Community FQXb (bio)By WILLIAM OREM • Mar. 23, 2014 @ 21:39 GMT Everyone is talking this week about the dramatic confirmation of inflationary theory: those first-instant gravitational waves whose details may even point--being, if you will, quantum phenomena that went suddenly ultra-macroscopic--toward the correct way to unify QM and GR. I myself have been musing on rather astonishing work in another field. Recently the big news there was released: an unprepossessing experiment involving a weak acid bath showed it's possible to revert mature, differentiated cells to a stem cell state, allowing for the prospect of wholesale repurposing. This is the angle most science journalists gave the discovery last month: "Outsider runs outrageous experiment, stumbles upon success." Alas--you knew this part was coming--it is now looking like the champagne may have been premature. Either way, though, I'm left musing. As a finding, it's counterintuitive. Is this a natural propensity of all cellular life? 1. 2. 3.
SpaceWeather Learn Physics Today! As of July 1, 2013 ThinkQuest has been discontinued. We would like to thank everyone for being a part of the ThinkQuest global community: Students - For your limitless creativity and innovation, which inspires us all. Teachers - For your passion in guiding students on their quest. Partners - For your unwavering support and evangelism. Parents - For supporting the use of technology not only as an instrument of learning, but as a means of creating knowledge. We encourage everyone to continue to “Think, Create and Collaborate,” unleashing the power of technology to teach, share, and inspire. Best wishes, The Oracle Education Foundation
Solar System Scope Math, Physics, and Engineering Applets Oscillations and Waves Acoustics Signal Processing Electricity and Magnetism: Statics Electrodynamics Quantum Mechanics Linear Algebra Vector Calculus Thermodynamics Mechanics Miscellaneous Licensing info. Links to other educational sites with math/physics-related information or java applets useful for teaching: And when you get tired of learning, here is some fun stuff: Pong Simulation Circuit-level simulation of original 1972 Pong. Stellarium Failed Star Found In The Neighborhood: Scientific American Podcast It looks like we have a new neighbor. It's actually been there all along, but astronomers have only now spotted what could be the seventh closest star system to the sun. The system is just nine light years away, a mere stone's throw in astronomical terms. It took so long to find because it's an extremely dim and cool kind of failed star called a brown dwarf. Astronomers found it using NASA's WISE satellite. The sun's newfound neighbor and five other supercool brown dwarfs belong to a class of failed star called Y dwarfs. You could safely touch one of the newfound brown dwarfs—its temperature is estimated at about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Hundreds of possible brown dwarfs are out there awaiting confirmation. —John Matson [The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
Latest Mars Weather Captioned Image Release No. MSSS-321 — 16 April 2014 Martian weather between 7 April 2014 and 13 April 2014: The MARCI acquires a global view of the red planet and its weather patterns every day. Local dust storms were observed in Solis, Aonia, and west of Syrtis. This week’s MARCI “movie” can be downloaded HERE (9.1 MB .mov file). Earlier Mars Weather Reports are available HERE. About the Quicktime Movie: The movie (a .mov file that you can click and play, above) was generated from images obtained by the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Citation and CreditThe image(s) and caption are value-added products. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems —or— NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS To cite the image(s) and caption information in a paper or report: Malin, M.
Is Time An Illusion? From The Buddha To Brian Greene : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture Can time be stopped, captured or even known? Does it exist, or is it all just an illusion? Karim Sahib / AFP/Getty Images Is time real, or is change just a kind of optical illusion resting on a deeper unchanging reality? As finite creatures, with death hovering just out of our sight, the true nature of time haunts all our endeavors. In the domains of spirituality, humans have also asked if there is more, or less, to time than ticking clocks or the march from birth to death. Buddhists, with their emphasis on meditation, have long seen the unspooling of time as an artifact of the mind. "You may say, 'I must do something this afternoon' but actually there is no 'this afternoon' ... Christian writers such as Meister Eckhart have taken a similar stance: "There exists only the present instant ... Science however has its own take on time's illusion. For decades physics inverted the problem, holding the now to be something less than real. One thing is, however, certain.