Quantum gravity takes singularity out of black holes - space - 29 May 2013

Metamaterial flat lens projects 3D UV images of objects A NIST team has created an ultraviolet (UV) metamaterial formed of alternating nanolayers of silver (green) and titanium dioxide (blue). When illuminated with UV light (purple) a sample object of any shape placed on the flat slab of metamaterial is projected as a three-dimensional image in free space on the other side of the slab. Here a ring-shaped opening in an opaque sheet on the left of the slab is replicated in light on the right. (Credit: Lezec/NIST) Scientists working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a new type of lens that bends and focuses ultraviolet (UV) light in such an unusual way that it can create ghostly, 3D images of objects that float in free space. The easy-to-build lens could lead to improved photolithography, nanoscale manipulation and manufacturing, and even high-resolution three-dimensional imaging, as well as a number of as-yet-unimagined applications in a diverse range of fields. Background

Mathematical breakthrough sets out rules for more effective teleportation For the last ten years, theoretical physicists have shown that the intense connections generated between particles as established in the quantum law of ‘entanglement’ may hold the key to eventual teleportation of information. Now, for the first time, researchers have worked out how entanglement could be ‘recycled’ to increase the efficiency of these connections. Published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the result could conceivably take us a step closer to sci-fi style teleportation in the future, although this research is purely theoretical in nature. The team have also devised a generalised form of teleportation, which allows for a wide variety of potential applications in quantum physics. Once considered impossible, in 1993 a team of scientists calculated that teleportation could work in principle using quantum laws. “We have also found a generalised teleportation technique which we hope will find applications in areas such as quantum computation.”

Giant, fluorescent pink slugs found on mountain | The Sideshow (NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service) It would seem to be something you'd see only in a cartoon or at a Phish concert, but according to park rangers in New South Wales, Australia, dozens of giant, fluorescent pink slugs have been popping up on a mountaintop there. "As bright pink as you can imagine, that's how pink they are," Michael Murphy, a ranger with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation . "On a good morning, you can walk around and see hundreds of them." The eight-inch creatures have been spotted only on Mount Kaputar, a 5,000-foot peak in the Nandewar Range in northern New South Wales. Scientists believe the eye-catching organisms are survivors from an era when Australia was home to rainforests. They "probably would have long since vanished, if a volcano had not erupted at Mount Kaputar about 17 million years ago," Ben Cubby wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald . And they're not the only unusual inhabitants on the mountain.

Physicists Create Quantum Link Between Photons That Don't Exist at the Same Time Now they're just messing with us. Physicists have long known that quantum mechanics allows for a subtle connection between quantum particles called entanglement, in which measuring one particle can instantly set the otherwise uncertain condition, or "state," of another particle—even if it's light years away. Now, experimenters in Israel have shown that they can entangle two photons that don't even exist at the same time. "It's really cool," says Jeremy O'Brien, an experimenter at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the work. Such time-separated entanglement is predicted by standard quantum theory, O'Brien says, "but it's certainly not widely appreciated, and I don't know if it's been clearly articulated before." Entanglement is a kind of order that lurks within the uncertainty of quantum theory. Entanglement can come in if you have two photons. In recent years, physicists have played with the timing in the scheme. So what's the advance good for?

New 3D Printer Brings Full Color Artwork to Life | 3D Printing Most 3D printers let you create colorful objects, provided that you're willing to print out multiple pieces and connect them to each other. Artists and designers craving a little more variety in their palettes may want to take a look at the ProDesk3D printer, which can print in full color like an inkjet. The ProDesk3D comes courtesy of botObjects, a New York- and London-based company that aims to deliver a consumer printer that's both feature-rich and affordable. "Most [3D desktop printers] will extrude one color," Martin Warner, CEO and co-founder of botObjects, told TechNewsDaily. Warner explained that 3D printers employ technology called "extrusion heads," which emit filaments of different materials in the same way that inkjet printers produce ink. "That allows you to have two or three predominant colors. The ProDesk3D's creations possess fine detail in addition to rich color. Changing lightbulbs may not be much fun, but games are.

Artificial Magnetic Monopoles discovered A team of re­searchers from Cologne, Mu­nich and Dres­den have man­aged to cre­ate ar­ti­fi­cial mag­netic monopoles. A team of re­search­ers from Co­logne , Mu­nich and Dresden have man­aged to cre­ate ar­ti­fi­cial mag­netic mono­poles. To do this, the sci­ent­ists merged tiny mag­netic whirls, so-called skyrmi­ons . When a mag­net is di­vided, a new mag­net with north and south poles is al­ways cre­ated. Over the last few years, ma­ter­i­als in which mag­netic whirls, so-called skyrmi­ons, are formed, have been ex­amined in­tens­ively. Even if these are not “real” mag­netic fields, it is pos­sible to meas­ure them ex­per­i­ment­ally in the same man­ner as nor­mal mag­net fields as they de­flect elec­trons. The re­search­ers asked ques­tions as to the con­sequences of at­tempt­ing to des­troy the mag­netic whirls. What hap­pens, however, within the ma­ter­i­als? The image schem­at­ic­ally shows how two mag­netic whirls merge into one. For quer­ies, con­tact: Pro­fessor Dr.

Students Build Battlestar Galactica-Inspired Flight Simulator Inspired by a trip to the museum, a group of students built the Viper 2.0, a life-size flight simulator fashioned after the Viper spacecraft from the TV series “Battlestar Galactica.” The initial Viper, introduced at last year's Maker Faire innovation festival, is impressive. The realistic-looking capsule was cooked up by Sam DeRose, now an engineering sophomore at Harvey Mudd College, and his family after a clearly influential visit to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. “They had a flight simulator that could turn 360 degrees on the roll axis, but not on the pitch,” DeRose said. “And it was so much fun riding on it [that] we wanted to build our own. We spent the next week dreaming up how we'd do it.” [Video: Viper Flight Simulator Can Spin Any Direction ] But the project didn't take shape until about four years later, when DeRose said he and his family first felt like they could start doing it because the technology was ready.

First-ever high-resolution images of a molecule as it breaks and reforms chemical bonds When Felix Fischer of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) set out to develop nanostructures made of graphene using a new, controlled approach to chemical reactions, the first result was a surprise: spectacular images of individual carbon atoms and the bonds between them. "We weren't thinking about making beautiful images; the reactions themselves were the goal," says Fischer, a staff scientist in Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division (MSD) and a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. What the microscope showed the researchers, says Fischer, "was amazing." The researchers report their results in the June 7, 2013 edition of the journal Science , available in advance on Science Express . Graphene nanostructures from the bottom up "In solution, more than a dozen compounds could be the products of the reaction we were using, and characterizing the results would be difficult," Fischer says.

Mysterious and Well-Preserved Oort Cloud Object Heading Into Our Solar System Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter An artist’s conception of two tidally locked objects orbiting the Sun from afar. The system: 2010 WG9 may likely look like this. Credit: ESO What if we could journey to the outer edge of the Solar System – beyond the familiar rocky planets and the gas giants, past the orbits of asteroids and comets – one thousand times further still – to the spherical shell of icy particles that enshrouds the Solar System. Imagine what astronomers could learn about the early Solar System by sending a probe to the Oort cloud! But it gets even better! Now you might be thinking: wait, don’t comets come from the Oort Cloud? So while there is a surprisingly high number of Oort cloud objects hanging out within the inner solar system, we needed to find one that is easy to observe and whose surface is well preserved. 2010 WG9 is just the object for the job! Recall that the wavelength of visible light relates to color. About Shannon Hall

New, simple theory may explain mysterious dark matter | Research News @ Vanderbilt by David Salisbury | Posted on Monday, Jun. 10, 2013 — 3:50 PM Abell 520 is a gigantic merger of galaxy clusters located 2.4 billion light years away. It appears to have left behind a large clump of dark matter. Most of the matter in the universe may be made out of particles that possess an unusual, donut-shaped electromagnetic field called an anapole. This proposal, which endows dark matter particles with a rare form of electromagnetism, has been strengthened by a detailed analysis performed by a pair of theoretical physicists at Vanderbilt University: Professor Robert Scherrer and post-doctoral fellow Chiu Man Ho. “There are a great many different theories about the nature of dark matter. Elusive particle Robert Scherrer, left, and Chiu Man Ho. Common electromagnetism, not exotic forces These predictions show that soon the existence of anapole dark matter should either be discovered or ruled out by these experiments.” Invisible to telescopes