Archive for the ‘physics’ category: Page 268
Nov 27, 2016
‘Diamond-age’ of power generation as nuclear batteries developed
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: nuclear energy, physics
New technology has been developed that uses nuclear waste to generate electricity in a nuclear-powered battery. A team of physicists and chemists from the University of Bristol have grown a man-made diamond that, when placed in a radioactive field, is able to generate a small electrical current.
Nov 24, 2016
Gravity may have chased light in the early universe
Posted by Andreas Matt in categories: physics, space
By Michael Brooks
It’s supposed to be the most fundamental constant in physics, but the speed of light may not always have been the same. This twist on a controversial idea could overturn our standard cosmological wisdom.
In 1998, Joao Magueijo at Imperial College London, proposed that the speed of light might vary, to solve what cosmologists call the horizon problem. This says that the universe reached a uniform temperature long before heat-carrying photons, which travel at the speed of light, had time to reach all corners of the universe.
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Nov 23, 2016
How Physics Falls Apart If The EMdrive Works
Posted by Andreas Matt in categories: physics, space travel
How, exactly, the laws of physics will crumble if NASA’s impossible space engine turns out to really work.
Nov 13, 2016
Physicists Just Discovered a Second State of Liquid Water
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in category: physics
It’s one of the most fundamental compounds on Earth, and it makes up roughly 60 percent of the human body, and yet water is turning out to be stranger than we could have ever imagined.
Researchers have been investigating the physical properties of water, and found that when it’s heated to between 40 and 60 degrees Celsius, it hits a ‘crossover temperature’, and appears to start switching between two different states of liquid.
As a chemical compound, water is so vital to life on Earth, we’ve been underestimating how legitimately weird it is.
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Nov 10, 2016
Synthetic biology research may enable future capabilities for Soldiers
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, computing, military, physics
ADELPHI, Md. — A U.S. Army Research Laboratory biotechnology scientist recently published an editorial article on the future directions of synthetic biology research to meet critical Army needs in the Synthetic Biology edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
In the publication, Dr. Bryn Adams, who works in ARL’s Bio-Technology Branch, highlights examples of robust, tractable bacterial species that can meet the demands of tomorrow’s state-of-the-art in synthetic biology.
“ACS Synthetic Biology is the premier synthetic biology journal in the world, with a wide readership of biologists, chemists, physicists, engineers and computer programmers,” Adams said. “A publication in this journal allows me to challenge the leaders in the field to meet a Department of Defense specific need — the need for new synthetic biology chassis organisms, or host cell, and toolkits to build complex circuits in them.”
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Nov 9, 2016
IF solid metallic hydrogen is a really good room temperature superconductor
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: materials, physics
On October 5th 2016, Ranga Dias and Isaac F. Silvera of Lyman Laboratory of Physics, Harvard University released the first experimental evidence that solid metallic hydrogen has been synthesized in the laboratory.
It took 495 GPa pressure to create. The sample is being held in the cryostat in liquid nitrogen.
If as predicted by theory the metallic hydrogen remains metastable when the extreme pressure is removed then the world will eventually be greatly changed.
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Nov 8, 2016
Impossible Spaceship Engine Called “EmDrive” Actually Works, Leaked NASA Report Reveals
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: physics, space travel
Great news if it turns out to be true!
Though scientists are still trying to figure out how it doesn’t violate the laws of physics.
Nov 8, 2016
Kardashev Scale: This Is What Life Will Look Like When We Harness the Energy of the Entire Universe
Posted by Andreas Matt in categories: energy, physics, space
In Brief:
- A Type IV civilization is a society that has managed to harness the energy of the entire universe.
- To get here, we would need to tap into energy sources unknown to us using strange laws of physics (laws that may or may not exist).
To measure the level of a civilization’s advancement, the Kardashev scale focuses on the amount of energy that a civilization is able to harness. Obviously, the amount of power available to a civilization is linked to how widespread the civilization is (you can’t harness the power of a star if you are confined to your home planet, and you certainly can’t harness the power of a galaxy if you can’t even get out of your solar system).