Strange Objects Punching Holes Through Saturn’s Outer Ring
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has revealed mysterious kilometer-sized objects that punch through Saturn’s chaotic and ever-changing F ring, leaving trails of ice behind them.
The objects pierce the planet’s thin ring at a gentle speed of just two meters per second, and then drag glittering ice particles out into space. The trails are typically 40 to 180 kilometers long. Astronomers are calling the ice trails “mini-jets.”
(via ikenbot)
Scientists now have evidence that Jupiter’s core has been dissolving, and the implications stretch far outside of our solar system.
Jupiter might be having a change of heart. Literally.
New simulations suggest that Jupiter’s rocky core has been liquefying and mixing with the rest of the planet’s innards. With this new data, astronomers hope to better explain a recent puzzling discovery of a strange planet outside of our solar system.
Einstein’s theory of gravity and quantum physics are expected to merge at the Planck-scale of extremely high energies and on very short distances. At this scale, new phenomena could arise. However, the Planck-scale is so remote from current experimental capabilities that tests of quantum gravity are widely believed to be nearly impossible. Now an international collaboration between the groups of Caslav Brukner and Markus Aspelmeyer at the University of Vienna and Myungshik Kim at Imperial College London has proposed a new quantum experiment using Planck-mass mirrors. Such an experiment could test certain predictions made by quantum gravity proposals in the laboratory. The findings will be published this week in Nature Physics.
An international team of astronomers has discovered a rare square galaxy with a striking resemblance to an emerald cut diamond.
The astronomers - from Australia, Germany, Switzerland and Finland - discovered the rectangular shaped galaxy within a group of 250 galaxies some 70 million light years away.
Mysterious Objects at the Edge of the Electromagnetic Spectrum
The human eye is crucial to astronomy. Without the ability to see, the luminous universe of stars, planets and galaxies would be closed to us, unknown forever. Nevertheless, astronomers cannot shake their fascination with the invisible.
Outside the realm of human vision is an entire electromagnetic spectrum of wonders. Each type of light—from radio waves to gamma-rays—reveals something unique about the universe. Some wavelengths are best for studying black holes; others reveal newborn stars and planets; while others illuminate the earliest years of cosmic history.
NASA has many telescopes “working the wavelengths” up and down the electromagnetic spectrum. One of them, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope orbiting Earth, has just crossed a new electromagnetic frontier.
(via thenewenlightenmentage)
Physics World Online Lecture Series
Date: Wednesday , April 4, 2012
Time: 4:00 PM BST
It took a man who was willing to break all the rules to tame a theory that breaks all the rules. This lecture will be based on Lawrence M Krauss’ new book Quantum Man: Richard Feynman’s Life in Science. Krauss will present a scientific overview of the contributions of Feynman, as seen through the arc of his fascinating life.
From quantum mechanics to antiparticles and from Rio de Janeiro to Los Alamos, a whirlwind tour will provide insights into the character, life and accomplishments of one of the 20th century’s most important scientists, as well as an object lesson in scientific integrity.
The webinar will run for approximately 45 minutes with time for a Q&A at the end.
Graphite has a tendency to behave very much like a metal, because the carbon molecules arrange themselves into a lattice structure. The crystal lattice is the same orientation that metal forms, and it allows the free-movement of electrons, making it a good electrical conductor.
Researchers in the US have created the first artificial samples of graphene with electronic properties that can be controlled in a way not possible in the natural form of the material. The samples can be used to study the properties of so-called Dirac fermions, which give graphene many of its unique electronic properties. The work may also lead to the creation of a new generation of quantum materials and devices with exotic behaviour.
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms organized in a honeycomb lattice. Physicists know that particles, such as electrons, moving though such a structure behave as though they have no mass and travel through the material at near light speeds. These particles are called massless Dirac fermions and their behaviour could be exploited in a host of applications, including transistors that are faster than any that exist today.
(Source: physicsworld.com)
Most Detailed View of a Solar Eclipse Corona
Credit & Copyright: Miloslav Druckmüller (Brno University of Technology), Martin Dietzel, Peter Aniol, Vojtech Rušin
Only in the fleeting darkness of a total solar eclipse is the light of the solar corona easily visible. Normally overwhelmed by the bright solar disk, the expansive corona, the sun’s outer atmosphere, is an alluring sight.
But the subtle details and extreme ranges in the corona’s brightness, although discernible to the eye, are notoriously difficult to photograph. Pictured above, however, using multiple images and digital processing, is a detailed image of the Sun’s corona taken during the 2008 August total solar eclipse from Mongolia.
(Source: ikenbot, via likeaphysicist)
Neutrinos captured under a mountain in central Italy have provided the first direct evidence for a nuclear reaction involved in the conversion of hydrogen to helium inside the Sun. The observation was made by the Borexino collaboration, which next hopes to ensnare as-yet-unseen neutrinos from fusion reactions taking place in stars heavier than our own.
Most of the Sun’s heat is generated in fusion reactions that form what is known as the “proton–proton cycle”. This involves the fusion of two hydrogen nuclei (protons) to form heavy hydrogen, the fusion with a third hydrogen nucleus to form helium-3 and then, via various pathways, the creation of extremely stable helium-4.
(Source: physicsworld.com)
