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Category: physics – Page 356

What came before the big bang?

Some people take the new year as an opportunity to contemplate their goals; Alan Lightman, writing in the January issue of Harper’s magazine, takes the opportunity to contemplate the creation of the universe.

It’s a topic too vast and unimaginable for most of us to wrap our brains around, but Lightman brings his considerable skills as both physicist (he teaches at MIT) and novelist (“Einstein’s Dreams”) to introduce us to a “small platoon of physicists” who focus on figuring out such things as what happened at the very first moment of the big bang, whether time or anything else existed before it, and exactly how we distinguish the future from the past.

And they expect, sometime in the next 50 years or so, to have some real answers.

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The Next Einstein? –“Radical New Theory Answers Unsolved Mysteries of Physics”

In late May, mathematician Eric Weinstein gave a talk at Oxford University about his ideas about “Geometric Unity,” a mathematical theory that purports to explain why the universe works the way it does. Weinstein He earned a 1992 Ph.D [in Mathematical Physics from Harvard University and has since held a Lady Davis Fellowship in the Racah Institute ofPhysics at Hebrew University, an NSF fellowship in the mathematics Department of MIT.

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Researchers say retrieving information from a black hole might be possible

Interstellar is one of the best sci-fi movies of the last decade, imagining a post-apocalyptic human population that needs to be saved from a dying Earth. A nearby black hole has the answers to humanity’s problems, and the brilliant script tells us we can enter a black hole and then use it to transcend space and time. In the film, the black hole also leaks out information that can save us, and it is captured by a complex computer as it’s being entered. That might seem implausible, but since we don’t know a lot about how black holes work, we can certainly accept such an outlandish proposition in the context of the movie.

In real life, however, physicists are trying to figure out how to access the secrets of a black hole. And it looks like some researchers have a theory to retrieve information from it, though it’s not quite as exciting as the complex bookcase that Interstellar proposes.

DON’T MISS: The biggest ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ plot holes explained

Black holes have an immense gravitational pull that affects everything around them, which makes data collection a major issue. Not even light can escape a black hole, and we’re far from figuring out how to reach one and “see” inside it.

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This Simple Video Explain Where All The Aliens Are And Why We Haven’t Found Them Yet

The “Fermi Paradox” and “The Great Filter.”

Our universe is huge and some parts are very old and if we somehow happen to live on a planet that’s fairly young, aliens must also exist somewhere. But where the hell are they? Kurz Gesagt tries to find an answer in this beautiful animation explainer that traces on The Fermi Paradox and different kinds of potential civilizations.

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Singaporean Professor Develops Energy-saving Algorithm

A researcher at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has developed a new technology that provides real-time detection, analysis, and optimization data that could potentially save a company 10 percent on its energy bill and lessen its carbon footprint. The technology is an algorithm that primarily relies on data from ubiquitous devices to better analyze energy use. The software uses data from computers, servers, air conditioners, and industrial machinery to monitor temperature, data traffic and the computer processing workload. Data from these already-present appliances are then combined with the information from externally placed sensors that primarily monitor ambient temperature to analyze energy consumption and then provide a more efficient way to save energy and cost.

The energy-saving computer algorithm was developed by NTU’s Wen Yonggang, an assistant professor at the School of Computer Engineering’s Division of Networks & Distributed Systems. Wen specializes in machine-to-machine communication and computer networking, including looking at social media networks, cloud-computing platforms, and big data systems.

Most data centers consume huge amount of electrical power, leading to high levels of energy waste, according to Wen’s website. Part of his research involves finding ways to reduce energy waste and stabilize power systems by scaling energy levels temporally and spatially.

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First plasma from Wendelstein 7-X fusion reactor

Testing of the Wendelstein 7-x stellarator has started with a bang, albeit a very very small one, with researchers switching on the experimental fusion reactor to produce its first helium plasma at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald, Germany. After almost a decade of construction work and more than a million assembly hours, the first tests have gone according to plan with the researchers to shift focus to producing hydrogen plasma after the new year.

Assembly of the Wendelstein 7-x stellarator was completed in April of last year, and after a period of careful testing of its various components, the science team finally flicked the switch on December 10. This saw around a single milligram of helium gas heated to one million degrees Celsius (1.8 million° F), with the flash observed on cameras and measuring devices for one tenth of a second.

“We’re very satisfied”, said Dr. Hans-Stephan Bosch, division head of Wendelstein 7-X, following the December 10 test. “Everything went according to plan.”

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Germany just fired up a monster machine that could revolutionize the way we use energy

On Thursday, the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics fired up a monster machine that it hopes will change the world.

The machine is called the Wendelstein 7-X, or W7-X for short. It’s a type of nuclear-fusion machine called a stellarator and is the largest, most sophisticated of its kind.

Nuclear fusion could prove to be a clean, inexhaustible energy source. But humans are still a ways from successfully building a reactor that could power a small town, let alone entire cities. But now, we’re one step closer.

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