Topic: SCIENCE - on January 21, 2014 at 3:45:00 PM CET
Ball Lightning Caught On Video and Spectrograph
Ball lightning has been reported for hundreds of years, and experimentally produced, but for the first time a natural will 'o wisp has been captured on video and amazingly, spectrograph, accidentally by researchers studying ordinary lightning
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Topic: SCIENCE - on December 21, 2013 at 2:28:00 PM CET
The Cubli
Building cubes that can jump up and balance
The Cubli is a 15 × 15 × 15 cm cube that can jump up and balance on its corner. Reaction wheels mounted on three faces of the cube rotate at high angular velocities and then brake suddenly, causing the Cubli to jump up. Once the Cubli has almost reached the corner stand up position, controlled motor torques are applied to make it balance on its corner. In addition to balancing, the motor torques can also be used to achieve a controlled fall such that the Cubli can be commanded to fall in any arbitrary direction. Combining these three abilities -- jumping up, balancing, and controlled falling -- the Cubli is able to 'walk'.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on December 17, 2013 at 4:59:00 PM CET
"Schnellster Wasserkocher der Welt" bringt Wasser in weniger als einer billionstel Sekunde zum Kochen
Hamburger Forscher haben ein Verfahren für den "schnellsten Wasserkocher der Welt" entworfen. Sie könnten - zumindest theoretisch - einen Minitropfen Wasser in weniger als einer billionstel Sekunde zum Kochen bringen. Das hätten Berechnungen in 200.000 Stunden Prozessorzeit ergeben, teilte das Deutsche Elektronen-Synchrotron (Desy) mit.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on December 6, 2013 at 2:32:00 PM CET
400,000-Year-Old Human Ancestor DNA Sequenced --"Shows Link to Extinct Relatives of Neanderthals"
Researchers sequenced the mitochondrial genome of a 400,000-year-old hominin from Sima de los Huesos, the “bone pit”, is a cave site in Northern Spain that has yielded the world’s largest assembly of Middle Pleistocene hominin fossils. Using novel techniques to extract and study ancient DNA researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, determined an almost complete mitochondrial genome sequence of a 400,000-year-old representative of the genus Homo and found that it is related to the mitochondrial genome of Denisovans, extinct relatives of Neandertals in Asia. DNA this old has until recently been retrieved only from the permafrost.
dailygalaxy.com Baffling 400,000-Year-Old Clue to Human Origins Oldest Known Early Human DNA Recovered A mitochondrial genome sequence of a hominin from Sima de los Huesos
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Topic: SCIENCE - on December 4, 2013 at 3:17:00 PM CET
A Link Between Wormholes and Quantum Entanglement
This advance is so meta. Theoretical physicists have forged a connection between the concept of entanglement—itself a mysterious quantum mechanical connection between two widely separated particles—and that of a wormhole—a hypothetical connection between black holes that serves as a shortcut through space. The insight could help physicists reconcile quantum mechanics and Einstein's general theory of relativity, perhaps the grandest goal in theoretical physics. But some experts argue that the connection is merely a mathematical analogy.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on November 13, 2013 at 4:41:00 PM CET
Physicists Plan to Build a Bigger LHC
When Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) started up in 2008, particle physicists would not have dreamt of asking for something bigger until they got their US$5-billion machine to work. But with the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, the LHC has fulfilled its original promise — and physicists are beginning to get excited about designing a machine that might one day succeed it: the Very Large Hadron Collider. The giant machine would dwarf all of its predecessors (see 'Lord of the rings'). It would collide protons at energies around 100 TeV, compared with the planned 14TeV of the LHC at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva in Switzerland.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on November 11, 2013 at 4:48:00 PM CET
After the Higgs hype, Cern still has as much purpose and passion as ever
As the tram trundles through the suburbs of Geneva, a huge lit-up globe by the side of the road lets me know I have arrived at Cern (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research). This is the mecca of particle physics. Most of it looks like a fairly undistinguished campus. "The money has not been spent on the buildings," I am repeatedly told. "The money is all underground." Underground, of course, are the tunnels where beams of light are smashed into each other. Under my feet are the colliders and detectors that are helping us understand what the universe is actually made of.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on September 19, 2013 at 2:38:00 PM CEST
Stephen Hawking's big ideas ... made simple - video animation
No time to read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time? In just two and a half minutes, Alok Jha explains why black holes are doomed to shrink into nothingness then explode with the energy of a million nuclear bombs, and rewinds to the big bang and the origin of the universe
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Topic: SCIENCE - on September 11, 2013 at 4:41:00 PM CEST
Complete scheme to “teleport” quantum information by photons
The principles of quantum mechanics allow us to realize ultra-high-capacity communication and ultra-high-speed quantum computation beyond the limits of current technology. One of the most important steps toward this goal is the transfer of quantum bits (superposition of 0 and 1) carried by particles of light by what is termed “quantum teleportation”.
The research group of Prof. Akira Furusawa and graduate student Shuntaro Takeda at the Graduate School of Engineering of the University of Tokyo have realized, for the first time, the complete quantum teleportation of photonic quantum bits using an innovative scheme of combining photonic quantum bits with optical wave teleportation.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on February 18, 2013 at 6:57:00 PM CET
Blähungen an Bord: ziehen lassen!
Wer sich im Flugzeug mit Bauchschmerzen herumquält hat nun zumindest die wissenschaftliche Bestätigung, dass Zurückhalten die schlechteste Lösung ist.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on July 6, 2012 at 11:50:00 AM CEST
What Can We Do With the Higgs Boson?
It’s going to happen. Someone in your class is going to bring up the Higgs announcement. This is great, it is the start of a discussion that the students started. But what should you talk about?
First some resources. Here are some pretty good links discussing the whole Higgs thing. Some of these are more detailed than others, but they are all nice in their own way.
Cosmic Variance: Higgs 101
Starts With a BANG!: The Biggest Firework of them all: The Higgs!
Quantum Diaries: New baby boson is born, weighing in at about 126 GeV
Galileo’s Pendulum: Higgsdependence Day!
Wired Science: Newly Discovered Particle Appears to Be Long-Awaited Higgs Boson
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Topic: SCIENCE - on July 4, 2012 at 5:18:00 PM CEST
What is the Higgs boson? - Video
John Ellis answer the question What is the Higgs boson? in preparation for the press conference following the seminar on LHC 2012 results on the Higgs boson searches, due on July 4 2012 at CERN
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