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Related: physicsBetter Nuclear Power Through Ping Pong The lab is deep-space quiet. A long, narrow hallway hung with fluorescent lights extends to my left. Four or five doors interrupt the flow of drywall. A few of those doors are open, the occupants of the rooms within now out in the hall and staring, ears plugged in anticipation. A technician flips a small lever to activate the vacuum pumps on an 18-foot cannon that is tented in bulletproof polycarbonate. Two Suns? Twin Stars Could Be Visible From Earth By 2012 By Dean Praetorius | HuffingtonPost.com Earth could be getting a second sun, at least temporarily. Dr. Brad Carter, Senior Lecturer of Physics at the University of Southern Queensland, outlined the scenario to news.com.au. Betelgeuse, one of the night sky’s brightest stars, is losing mass, indicating it is collapsing.
Faster-than-light neutrinos could be proof of extra dimensions Similarly, how can I get my ice cream scoops to jump between flavours and manipulate them? Because my wife is always buying Chocolate, but I prefer Strawberry and would like it to be in the shape of a bunny rabbit. Three main issues I see with that. 'We Don't Planet' Episode 3: What's Up with Gravitational Lensing? The fundamental description of gravity under general relativity — that the presence of matter and energy deforms the fabric of space-time, and this deformation influences the motion of other objects — leads to a rather unexpected result: a massive object can act like a lens, magnifying and warping the images of background objects. This prediction was the first major test of general relativity, with Sir Arthur Eddington leading an expedition to measure the small (but detectable) deflection of starlight around our sun, and today this facet of our universe is used as a powerful cosmological probe. The challenge that gravitational lensing answers is the determination of mass at very large scales. Since most of the mass of the universe is composed of dark matter, we can only rely on indirect probes to measure the true mass of galaxies and clusters of galaxies.
Glow-in-the-dark mushroom rediscovered after 170 years It's something you would never expect to go missing, but one of the world's brightest glow-in-the-dark mushrooms has been rediscovered after an absence of more than 170 years, according to USA Today. The bioluminescent shrooms had become a Brazilian legend of sorts. They were first spied in 1840 by an English botanist named George Gardner, who was alarmed after he saw some boys playing with a glowing object in the streets of Vila de Natividad, a village in the Goiás state in central Brazil. After that, no more sightings of the brightly glowing fungus had ever been reported. The mushroom was nearly forgotten until 2002, when Brazilian chemist Cassius Stevani came across Gardner's early reports.
Could cold spot in the sky be a bruise from a collision with a parallel universe? Scientists have long tried to explain the origin of a mysterious, large and anomalously cold region of the sky. In 2015, they came close to figuring it out as a study showed it to be a “supervoid” in which the density of galaxies is much lower than it is in the rest of the universe. However, other studies haven’t managed to replicate the result. Fish mimics octopus that mimics fish Nature's game of intimidation and imitation comes full circle in the waters of Indonesia, where scientists have recorded for the first time an association between the black-marble jawfish (Stalix cf. histrio) and the mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus). Undescribed by scientists until 1998, the talented mimic octopus is known to impersonate toxic flatfish, lionfish, and even sea snakes by creatively configuring its limbs, adopting characteristic undulating movements, and displaying bold brown-and-white color patterns. Thanks to these brazen habits, it can swim in the open with relatively little fear of predators. The jawfish, on the other hand, is a small and timid fish. It spends most of its adult life close to a sand burrow, where it will quickly retreat upon sighting a predator. During a diving trip in Indonesia in July 2011, Godehard Kopp of the University of Gottingen, Germany, filmed an unexpected pairing between the two animals.
Schrödinger’s Cat: Explained Erwin Schrödinger was born in Vienna on August 12, 1887 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. He is best known for his work regarding quantum theory, particularly about his thought experiment involving a cat in order to explain the flawed interpretation of quantum superposition. The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics essentially states that an object in a physical system can simultaneously exist in all possible configurations, but observing the system forces the system to collapse and forces the object into just one of those possible states. Animal Sleep Most animals have a daily pattern of rest and activity. Some animals are more active during the day (diurnal) and some are more active during the night (nocturnal). How much time do animals spend sleeping?
Chinese Scientists Successfully Teleported a Particle to Space When it comes to weird quantum effects, none is weirder than quantum teleportation. Scientists can—and have—used the unique and complicated physics of quantum mechanics to instantaneously teleport small particles across great distances. Now, a Chinese team has broken the distance record by teleporting particles to a satellite in space. Your Brain On Psilocybin Might Be Less Depressed : Shots - Health Blog hide captionThis could be your forest on psilocybin. Baxterclaus/Flickr This could be your forest on psilocybin. Magic mushrooms are said to blow your mind, but the hallucinogenic chemical psilocybin, the active ingredient, actually reins in key parts of the brain, according to two new studies.
Google's Nuclear Fusion Project Is Paying Off - Google and Tri Alpha Energy Improve Plasma Generator Tri Alpha Energy / Erik Lucero Nuclear fusion, the process the sun has used for billions of years to fuse atoms of hydrogen into atoms of helium, could be the pot of gold at the end of the clean energy rainbow. If we could engineer a reaction to snowball but remain contained, nuclear fusion reactors could supply virtually unlimited clean energy here on Earth. Yet, the technology seems perpetually just around the corner. Google and nuclear fusion company Tri Alpha Energy, which operates fusion reactor projects in California, just took us one step closer to rounding that corner. The two companies began working together in 2014, and they just released their first major research results.
Primates as prey, predators, competitors of snakes Photo by J. Headland/Courtesy of PNAS Reticulated python shot by Kekek Aduanan, the adult male Agta on the right, on June 9, 1970, at the headwaters of the Koso River in the Sierra Madre of Aurora Province, Luzon, Philippines. Note the snake's girth and head size relative to the size of the men holding her carcass. More than a quarter of the men in a modern Filipino hunter-gatherer group have been attacked by giant pythons, reports a study that also concludes that humans and snakes not only eat and are eaten by each other, but have long been competitors for the same prey. Skin of the same python as above after the two hunters and Headland butchered it, thereby providing about 55 pounds of meat to the men's families and fellow group members.