ever wondered how astronauts sleep in space? of course you have....
ever wondered how astronauts sleep in space? of course you have. and now you know.
New Physics Complications Lend Support to Multiverse Hypothesis: Scientific American
New Physics Complications Lend Support to Multiverse Hypothesis: Scientific American:Decades of confounding experiments have physicists considering a startling possibility: The universe might not make sense
scienceyoucanlove: Neil deGrasse Tyson, MA '83, is the public...
Neil deGrasse Tyson, MA '83, is the public face of science. But he says his success has nothing to do with UT.
"Hey, aren't you the scientist?"
The voice calls out on a bustling Manhattan sidewalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson—celebrity astrophysicist and director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium—whirls around, looking for its source. He sees a disheveled homeless man with a piercing stare.
"Yes, I guess I am," says Tyson, MA '83. "What can I do for you?"
"I've seen you on TV," the man replies. "I just want to know—how exactly would a black hole kill a person?"
So Tyson launches into a quick account of spaghettification, or the way extreme gravitational forces near a black hole would stretch a human body from head to toe—like a skinny pasta noodle—until its very atoms would be wrenched apart. "A black hole is a one-way trip," he is fond of saying. "You ain't coming out."
Perhaps no other scientist in the world is so famous that even someone lacking basic shelter stops him on the street to ask a technical question. But Neil deGrasse Tyson, 53, is like no other scientist. More than anyone else living today, he is the public face of his entire field.
You may not know his name, but you've seen him on CNN, ABC, The Colbert Report, The Tonight Show, Jeopardy!, or even Stargate Atlantis. TIME named him one of the 100 most influential Americans; People gave him the inimitable title of "Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive." And when his new show debuts on FOX next year, Tyson will be exposed to his widest audience yet.
"People stop me on the street all the time," Tyson says. "Taxi drivers, janitors, businessmen. It doesn't matter who you are—it's human nature to ask deep questions about the universe. To look up and wonder what's out there. And I'm happy to talk about it."
Connecting with such a prominent alumnus could be huge for The University of Texas. This is even truer because Tyson is African-American, and UT has long had a troubled relationship with the black community. But Tyson is not exactly UT's biggest fan. That's because he and the University had a bad break-up—one that prompts tricky questions about how academia defines success. As we'll see, his time at UT is the one thing Tyson doesn't like to talk about.
read more about Neil's journey and struggles
The Hubble Telescope has spotted an in-progress collision of a...
The Hubble Telescope has spotted an in-progress collision of a spiral and lenticular galaxy.
Mars pebbles prove water history
Mars pebbles prove water historyThe Perils of Going to Mars Include Radiation
The Perils of Going to Mars Include Radiation:For travelers to Mars, one of the significant risks would be high doses of radiation, a new study says.
DO YOU WANT TO SEE SOME BLACK HOLES? OF COURSE YOU DO. Well, you...
DO YOU WANT TO SEE SOME BLACK HOLES? OF COURSE YOU DO.
Well, you won't be able to see them directly, but G2, a massive gas cloud scheduled to pass through the Milky Way, could provide evidence of black holes at the center of the Milky Way. As the massive cloud passes by a collection of mid-sized black holes, they should cause the gas to spin and heat up, emitting x-rays that will be observable from telescopes in space. These observations could lead to concrete evidence for "intermediate mass" black holes - a few thousand times the mass of our Sun.
Read More HERE
(Top) Image is the result of the four-way Doppler measurements...
(Top) Image is the result of the four-way Doppler measurements by Relay satellite and Main Orbiter transponder (RSAT) and Differential VLBI Radio Source (VRAD) on board JAXA's "Kaguya" (SELENE) orbiter. LGM2011 gravity acceleration at the lunar surface (unit in ms-2). The near-side is shown on the left, the far-side on the right. Azimuthal equidistant projection with a central meridian of 0° longitude (left) and 180° (right). Meridians and parallels are 30° apart.
(Bottom) Image derived from the Clementine global color data (in 750 and 950 nm wavelengths) showing the concentration of iron in the soils of the lunar surface. Note high iron levels of near side maria and elevated iron associated with South Pole-Aitken basin on the far side. Very low iron of north-central far side suggests large amount of nearly pure anorthosite, indicating early Moon melted globally. See Lucey et al. (1995, Science 268, 1150) for details on this method of iron mapping.
NASA - NASA'S Swift Reveals New Phenomenon in a Neutron Star
NASA - NASA'S Swift Reveals New Phenomenon in a Neutron Star:NASA's Swift telescope has spotted a spinning neutron star suddenly slowing down. The star, 1E 2259+586, is a magnetar, a neutron star having very powerful magnetic fields and occasionally exploding at high energies. This discovery will help scientists understand the extreme physical conditions present within neutron stars.
ABSOLUTE MOTHERFUCKING BADASSES OF THE DAY: THE SOYUZ CREW, WHO...
ABSOLUTE MOTHERFUCKING BADASSES OF THE DAY: THE SOYUZ CREW, WHO SET A RECORD FOR FASTEST TRIP TO THE ISS (5 HOURS 39 MINUTES)
[ABOVE, left -> right: NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Luca Parmitano]
Read More HERE
List of Free Science Books
List of Free Science Books:Loads of free science books, including books on physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy and mathematics. Enjoy!
Weird Quantum Effect Observed For First Time
Weird Quantum Effect Observed For First Time:By: Jesse Emspak, LiveScience Contributor Published: 05/26/2013 09:12 AM EDT on LiveScience Using super-chilled atoms, physicists have for the first time observed a weird phenomenon called quantum magnetism, which describes the behavior of single atoms as they act like tiny bar magnets. Quantum magnetism is a bit different from classical magnetism, the kind you see when you stick a magnet to a fridge, because individual atoms have a quality called spin, which is quantized, or in discrete states (usually called up or down).
Comprehensive Analysis of Impact Spherules Supports Theory of Cosmic Impact 12,800 Years Ago
Comprehensive Analysis of Impact Spherules Supports Theory of Cosmic Impact 12,800 Years Ago:Comprehensive Analysis of Impact Spherules Supports Theory of Cosmic Impact 12,800 Years Ago
PHOTOS: Suit May Give Thrill-Seekers 'Iron Man' Skills
PHOTOS: Suit May Give Thrill-Seekers 'Iron Man' Skills:Tony Stark may be a fictional character, but not everything in the "Iron Man" films is completely outside the realm of possibility. At least that much has been demonstrated by Solar System Express (Sol-X) and Juxtopia LLC, two tech startups that have collaborated to create a real-life "Iron Man" suit, which could be used for skydiving from space.
NASA Admits They Are Working To Travel Faster Than The Speed Of Light
NASA Admits They Are Working To Travel Faster Than The Speed Of Light:NASA is currently working on the first practical field test toward the possibility of faster than li
NASA - Is There an Atmosphere on the Moon?
NASA - Is There an Atmosphere on the Moon?:Until recently, most everyone accepted the conventional wisdom that the moon has virtually no atmosphere.
Researchers Explain Magnetic Field Misbehavior in Solar Flares
Researchers Explain Magnetic Field Misbehavior in Solar Flares:Baltimore MD (SPX) May 27, 2013 - When a solar flare filled with charged particles erupts from the sun, its magnetic fields sometime break a widely accepted rule of physics. The flux-freezing theorem dictates that the magnetic lines
fuckingurltakenbullshit: thenewenlightenmentage: The First...
The First Image Ever of a Hydrogen Atom's Orbital Structure
What you're looking at is the first direct observation of an atom's electron orbital — an atom's actual wave function! To capture the image, researchers utilized a new quantum microscope — an incredible new device that literally allows scientists to gaze into the quantum realm.
An orbital structure is the space in an atom that's occupied by an electron. But when describing these super-microscopic properties of matter, scientists have had to rely on wave functions — a mathematical way of describing the fuzzy quantum states of particles, namely how they behave in both space and time. Typically, quantum physicists use formulas like the Schrödinger equation to describe these states, often coming up with complex numbers and fancy graphs.
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astrodidact: Physicists Create Quantum Link Between Photons...
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. Suppose you have a quantum particle of light, or photon. It can be polarized so that it wriggles either vertically or horizontally. The quantum realm is also hazed over with unavoidable uncertainty, and thanks to such quantum uncertainty, a photon can also be polarized vertically and horizontally at the same time. If you then measure the photon, however, you will find it either horizontally polarized or vertically polarized, as the two-ways-at-once state randomly "collapses" one way or the other.
Entanglement can come in if you have two photons. Each can be put into the uncertain vertical-and-horizontal state. However, the photons can be entangled so that their polarizations are correlated even while they remain undetermined. For example, if you measure the first photon and find it horizontally polarized, you'll know that the other photon has instantaneously collapsed into the vertical state and vice versa—no matter how far away it is. Because the collapse happens instantly, Albert Einstein dubbed the effect "spooky action at a distance." It doesn't violate relativity, though: It's impossible to control the outcome of the measurement of the first photon, so the quantum link can't be used to send a message faster than light.
In standard entanglement swapping (top), entanglement (blue shading) is transferred to photons 1 and 4 by making a measurement on photons 2 and 3. The new experiment (bottom) shows that the scheme still works even if photon 1 is destroyed before photon 4 is created. Image: AAAS/Science
Now Eli Megidish, Hagai Eisenberg, and colleagues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have entangled two photons that don't exist at the same time. They start with a scheme known as entanglement swapping. To begin, researchers zap a special crystal with laser light a couple of times to create two entangled pairs of photons, pair 1 and 2 and pair 3 and 4. At the start, photons 1 and 4 are not tangled. But they can be if physicists play the right trick with 2 and 3.
The key is that a measurement "projects" a particle into a definite state — just as the measurement of a photon collapses it into either vertical or horizontal polarization. So even though photons 2 and 3 start out unentangled, physicists can set up a "projective measurement" that asks, are the two in one of two distinct entangled states or the other? That measurement entangles the photons, even as it absorbs and destroys them. If the researchers select only the events in which photons 2 and 3 end up in, say, the first entangled state, then the measurement also entangles photons 1 and 4. (See diagram, top.) The effect is a bit like joining two pairs of gears to form a four-gear chain: Enmeshing two inner gears establishes a link between the outer two.
In recent years, physicists have played with the timing in the scheme. For example, last year a team showed that entanglement swapping still works even if they make the projective measurement after they've already measured the polarizations of photons 1 and 4. Now, Eisenberg and colleagues have shown that photons 1 and 4 don't even have to exist at the same time, as they report in a paper in press at Physical Review Letters.
To do that, they first create entangled pair 1 and 2 and measure the polarization of 1 right away. Only after that do they create entangled pair 3 and 4 and perform the key projective measurement. Finally, they measure the polarization of photon 4. And even though photons 1 and 4 never coexist, the measurements show that their polarizations still end up entangled. Eisenberg emphasizes that even though in relativity, time measured differently by observers traveling at different speeds, no observer would ever see the two photons as coexisting.
The experiment shows that it's not strictly logical to think of entanglement as a tangible physical property, Eisenberg says. "There is no moment in time in which the two photons coexist," he says, "so you cannot say that the system is entangled at this or that moment." Yet, the phenomenon definitely exists. Anton Zeilinger, a physicist at the University of Vienna, agrees that the experiment demonstrates just how slippery the concepts of quantum mechanics are. "It's really neat because it shows more or less that quantum events are outside our everyday notions of space and time."
So what's the advance good for? Physicists hope to create quantum networks in which protocols like entanglement swapping are used to create quantum links among distant users and transmit uncrackable (but slower than light) secret communications. The new result suggests that when sharing entangled pairs of photons on such a network, a user wouldn't have to wait to see what happens to the photons sent down the line before manipulating the ones kept behind, Eisenberg says. Zeilinger says the result might have other unexpected uses: "This sort of thing opens up people's minds and suddenly somebody has an idea to use it in quantum computing or something."
This story provided by ScienceNOW, the daily online news service of the journal Science.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/quantum-linked-photons/
scienceyoucanlove: Solar Storms, With a Chance of Proton...
Solar Storms, With a Chance of Proton Showers
This large solar flare, produced by an active region of the sun (AR9077), triggered magnetic storms and knocked out satellites when it created a solar storm on July 14, 2000. Nicknamed the Bastille Day Event, it was the third largest storm of its kind in the past 30 years, and the biggest solar radiation event since 1989. The Slinky-like loops represent magnetic field lines.
The orbiting Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) satellite captured this close-up image after the flare erupted. Recorded in extreme ultraviolet light, it covers a 230,000-by-77,000 kilometer area on the sun's surface and shows a one-million-degree solar plasma cooling down.
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