First predicted in the 1960s, like the Higgs boson before it, the pentaquark eluded science for decades until its recent detection at CERN’s LHCb collaboration. The discovery amounts to finding a new form of matter…
Forensic researchers from the University of Salzburg have developed a new method for establishing an exact time of death after as long as 10 days – a significant step forward from the current method of measuring core body temperature, which only works up to 36 hours after death.
1/60 minute. 1/3,600 hour. 1/86,400 day. 1/1 hertz. The duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of a 133 55Cs caesium isotope corresponds to one second. But what does it look like? And where might you find a second?
Deep down, in huge subterranean caverns… Underneath the Franco-Swiss border… 300 feet underground… lies a beast of unprecedented power… and mystery. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that man summons to explore the uncharted corners of the sub-atomic realm… After two years of a deep slumber, the mighty beast has awoken…
Still in its early stages, El Niño has the potential to cause extreme and even devastating weather around the World. According to climate graphs, we have reached a 0.6 value for the ENSO. It’s a 60% probability. El Niño is now officially back.
One of the all-time most interesting elements in the Periodic Table, nitrogen is a colourless, odourless, inert diatomic gas that makes up to 78% of the Earth’s atmosphere. We breathe it everyday, although an atmosphere of pure nitrogen is nefarious to animal and human life. It is vital to life and plants simply strive on it. Nitrogen compounds are explosive, and nations have gone to war over it. It can feed… or kill.
What Pickpockets Know and Your Brain Would Rather Not Tell You
Be under no illusion. You saw the sign: “Pickpockets are operating in this area”. You reacted. Instantly. The first thing you did was to check your pockets or handbag for signs of financial solvability. All is well. You relax. Only now, you’ve become the “mark”… because you’ve just given away precious information about the location of your valuables around your body.
Surrounding the town of El Ejido, Almeria Province, southern Spain is a sea of greenhouses, stretching for tens of kilometres, visible from space. Millions of tons of vegetables are exported from there to other European countries and further parts of the World. Along the Mediterranean coast, tourism flourishes, fuelling a booming real estate economy…
Should you ever have wondered what the Higgs boson sounds like… It’s… “AS LOUD AS A RIFF BY JOE SATRIANI. WHAT?! IT’S AS LOUD… AS A…” Oh, wait!! Here it is.
“Dark matter?” You cannot see it. But there is something there. As for what it is, it’s anybody’s guess! Dark matter does not interact with light. At all. Which makes it difficult to detect.“But if you cannot see it? How do you know it is in fact there?” Well, it does interact with gravity, and as it does so it bends the path of any light ray passing nearby...
That’s how this TED video on the Higgs boson begins. I say two guys… It’s more like one physicist working on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN – the European laboratory for Particle Physics – aka Dave Barney, and a Blues singer, aka Steve Goldfarb, in the guise of a pink slug…
Four states of matter can be seen in everyday life: solid, liquid, gas, and – somewhat more exotically – plasma. As a tightly bound combination of oxygen and hydrogen atoms, a water molecule is nothing out of the ordinary. Liquid water, steam or ice are still just water. Yet, it is intriguing to see how the very same building blocks of matter are capable of producing such broadly distinct states.
Take one second and divide it a million times. Then, take one millionth of that second and divide it again… by a billion! All you’re left with is a femtosecond. That’s how fast the Linac laser at Palo Alto can deliver burst of X-rays and track chemical reactions in living systems… as they happen.
You’re not having déjà vu. I already wrote about the Leidenfrost Maze in this blog. And although physics experiments fascinate many, they don’t normally weigh up as Internet clickbait. But the Leidenfrost effect is different…
Ever since Francis Crick and James Watson brought Physics and Biology together in 1953 to unveil the molecular structure of DNA, the boundary between the two disciplines has continued to become increasingly blurred. In this genomic new era, ever more principles from Physics are being applied to living systems in an attempt to understand complexity at all levels. Although sometimes the best solution to a Physics problem lies in the macroscopic world of Biology…
This mesmerising image of the Northern Lights over Scotland was captured by Baltimore-born NASA astronaut Terry Virts, a member of Expedition 42 from the International Space Station earlier this week, as it drifted over Europe.
What happened at time T = 0? is still anybody’s guess. At least, earlier observations of Planck’s radiation had suggested the first generation of stars were bursting into life by about 420 million years after the Big Bang. However, scientists from Europe’s Planck satellite mission now say the first stars lit up the Universe later than was previously thought…
At the beginning of the 20th century, the discovery of the radiometric “clock” revolutionised our understanding of the Earth’s deep history, confirming what geologists had been claiming for decades. Nevertheless, newer and more accurate dating methods posed further problems in themselves. After all, how do we know our Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and not a mere few thousands of years as suggested by the Bible?
Tin – an important element for the electronics industry. Tin is in high demand to manufacture devices like smartphones and tablets. In Indonesia and elsewhere, people work in mines to dig tin ore out of the ground. A dangerous job is made even more unsafe where the mine is being run illegally. And it is not just the adults who take risks. Children in Indonesia are working in brutal conditions to collect the materials used in our cool gadgets. The manufacturers are complicit. Do you really feel like buying that brand new mobile phone now?
Our planet has existed for 4.5 billion years, and it has been a busy lifetime. From amazing leaps and bounds forward into evolution to devastating asteroid impacts and other episodic extinctions, here are the biggest milestones in Earth’s history – the eventful journey that shaped our World today.
No other country on Earth has more bushfires than Australia. Bush fires spread quickly destroying everything in their path and they are extremely difficult for fire brigades to control. At the CSIRO in Yarralumla, researchers are using their Pyrotron – a combustion wind tunnel – to provide them with a unique insight into how fire behaves in the Australian bush.
A friend of mine once casually asked me over a drink: “What is entropy?” Eeek! Interesting concept. But… How do you define entropy in a non-mathematical way? How can you sum up entropy in 30 seconds? In one mental image. In a single concept… In one word. A form of energy? A measure of disorder in the Universe? Randomness? All of the above? Tricky question. And then, I dropped my glass…
… is pretty much the bemused reaction you’ll get if you allow yourself to answer casual questions about science over a drink with a non-physicist. AB-SO-LUTE disbelief. Your fault! Shouldn’t have gone there… Pretend you didn’t hear the question… Especially if the answer is ion propulsion!
GOCE – Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer
GOCE succumbed to gravity – the force it had been sent up into space to study. Ironically. When the xenon fuel for this engine was exhausted, the satellite fell back to Earth in November 2013. The first of ESA’s Living Planet Programme satellites, GOCE was intended to map the Earth’s gravity field in unprecedented detail...
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