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Image credit: Kevin Luhman/PENN State/Eberly College of Science The recent discovery of this system, ranking third closest to the Sun after the planet-hosting alpha Centauri system and the red dwarf Barnard’s Star, has not been greeted with as much interest as it merits. Efforts to find the dim red and brown dwarfs close to the […]
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Thanks to both of you for your input! I really appreciate it!
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Thanks for the corrections, Sara.
I'm aware of dark energy, and of the various types of matter. But that's why I said "reasonable." At the beginning, no one expected dark matter.
I'll make the other corrections. I knew that the CMB was a blackbody, but I was too lazy to compute the peak frequency. Sorry about that.
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New generation wide-field instruments, especially SKA pathfinders in the radio regime, will detect a huge number of transient sources that can be followed-up by very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) at […]
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Many viewers who tuned into American Idol on April 4th expected the dismissal of Lazaro Arbos, a likeable young man with an endearing stutter but marginal talent and an unfortunate tendency to forget lyrics. They were stunned when Burnell Taylor was eliminated instead. Arbos inexplicably wound up in the top three of the remaining contestants, [...]
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eading nanoscientists created beautiful, tiled patterns with flat nanocrystals, but they were left with a mystery: Why did some sets of crystals arrange themselves in an alternating, herringbone style? To find out, they turned to experts in computer simulation at the University of Michigan and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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A new joint innovation by the National Physical Laboratory and the University of Cambridge could pave the way for redefining the ampere in terms of fundamental constants of physics. The world's first graphene single-electron pump provides the speed of electron flow needed to create a new standard for electrical current based on electron charge.
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Considering Jonah's audience, I think 'radio wave' is a reasonable layman's term for any and all electromagnetic radiation. The specific frequency band isn't important to my understanding of the overall concept.
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"If you stick a reasonable amount and distribution of mass into the equations, the universe must either expand or contract—it can’t stay still."
Mass will always close a universe and cause it to contract. You need something different (aka. dark energy) to keep a universe with mass from collapsing or to have an ever expanding universe. Additionally, if you have the right mix of things, you can create a static universe.
"We now call this idea Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, and it […]
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SteelyKid has a new prize possession: a training-wheel bike! You can’t quite hear what she says at the end of this, when she stops the bike, but it’s “That should be a full video!” She knows her fan base. On the way back, she wiped out (the first bad crash on the new bike) and…
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Pear-shaped nuclei in some atoms may help explain antimatter
Researchers have used a particle accelerator called REX-ISOLDE at CERN in Switzerland to discover an atom […] Read moreThe post MI weekly selection #22 appeared first on Mapping Ignorance.
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[...] For There We Are Captured: The Geometry of Spacetime [...]
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[...] General Relativity Lets Us Take Shortcuts [...]
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[...] had always existed and that it would always continue to exist. Even Albert Einstein held this view. I previously explained why we know the universe is expanding, so I’m going to continue that story [...]
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[...] A Spacetime Cocktail: Minkowski Space and Special Relativity [...]
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Always Walk Away From An Explosion—The Story of the Big BangWe were fortunate to be there a day or two before ‘the big bang’ and then we got the heck out of town. ~Scotty Moore A few weeks ago, +Matthew Villaneuva asked the following question on Google+: Does anybody else … Continue reading →The post Always Walk Away From An Explosion—The Story of the Big Bang appeared first on The Physics Mill.
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A Small Hero by Giuseppe ParisiSome time ago, I have read the essay by Roger Highfield answering to the Edge 2013 question: What should we be worried about? According to Highfield, one of these worries is represented by the decline of the scientific hero because of the abnormal growth of the Big Science. This gives the clear impression that science can be done by an anonymous army of researchers that studies all the possible theories and experiments. The discovery is inescapable and the
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Yesterday was the 95th anniversary of the birth of Richard Feynman, one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. An excuse for an unusual partyThis evening BBC2 will show a documentary by Chris Riley about a remarkable man; Richard Feynman. Yesterday, on the 95th anniversary of Feynman's birth, Riley showed some clips and discussed the programme, and the man, with Robin Ince, Christopher Sykes and an audience at the Bloomsbury Theatre. Sykes met Feynman several times, and made three
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