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Dark Energy, Dark Matter

Dark Energy, Dark Matter
Dark Energy, Dark Matter In the early 1990s, one thing was fairly certain about the expansion of the Universe. It might have enough energy density to stop its expansion and recollapse, it might have so little energy density that it would never stop expanding, but gravity was certain to slow the expansion as time went on. Granted, the slowing had not been observed, but, theoretically, the Universe had to slow. The Universe is full of matter and the attractive force of gravity pulls all matter together. Then came 1998 and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of very distant supernovae that showed that, a long time ago, the Universe was actually expanding more slowly than it is today. Eventually theorists came up with three sorts of explanations. What Is Dark Energy? More is unknown than is known. One explanation for dark energy is that it is a property of space. Another explanation for how space acquires energy comes from the quantum theory of matter. What Is Dark Matter? Related:  Subatomic particle colliders aka CERN or LHC

Meet Joe Incandela, Higgs boson -- or 'God Particle' -- detective Physicist Joe Incandela announced the discovery of the Higgs boson on July 4, 2012. The mosaic of photos of colleagues spells "CMS," which stands for Compact Muon Solenoid. CMS is one of the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider that detected the particle. The Large Hadron Collider is located at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, near Geneva, Switzerland. The Higgs boson, the elusive particle that scientists had hoped to find for decades, helps explain why matter has mass. The ATLAS experiment, seen here in 2011, is about two stories taller than CMS. Much of three stories of electronics at CMS are involved in making split-second decisions about what data to keep and what to discard. A technician works on the CMS experiment. Joe Incandela, the spokesperson for CMS, says that about 4,000 scientists collaborate on the experiment. Physicists in the CMS control room. Evaldas Juska, an engineer, is working on computers involved with CMS. Exploring the universe at CERN LHCb

Beyond the speed of light With potentially groundbreaking data published in the last few weeks, Conor O’Nolan talks about the experiments that could change physics forever Two weeks ago scientists at OPERA in Italy, working in collaboration with CERN in Geneva, published a paper which suggested that they have observed neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light. News of their apparent discovery went viral instantly, and the findings were published on a number of news websites before the CERN website was even updated. Should these results be verified, a large proportion of physics will have to be completely rewritten. In the seventeenth century, Issac Newton invented Newtonian mechanics. In 1905, Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity, which allowed particle physics to be better understood than if classical mechanics was used. Wolfgang Pauli postulated the neutrino in 1930 to explain the observed discrepancies in beta decay (A type radioactive decay).

What is the God particle? | Angels & Demons - The science behind the story The term 'The God particle' was coined by the physicist Leon Lederman in his 1993 popular science book, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? The particle that the book title refers to is the 'Higgs boson'. The particle we now call the Higgs boson has never been observed. What is the Higgs boson? The theories and discoveries of thousands of physicists over the past century have resulted in a remarkable insight into the fundamental structure of matter: everything in the Universe is found to be made from twelve basic building blocks called fundamental particles, governed by four fundamental forces. Our best understanding of how these twelve particles and three of the forces are related to each other is encapsulated in the Standard Model of particles and forces. Peter Higgs at CERN in April 2008. However, in order for this unification to work mathematically, it requires that force-carrying particles have no mass. What does the Higgs boson have to do with God?

Space Today Online -- The Sun and the Solar System -- Sunspots Yes! The spots are storms on the superhot Sun and they are keeping Earth aglow, according to the U.S. space agency. Noting that the Sun is especially hot right now, NASA says our star is spewing out electromagnetic radiation in the midst of an interesting storm season. A lot of that energy arrives at Earth. However, even as plasma and high-energy particles from the Sun light up Earth's ionosphere, orbiting detectors and other scientific equipment compose an early-warning system help us keep satellites in space and power grids on the surface of the planet safe. Solar Cycles. NOTE: you never should look directly at the Sun for any reason. Cycle Numbers. The Latest Solar Maximum. The Solar Cycle 23 peak seems to have been the month of April 2000 when the smoothed sunspot number (SSN) was 120.8. What are smoothed sunspot numbers? Cycle 23 like Cycle 20. Magnetic flip. Negative Effects. The Challenger disaster of 1986 had set shuttle flights back three years.

'God particle' unveiled? Super-collider scientists declare victory | Technology GENEVA (AP) — To cheers and standing ovations, scientists at the world's biggest atom smasher claimed the discovery of a new subatomic particle Wednesday, calling it "consistent" with the long-sought Higgs boson — popularly known as the "God particle" — that helps explain what gives all matter in the universe size and shape. "We have now found the missing cornerstone of particle physics," Rolf Heuer, director of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), told scientists. He said the newly discovered subatomic particle is a boson, but he stopped just shy of claiming outright that it is the Higgs boson itself — an extremely fine distinction. "As a layman, I think we did it," he told the elated crowd. "We have a discovery. We have observed a new particle that is consistent with a Higgs boson." The Higgs boson, which until now has been a theoretical particle, is seen as the key to understanding why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give an object weight. "Thanks, nature!"

Saturn storm: Cassini spacecraft pictures of monster storm dying out. An overview of the planet showing how ridiculosuly long this storm was, wrapping clearly around Saturn. The rings are edge-on and very thin, making them hard to spot. The shadow of the rings on the planet's clouds is obvious. Click to embiggen. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI In late 2010, Saturn got a bit of acne. This happens frequently on the ringed planet, but in this case the storm forgot to stop. This new image from the Cassini spacecraft (below) shows the storm at its height of glory. The storm persisted for months, and then fizzled out. The series of photos from the Cassini spacecraft (below) shows the progress of the storm over time (it’ll be easier to see this in the much bigger version of the picture ). This color-enhanced sequence of images shows the head of the storm wrapping around the planet, meeting its tail, and dying. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute It’s not clear why, though the fact that the tail and head collided must be involved.

Inside the Large Hadron Collider: How IT powers the greatest experiment in history At the press of a button, the largest machine ever made by humans will come alive. Buried around 100m underground, near Geneva, Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider is about to make history once again when it restarts in a few weeks time. Thousands of researchers are at work in the center to discover how the world was made and what happened right after the Big Bang. "When I arrived at CERN [European Organization for Nuclear Research], I immediately felt that it was science heaven," Alberto Pace, IT data and storage services group leader, told ZDNet. Pace and his team get to be part of the most exciting scientific experiment in history, the one that discovered the Higgs boson. What exactly is the Higgs boson, and what does it do? All the experiments happen in a circular underground tunnel which is 27km long and has a depth which ranges from 50m to 175m below ground. How data travels Hundreds of millions of particle collisions take place every second, at the heart of LHC's detectors.

Space Zen: Will Humans' Brains Change During Travel in Outer Space? -A Galaxy Insight In February, 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell experienced the little understood phenomenon sometimes called the “Overview Effect”. He describes being completely engulfed by a profound sense of universal connectedness. Without warning, he says, a feeing of bliss, timelessness, and connectedness began to overwhelm him. He describes becoming instantly and profoundly aware that each of his constituent atoms were connected to the fragile planet he saw in the window and to every other atom in the Universe. He described experiencing an intense awareness that Earth, with its humans, other animal species, and systems were all one synergistic whole. Rusty Schweikart experienced it on March 6th 1969 during a spacewalk outside his Apollo 9 vehicle: “When you go around the Earth in an hour and a half, you begin to recognize that your identity is with that whole thing. Newberg's first test subject will not be an astronaut, but rather a civilian. This is done with Faraday cages.

CERN eyes new giant particle collider Europe's physics lab CERN said Thursday it was eyeing plans for a circular particle collider that would be seven times more powerful than the facility which discovered the famous "God particle." "The time has come to look even further ahead," the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced. In 2012, CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—a giant lab housed in a 27-kilometre (17-mile) tunnel straddling the French-Swiss border—identified what is believed to be the Higgs boson, the long-sought maker of mass theorised in the 1960s. The facility flushed out the so-called God particle by crashing proton beams at velocities near the speed of light. It went offline a year ago for an 18-month overhaul. The LHC, completed in 2008, has "at least 20 more years" of life in it, the agency said. However, the long time needed to build its successor—the LHC took a quarter of a century—means that planning should start now. The winner will be "a worthy successor to the LHC," CERN said.

Through The Wormhole: Are There Parallel Universes? | Documentary Since the ancient Greeks first speculated that everything they observed in reality was the result of the interaction of tiny particles they called atoms, great thinkers have tried to find a single mathematical formula that governs and explains the workings of the entire universe. So far, though, even minds as brilliant as physicists Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking have been unable to come up with that single grand equation of everything, also known as the theory of everything, or the final theory. Nevertheless, they continue to try, because without that final piece of the puzzle that is reality, the sum total of what we know falls a bit short of making sense. Perhaps the most illustrious searcher for the equation of everything was physicist Albert Einstein, who spent the last 35 years of his life trying to uncover such an overarching explanation. Watch the full documentary now -

Physicists Proposing New U.S. Linear Particle Collider Physicists Proposing New U.S. Linear Particle Collider High-energy physicists from across the United States will gather at The Johns Hopkins University March 19-21 to consider and refine a proposal for a major new U.S. particle collider. Researchers coming to the Hopkins meeting are advocates of a proposal known as the Electron-Positron Linear Collider. Many believe such a collider could help confirm a theory known as supersymmetry, resolving many of the unanswered questions in their present understanding of elementary particles and the forces that act on them American scientists also feel an American commitment to build the proposed collider could help maintain the United States' leadership role in particle physics, a status many think the United States began to relinquish when it pulled the plug on the Superconducting Supercollider in the early 1990s. "The U.S. won't be at the energy frontier then, and we have to ask ourselves, 'What does that mean?' Related websites: Morris Swartz

De la mécanique quantique à échelle humaine La languette placée en état de superposition quantique. (O'Connell et al., Nature, Advance Online Publication) D e la physique quantique, oui, mais visible à l’œil nu! Andrew Cleland et son équipe de l’université de Californie ont réussi à placer une languette de métal de plusieurs dizaines de micromètres dans un état de superposition quantique. La languette vibre tout en ne vibrant pas, conséquence d’un principe fondamental de la physique quantique. Ces résultats sont publiés cette semaine par la revue (AOP). D’après la théorie quantique de la matière, les objets microscopiques se comportent à la fois comme des ondes et des particules. Ce constat est connu par les physiciens depuis des décennies, mais jusqu’ici, il n’avait pu être observé qu’à des échelles atomiques. Pour placer un objet de 30 micromètres dans un état quantique, Andrew Cleland et son équipe ont utilisé un circuit électrique supraconducteur qui obéit aux lois de la mécanique quantique. A voir également:

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