking pictures in the far-infrared, seeking heat signatures that can bely intense activity in and around the black hole.

“Herschel has resolved the far-infrared emission within just 1 light-year of the black hole, making it possible for the first time at these wavelengths to separate emission due to the central cavity from that of the surrounding dense molecular disc,” stated Javier Goicoechea of the Centro de Astrobiología, Spain, lead author of a paper reporting the results.

The science team supposes that there are strong shocks within the gas (which is magnetized) that help turn up the heat. The shocks could occur when gas clouds butt up against each other, or material shoots out Fast and Furious-style between stars and protostars (young stars.)

“The observations are also consistent with streamers of hot gas speeding towards Sgr A*, falling towards the very center of the galaxy,” stated Goicoechea. “Our galaxy’s black hole may be cooking its dinner right in front of Herschel’s eyes.”

image 1: Artist’s concept of a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy. credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

image 2: At left, ionized gas in the galaxy as seen in radio wavelengths; at right, the spectrum at the center seen by Herschel. credit: Radio-wavelength image: National Radio Astronomy Observatory/Very Large Array (courtesy of C. Lang); spectrum: ESA/Herschel/PACS & SPIRE/J.R. Goicoechea et al. (2013).

Disclaimer: I know. I know.

Let’s just smile at this and move on :)

(Source: black-roses-in-myheart, via leblogphysique)

New experiments set to detect gravitational waves

Over the next five years, Mansi Kasliwal writes in an astrophysics perspective in the journal Science, researchers will begin setting up experiments designed to detect gravitational waves. Kasliwal, an astronomer with the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science located in Pasadena, California, says momentum is building in the physics community to find proof of the existence of gravitational waves. Thus, far, they are still considered theoretical.

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(Source: christinetheastrophysicist)

Physicists from CERN team up with TED-Ed to create five lessons that make particle physics child’s play

As part of TEDxCERN, physicists from the famous institution, home of  the Large Hadron Collider (and birthplace of the Word Wide Web), teamed up with animators from TED-Ed to create easy-to-understand animated lessons that explain concepts like dark matter, big data and the Higgs boson in lay terms.

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(via christinetheastrophysicist)