Astronomers Find First Evidence Of Other Universes There’s something exciting afoot in the world of cosmology. Last month, Roger Penrose at the University of Oxford and Vahe Gurzadyan at Yerevan State University in Armenia announced that they had found patterns of concentric circles in the cosmic microwave background, the echo of the Big Bang. This, they say, is exactly what you’d expect if the universe were eternally cyclical. That’s an extraordinary discovery: evidence of something that occurred before the (conventional) Big Bang. Today, another group says they’ve found something else in the echo of the Big Bang. These bubbles probably had a violent past, jostling together and leaving “cosmic bruises” where they touched. Now Stephen Feeney at University College London and a few pals say they’ve found tentative evidence of this bruising in the form of circular patterns in cosmic microwave background. Again, this is an extraordinary result: the first evidence of universes beyond our own. So, what to make of these discoveries. Ref:
Our earliest primate cousin discovered in Asia - life - 05 June 2013 OUR distant ancestors evolved not in Africa but Asia, in a hothouse world newly free of dinosaurs. Over 55 million years ago, in the lush rainforests of what is now east Asia, a new voice was heard in the animal chorus: the cry of the first primate. A fossil unveiled this week might give us an idea of what this crucial ancestor looked like. "For the first time we can shine a light on this critical part of the [evolutionary] tree and say what did these animals look like?" A new dimension for 3-D protein structures (Phys.org) —3D structures of biological molecules like proteins directly affect the way they behave in our bodies. EPFL scientists have developed a new infrared-UV laser method to more accurately determine the structure of proteins containing thousands of atoms. Biological molecules like proteins contain thousands of atoms that form extremely complex 3D structures. Being able to identify such structures is important because they directly affect how a molecule behaves in cells, and can often make the difference between life and death; for example, mad cow disease is caused by the misfolded version of an otherwise harmless prion protein. Proteins and peptides tend to have extremely complex three-dimensional structures. Working out the structure of biological molecules begins by making several theoretical predictions of what a molecule would look like, and then matching them to experimental data. Explore further: Movement of pyrrole molecules defy 'classical' physics
Silver nanoparticles provide clean water for $2 a year - health - 10 May 2013 SOMETIMES the solution to an enormous problem is tiny. Silver nanoparticles may be the key to supplying clean, affordable drinking water worldwide. Thalappil Pradeep at the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai and colleagues have developed a filter based on an aluminium composite, embedded with silver nanoparticles. As water flows through the filter, the nanoparticles are oxidised and release ions, which kill viruses and bacteria, and neutralise toxic chemicals such as lead and arsenic. Some nanoparticles leach into the water but at concentrations that pose no threat to health. In tests, a 50-gram composite filtered 1500 litres of water without needing reactivation, so they estimate that a 120g-filter that costs just $2 would provide safe drinking water for a family of five for one year (PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1220222110). The filters are undergoing field trials in India with the aim of preventing waterborne diseases. New Scientist Not just a website! More From New Scientist
Space vs time: One has to go – but which? - physics-math - 17 June 2013 TO ISAAC NEWTON, space was the "sensorium of God", the organ through which the deity surveyed His creation. It was absolute, unchanging, infinite. Flowing through it "equably without regard to anything external", as Newton wrote in his great physical treatise Principia, was another similarly absolute heavenly creation: time. Not everyone bought that idea. A few centuries on, God features less prominently in the debate, but arguments about the nature of space and time swirl on.
Making memories: Practical quantum computing moves closer to reality Researchers at the University of Sydney and Dartmouth College have developed a new way to design quantum memory, bringing quantum computers a step closer to reality. The results will appear June 19 in the journal Nature Communications. Quantum computing may revolutionize information processing, by providing a means to solve problems too complex for traditional computers, with applications in code breaking, materials science and physics. In the worldwide drive to build a useful quantum computer, the simple-sounding task of effectively preserving quantum information in a quantum memory is a major challenge. The Sydney-Dartmouth team's results demonstrate a path to what is considered a holy grail in the research community: storing quantum states with high fidelity for exceptionally long times, even hours according to their calculations. "Our new approach allows us to simultaneously achieve very low error rates and very long storage times," said co-senior author Dr.
Mathematicians think like machines for perfect proofs - physics-math - 25 June 2013 Read full article Continue reading page |1|2 It's difficult to get computers to think like humans, so mathematicians are trying the opposite. A proposed mathematical framework forces humans to think more like machines in order to harness the remarkable ability of computers to rapidly check proofs. The framework provides the possibility of proofs that can't be wrong – and so wouldn't need to be laboriously checked by humans. It could also be the first step towards computers carrying out mathematics by themselves, and perhaps even more advanced forms of artificial intelligence. Mathematical proofs are becoming so complex that even other mathematicians have a hard time following them. One solution is to use computer-verified proofs, in which software double-checks each logical step in a proof to ensure its correctness. Sandcastle sets In theory any proof can be rigorously written in the language of sets, but mathematicians don't normally bother. Instruction manual The reward? More from the web
The coming Golden Age of neurotech | TURING CHURCH All seems to indicate that the next decade, the 20s, will be the magic decade of the brain, with amazing science but also amazing applications. With the development of nanoscale neural probes and high speed, two-way Brain-Computer interfaces (BCI), by the end of the next decade we may have our iPhones implanted in our brains and become a telepathic species. Ramez Naam’s great sci-fi novel NEXUS is a fascinating preview. Last month the New York Times revealed that the Obama Administration may soon seek billions of dollars from Congress for a Brain Activity Map (BAM) project. The full details of the project are not known and will probably remain unknown until the official announcement, perhaps in March, but some factlets and hints are emerging. Zebrafish, mouse… and then of course humans. This is a race to the brain, like the space race of the 60s, this time between the U.S. and Europe (but I would be surprised if the Chinese will not decide to participate in the race).
Scientists resurrect extinct frog that gives birth through its mouth Gastric-Brooding Frog. Australian Government Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts Scientists have resurrected an extinct frog species, that gives birth through its mouth, by transplanting its DNA into the eggs of another frog species. The team implant cells of extinct amphibian, collected in the 1970s and kept in deep freezer for 40 years, into the eggs of living relative team implanted cell nuclei from tissues into donor eggs from a distantly-related frog. The extinct frog is the Rheobatrachus silus, one of two species of gastric-brooding frogs, native to Queensland in eastern Australia. Both species became extinct in the mid-1980s. Image © wikipedia The gastric-brooding frogs or Platypus frogs (Rheobatrachus) were a genus of ground-dwelling frogs native to Queensland in eastern Australia. The combined ranges of the gastric-brooding frogs comprised less than 2,000 square kilometres (770 sq mi). Sources popsci, wikipedia via WordlessTech
Wormhole entanglement gives space-time the bends - 26 July 2013 Read more: Quantum romance: Wormhole unites star-crossed lovers SPACE-TIME, the very fabric of our universe, may be a tangled place. Entanglement, a feature of quantum mechanics that links objects over great distances, could be responsible for its structure. What's more, entanglement may fill the universe with a thicket of cosmic tunnels called wormholes. All these ideas fall out of a new theory that is making inroads into unifying gravity, which operates on large scales, with quantum mechanics, the science of the very small. A successful theory of quantum gravity is one of the biggest goals of modern physics. The theory also raises the bizarre possibility of using wormholes to enable a futuristic version of a lover's leap.