Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers from the University of Southampton, together with colleagues from the universities of Cambridge and Barcelona, have shown it’s theoretically possible for black holes to exist in perfectly balanced pairs—held in equilibrium by a cosmological force—mimicking a single black hole.

Black holes are massive astronomical objects that have such a strong gravitational pull that nothing, not even light, can escape. They are incredibly dense. A black hole could pack the mass of the Earth into a space the size of a pea.

Conventional theories about black holes, based on Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, typically explain how static or spinning black holes can exist on their own, isolated in space. Black holes in pairs would eventually be thwarted by gravity attracting and colliding them together.

Whenever light interacts with matter, light appears to slow down. This is not a new observation and standard wave mechanics can describe most of these daily phenomena.

For example, when light is incident on an interface, the standard wave equation is satisfied on both sides. To analytically solve such a problem, one would first find what the wave looks like at either side of the interface, and then employ electromagnetic boundary conditions to link the two sides together. This is called a piecewise continuous solution.

However, at the boundary, the incident light must experience an acceleration. So far, this has not been accounted for.

Researchers have developed a potentially revolutionary superlens technique that once seemed impossible to see things four times smaller than even the most modern microscopes have seen before. Known as the ‘diffraction limit’ because the diffraction of light waves at the tiniest levels has prevented microscopes from seeing things smaller than those waves, this barrier once seemed unbreakable.

Many have tried to peer below this optical barrier using a technique that researchers in the field term ‘superlensing, including making customized lenses out of novel materials. But all have gathered too much light. Now, a team of physicists from the University of Sydney says they have discovered a viable path that peeks beyond the diffraction limit by a factor of four times, allowing researchers to see things smaller than ever seen before. And the way they did, it is like nothing anyone else has tried.

Breaking the Diffraction Limit by ‘Superlensing’ without a Superlens.

Despite its waif-like proportions, scientists have found over the years that graphene is exceptionally strong. And when the material is stacked and twisted in specific contortions, it can take on surprising electronic behavior.

Now, MIT physicists have discovered another surprising property in graphene: When stacked in five layers, in a rhombohedral pattern, graphene takes on a very rare, “multiferroic” state, in which the material exhibits both unconventional magnetism and an exotic type of electronic behavior, which the team has coined ferro-valleytricity.

Scientists in Japan have managed to manipulate light as though it was being influenced by gravity. By carefully distorting a photonic crystal, the team was able to invoke “pseudogravity” to bend a beam of light, which could have useful applications in optics systems.

One of the quirks of Einstein’s theory of general relativity is that light is affected by the fabric of spacetime, which itself is distorted by gravity. That’s why objects with extremely high masses, like black holes or entire galaxies, wreak such havoc on light, bending its path and magnifying distant objects.

In recent studies, it was predicted that it should be possible to replicate this effect in photonic crystals. These structures are used to control light in optics devices and experiments, and they’re generally made by arranging multiple materials into periodic patterns. Distortions in these crystals, it was theorized, could deflect light waves in a way very similar to cosmic-scale gravitational lenses. The phenomenon was dubbed pseudogravity.

Published 8 seconds ago.

Physicists at the Kyoto Institute of Technology altered a special material called a photonic crystal to change the way light moves, creating pseudogravity, an effect similar to a tiny black hole. The experiment was inspired by Einstein’s theory of relativity and showcased light similar to how it would be if it were passing through a gravitational field. According to Science Alert, this experiment has far-reaching implications for the control and manipulation of light in optics and communications technology.

A subtle mistranslation of Isaac Newton’s first law of motion that flew under the radar for three centuries is giving new insight into what the pioneering natural philosopher was thinking when he laid the foundations of classical mechanics.

The first law of motion is often paraphrased as “objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and objects at rest tend to stay at rest.” But the history of this rather obvious-seeming axiom about inertia is complicated. Writing in Latin in his 17th-century book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Newton said, “Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by the forces impressed.”

Throughout the centuries, many philosophers of science have interpreted this phrasing to be about bodies that don’t have any forces acting upon them, says Daniel Hoek, a philosopher at Virginia Tech. For example, in 1965 Newton scholar Brian Ellis paraphrased him as saying, “Every body not subject to the action of forces continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line.” But that’s a bit puzzling, Hoek says, because there are no bodies in the universe that are free of external forces acting upon them. Why make a law about something that doesn’t exist?

Russian astrophysicists propose the Casimir Effect causes the universe’s expansion to accelerate. Mystery effect speeds up the universe — not dark energy, says study.

This week, researchers proved empirically that life isn’t fair. Also, you’ll notice that, in a superhuman display of restraint, I managed to write a paragraph about the simulated universe hypothesis without once referencing “The Matrix.” (Except for this reference.)

Oh, so a European research team has proven that flipped coins aren’t actually fair? Buddy, life isn’t fair! Do you think the world owes you two equally probable outcomes as established by an axiomatic mathematical formalization? When I was a kid, we didn’t even have coins! We had to roll dice! It took 10 minutes to start a football game! Oh, so a coin is very slightly more likely to land on the same face as its initial position? Quit crying! It’s only a meaningful bias if you flip a coin multiple times!

Applying a recently discovered physical law, a physicist at the University of Portsmouth has contributed to the discussion about whether or not the universe is a simulation. The simulated universe hypothesis proposes that the universe is actually a simulation running on a vastly complex computing substrate and we’re therefore all just NPCs, walking through our animation loops and saying, “Hail, summoner! Conjure me up a warm bed!” and “Do you get to the Cloud District often?”