* (You look inside...) * (Inside the joke book is a quantum physics book.)
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Latest Posts by sansbook - Page 2
Water Droplet Orbiting a Needle in Space
“This experiment was performed back in 2012 by astronaut Don Pettit on board the International Space Station (ISS) as part of NASA’s Science off the Sphere series. And although the set-up may look a lot like a strangely shaped planetary system, the physics here is a little different, because it’s the effect of static electric forces, rather than gravitational pull, that’s keeping the droplets in orbit.“
This happens because our awesome astronaut rubbed the polyethylene needle with paper to create an electric charge, (similar to rubbing a balloon on your head..) which “captures” the water droplet in an orbit. In the absence of gravity the potential force of the charge keeps the water droplet in orbit.
Here’s an explanation from the astronaut himself. It’s awesome.
VIDEO.
Neat! :D
Measuring Distances To Stars Just Got A Whole Lot Easier Thanks To This “Stellar Twin” Trick
Scientists have developed a novel method to calculate the distances to stars, and it could be useful in helping map the size of galaxies. The study is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The researchers from the University of Cambridge examined what are known as “stellar twins.” These are stars that are identical, with exactly the same chemical composition, which can be worked out from their spectra – the type of light they emit. If they were both placed at the same distance from Earth, they would shine with equal brightness.
So the team realized that if the distance to just one of the stars was known, the other could be calculated relatively easily based on how brightly it was shining. The dimmer it is, the further away it is, and vice versa. The method can be used to accurately measure the distance.
“It’s a remarkably simple idea – so simple that it’s hard to believe no one thought of it before,” said lead author Dr Paula Jofre Pfeil, from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, in a statement. “The further away a star is, the fainter it appears in the sky, and so if two stars have identical spectra, we can use the difference in brightness to calculate the distance.”
Read more ~ IFL Science
Photo credit: RealCG Animation Studio. Shutterstock.
Hubble Finds That the Nearest Quasar Is Powered by a Double Black Hole
The finding suggests that quasars—the brilliant cores of active galaxies – may commonly host two central supermassive black holes, which fall into orbit about one another as a result of the merger between two galaxies. Like a pair of whirling skaters, the black-hole duo generates tremendous amounts of energy that makes the core of the host galaxy outshine the glow of its population of billions of stars, which scientists then identify as quasars.
Scientists looked at Hubble archival observations of ultraviolet radiation emitted from the center of Mrk 231 to discover what they describe as “extreme and surprising properties.”
If only one black hole were present in the center of the quasar, the whole accretion disk made of surrounding hot gas would glow in ultraviolet rays. Instead, the ultraviolet glow of the dusty disk abruptly drops off toward the center. This provides observational evidence that the disk has a big donut hole encircling the central black hole. The best explanation for the donut hole in the disk, based on dynamical models, is that the center of the disk is carved out by the action of two black holes orbiting each other. The second, smaller black hole orbits in the inner edge of the accretion disk, and has its own mini-disk with an ultraviolet glow.
Read more ~ NASA.gov
Image: This artistic illustration is of a binary black hole found in the center of the nearest quasar to Earth, Markarian 231. Credits: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Non-Newtonian fluids are capable of all kinds of counter-intuitive behaviors. The animations above demonstrate one of them: the tubeless or open siphon. Once the effect is triggered by removing some of the liquid, the fluid quickly pours itself out of the beaker. This is possible thanks to the polymers in the liquid. The falling liquid pulls on the fluid left behind in the beaker, which stretches the polymers in the fluid. When stretched, the polymers provide internal tension that opposes the extensional force being applied. This keeps the fluid in the beaker from simply detaching from the falling liquid. Instead, it flows up and over the side against the force of gravity, behaving rather more like a chain than a fluid! (Image credit: Ewoldt Research Group, source)
Scientists don’t fully understand quantum entanglement—but they know that space, or physical distance, is not a factor in the “communication” between two entangled particles. If one is affected by a force or a measurement, the other also reacts in the same moment, even if they are separated by leagues. Unlocking the secrets of this phenomenon could lead to incredible advancements in technology, such as quantum machines that transmit information faster than light.
Click the image above to learn more!
The Atom and Its Quantum Mirror Image: Physicists Experimentally Produces Quantum-Superpositions, Simply Using a Mirror (click thru for ScienceDaily article)
_________
“This uncertainty about the state of the atom does not mean that the measurement lacks precision,” Jörg Schmiedmayer (TU Vienna) emphasizes. “It is a fundamental property of quantum physics: The particle is in both of the two possible states simultaneousely, it is in a superposition.” In the experiment the two motional states of the atom – one moving towards the mirror and the other moving away from the mirror – are then combined using Bragg diffraction from a grating made of laser light. Observing interference it can be directly shown that the atom has indeed been traveling both paths at once…“
A High-Bandwidth Interplanetary Connection
(click picture for link)
“A new study suggests that by twisting laser light, scientists could pack enough information into interplanetary beams to speed up extraterrestrial communications to the multi-gigabit level.…”
Associated Press
GENEVA — Physicists on the team that measured particles traveling faster than light said Friday they were as surprised as their skeptics about the results, which appear to violate the laws of nature as we know them.
Hundreds of scientists packed an auditorium at one of the world’s foremost laboratories on the Swiss-French border to hear how a subatomic particle, the neutrino, was found to have outrun light and confounded the theories of Albert Einstein.
“To our great surprise we found an anomaly,” said Antonio Ereditato, who participated in the experiment and speaks on behalf of the team.
An anomaly is a mild way of putting it.
Going faster than light is something that is just not supposed to happen, according to Einstein’s 1905 special theory of relativity. The speed of light — 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second) — has long been considered a cosmic speed limit.
The team — a collaboration between France’s National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics Research and Italy’s Gran Sasso National Laboratory — fired a neutrino beam 454 miles (730 kilometers) underground from Geneva to Italy.
They found it traveled 60 nanoseconds faster than light. That’s sixty billionth of a second, a time no human brain could register.
“You could say it’s peanuts, but it’s not. It’s something that we can measure rather accurately with a small uncertainty,” Ereditato told The Associated Press.
If the experiment is independently repeated — most likely by teams in the United States or Japan — then it would require a fundamental rethink of modern physics.
“Everybody knows that the speed limit is c, the speed of light. And if you find some matter particle such as the neutrino going faster than light, this is something which immediately shocks everybody, including us,” said Ereditato, a researcher at the University of Bern, Switzerland.
Physicists not involved in the experiment have been understandably skeptical.
Alvaro De Rujula, a theoretical physicist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research outside Geneva from where the neutron beam was fired, said he blamed the readings on a so-far undetected human error.
If not, and it’s a big if, the door would be opened to some wild possibilities.
The average person, said De Rujula, “could, in principle, travel to the past and kill their mother before they were born.”
But Ereditato and his team are wary of letting such science fiction story lines keep them up at night.
“We will continue our studies and we will wait patiently for the confirmation,” he told the AP. “Everybody is free to do what they want: to think, to claim, to dream.”
He added: “I’m not going to tell you my dreams.”
Possible expansion/revision on QED theory needed? …
“Observations made with NIST’s Electron Beam Ion Trap indicate that, in ions with a strongly positive charge, electrons can behave in ways inconsistent with quantum electrodynamics (QED) theory, which describes electromagnetism. While more experiments are needed,the data could imply that some aspects of QED theory require revision. ”
…read more
Stephen Hawking challenges the notion of black holes as we know them in a new paper (still awaiting peer-review)
“’There is no escape from a black hole in classical theory,’ Hawking told Nature. Quantum theory, however, ‘enables energy and information to escape from a black hole’. A full explanation of the process, the physicist admits, would require a theory that successfully merges gravity with the other fundamental forces of nature. But that is a goal that has eluded physicists for nearly a century. 'The correct treatment,’ Hawking says, 'remains a mystery.’Hawking’s new work is an attempt to solve what is known as the black-hole firewall paradox, which has been vexing physicists for almost two years, after it was discovered by theoretical physicist Joseph Polchinski of the Kavli Institute and his colleagues…. (read more)”