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Warp Drive More Possible Than Thought, Scientists Say

Warp Drive More Possible Than Thought, Scientists Say
HOUSTON — A warp drive to achieve faster-than-light travel — a concept popularized in television's Star Trek — may not be as unrealistic as once thought, scientists say. A warp drive would manipulate space-time itself to move a starship, taking advantage of a loophole in the laws of physics that prevent anything from moving faster than light. A concept for a real-life warp drive was suggested in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre; however, subsequent calculations found that such a device would require prohibitive amounts of energy. Now physicists say that adjustments can be made to the proposed warp drive that would enable it to run on significantly less energy, potentially bringing the idea back from the realm of science fiction into science. "There is hope," Harold "Sonny" White of NASA's Johnson Space Center said here Friday (Sept. 14) at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss the challenges of interstellar spaceflight. Warping space-time Laboratory tests Related:  science explains world

10 Strange Things About The Universe Space The universe can be a very strange place. While groundbreaking ideas such as quantum theory, relativity and even the Earth going around the Sun might be commonly accepted now, science still continues to show that the universe contains things you might find it difficult to believe, and even more difficult to get your head around. Theoretically, the lowest temperature that can be achieved is absolute zero, exactly ? One of the properties of a negative-energy vacuum is that light actually travels faster in it than it does in a normal vacuum, something that may one day allow people to travel faster than the speed of light in a kind of negative-energy vacuum bubble. One prediction of Einstein’s theory of general relativity is that when a large object moves, it drags the space-time around it, causing nearby objects to be pulled along as well. Relativity of Simultaneity Since this extra dimension is so small, only tiny objects, such as particles, can move along it. Antimatter Retrocausality

Timeline Photos 100 Websites You Should Know and Use In the spring of 2007, Julius Wiedemann, editor in charge at Taschen GmbH, gave a legendary TED University talk: an ultra-fast-moving ride through the “100 websites you should know and use.” Six years later, it remains one of the most viewed TED blog posts ever. Time for an update? We think so. Below, the 2013 edition of the 100 websites to put on your radar and in your browser. To see the original list, click here. And now, the original list from 2007, created by Julius Wiedemann, editor in charge at Taschen GmbH.

New evidence that plants get their energy using quantum entanglement The fact that biological systems can exploit quantum effects is quite astounding. No it is not, not even remotely.There is literally no possible way that photosynthesis could take place without involving quantum physics. This particular exploit is really neat, of course, but far too much as been made of how mystical or ungraspable quantum physics is. Basic chemistry is defined by quantum physics. Every interaction of two particles or two molecules is the result of the laws of quantum physics. The distinction being made is that toast-making was just as explicable with continuous waves of energy being absorbed by the bread but that no such classical interpretation is possible for these new photosynthesis observations. Right? Yeah, it's always easy to come in after someone's done the hard research and go "Oh, pff. Or, you can sit back and let people admire how wild our Universe is and just how little we know about it. well now why havent all the people working on this already aware of this?

Wormhole Construction: Proceed with Caution Ronnie Chen/Hampton University, from a ThinkQuest project Spaceships on Star Trek: Deep Space 9 regularly take a shortcut between distant parts of the Universe by traveling through a wormhole, a kind of spacetime tunnel. Although Einstein’s General Relativity theory allows wormholes to exist, physicists have been trying for decades to construct them mathematically without breaking any other laws of physics. Most researchers agree that wormholes require “exotic matter”–stuff that is repelled by gravity, rather than attracted–but some have claimed ways around that problem. According to Matt Visser of Washington University in St. On the other hand, no one knows if enough of this weird stuff can exist in one place at one time to create a decent-sized wormhole. Their approach was to rigorously define a wormhole “throat” (the narrowest point) and show that because light rays spread out as they emerge from it, there must be a kind of “antigravity”–the hallmark of exotic matter. References

Assange: Facebook, Google, Yahoo are Spying Tools In Julian Assange’s exclusive interview with RT he discusses everything from the uprisings in MENA, to his extradition fight, the Guantanamo and US Cable files, his relationship with The Guardian and The New York Times, global political youth movements, the current state of mainstream media and Bradley Manning. He famously warns that social media and in particularly Facebook, Google, Yahoo are among the greatest spy machines ever invented. Once again Mr. Assange demonstrates his intelligence, authenticity and consciousness. The man behind WikiLeaks says his website’s revelations are just the tip of the iceberg. It is only a matter of time before more damaging information becomes known. "It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena, they have an interface they have developed for US Intelligence to use. Watch the full documentary now (playlist - 42 minutes)

Can we grow a stronger-than-steel 'wonder material' to save the world? It’s stiffer than Kevlar, thinner than paper, and in a few years, it may be mass-produced using only sunlight and water. Scientists in the US this week announced a new, and potentially groundbreaking method for producing nanocellulose — a so-called "wonder material" derived from tree fiber that could be used to create ultra-thin displays, lightweight body armor, and a wide range of other products. Their key ingredient? Algae. "one of the most important discoveries in plant biology" Dr. At the core of Brown's research is a family of bacteria that produce vinegar, Kombucha tea, and nata de coco. Brown's method, by contrast, is vastly more efficient and environmentally friendly, requiring only sunlight, water, and algae. Organic, self-sustaining factories These genetically-altered algae, known as cyanobacteria, are entirely self-sustaining. The team is currently working on synthesizing a more complete and stable form of the material, though their progress is already promising.

Facebook Esoteric Tube - Downloading Reality Make graphene in your kitchen with soap and a blender - physics-math - 20 April 2014 First, pour some graphite powder into a blender. Add water and dishwashing liquid, and mix at high speed. Congratulations, you just made the wonder material graphene. This surprisingly simple recipe is now the easiest way to mass-produce pure graphene – sheets of carbon just one atom thick. The material has been predicted to , based on its unusual electrical and thermal properties. "There are companies producing graphene at much higher rates, but the quality is not exceptional," says Jonathan Coleman of Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. Coleman's team was contracted by Thomas Swan, a chemicals firm based in Consett, UK, to come up with something better. Carbon smoothie The team put graphite powder and a solvent fluid in a laboratory mixer and set it spinning. "If you are using a blender, why use a fancy expensive surfactant? Still, Coleman says you may not want to try this at home. "It is a fun experiment, but it wouldn't get you very far," says Colman. Useful defects More from the web

A world first! Success at complete quantum teleportation Furusawa group at the University of Tokyo has succeeded in demonstrating complete quantum teleportation of photonic quantum bits by a hybrid technique for the first time worldwide. In 1997, quantum teleportation of photonic quantum bits was achieved by a research team at Innsbruck University in Austria. However, such quantum teleportation couldn't be used for information processing, because measurement was required after transport, and the transport efficiency was low. So, quantum teleportation was still a long way from practical use in quantum communication and quantum computing. The demonstration of quantum teleportation of photonic quantum bits by Furusawa group shows that transport efficiency can be over 100 times higher than before. Also, because no measurement is needed after transport, this result constitutes a major advance toward quantum information processing technology. "I think we can definitely say that quantum computers have come closer to reality.

Experience Just How Big the Universe is, in One Mind-Blowing Interactive You need a more recent version of Adobe Flash Player. Recently, NASA scientists combined data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes to discover the most distant galaxy known to date. The galaxy, named Abell2744 Y1, was formed around 13.2 billion years ago when the universe was extremely young. Image: Galaxy cluster Abell2744 obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope (Credit: NASA) But what does that really mean? Most of us have trouble visualizing the height of buildings, or the distance it takes to get home from work, let alone things on an intergalactic scale. Even cooler are the tidbits of information that are provided when you click on an object. 1. This is the smallest unit of scale in the universe. As you can see from the animation it takes a bit of zooming to reach this scale. 2. Fundamental particles such as quarks, neutrinos and the Higgs boson are theoretically point sized. 3. 4. Tres-4 is the second largest planet discovered so far. 5. 6. 7.

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