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Apr 9, 2022

Scientists managed to take pure energy and create matter — and new physics

Posted by in category: particle physics

On his 143rd birthday, Inverse celebrates the world’s most iconic physicist — and interrogates the myth of his genius. Welcome to Einstein Week.

Brandenburg is a member of the STAR collaboration, a group of more than 700 scientists from 15 countries who use BNL’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC (pronounced “Rick”), to smash gold nuclei together at 99.995 percent the speed-of-light.

For this experiment, the researchers were more interested in the near misses than the hits. Ultra-high-energy photons encircle the gold nuclei like an aura, and auras collide as nuclei zoom past one another. When photons (particles of light; massless, pure energy) collide, they generate an electron and a positron, its antimatter counterpart — both particles that have a mass. This is known as the Breit-Wheeler Process.

Apr 9, 2022

Watch: All-civilian Crew Arrives at International Space Station

Posted by in categories: innovation, space travel

The first all-civilian crew arrived at the International Space Station after a historic launch with SpaceX and Axiom Space. The crew will spend eight days partaking in science experiments and philanthropic projects. » Subscribe to NBC News: http://nbcnews.to/SubscribeToNBC
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Apr 9, 2022

Fermilab Says Particle Is Heavy Enough to Break the Standard Model

Posted by in categories: cosmology, information science, particle physics, quantum physics

If the W’s excess heft relative to the standard theoretical prediction can be independently confirmed, the finding would imply the existence of undiscovered particles or forces and would bring about the first major rewriting of the laws of quantum physics in half a century.

“This would be a complete change in how we see the world,” potentially even rivaling the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson in significance, said Sven Heinemeyer, a physicist at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Madrid who is not part of CDF. “The Higgs fit well into the previously known picture. This one would be a completely new area to be entered.”

The finding comes at a time when the physics community hungers for flaws in the Standard Model of particle physics, the long-reigning set of equations capturing all known particles and forces. The Standard Model is known to be incomplete, leaving various grand mysteries unsolved, such as the nature of dark matter. The CDF collaboration’s strong track record makes their new result a credible threat to the Standard Model.

Apr 9, 2022

Hubble Space Telescope spots extreme weather on strange alien worlds

Posted by in category: space

Would you like to visit a world where it rains rock?


Since astronomers began finding exoplanets in the 1990s, they’ve uncovered a lot of hot Jupiters, and now NASA’s most venerable telescope is playing meteorologist.

These colossal worlds are gas giants like our own Jupiter but orbit much closer to their parent stars — close enough that their surfaces might boil at stomach-churning temperatures above 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,600 degrees Celsius). Now, the Hubble Space Telescope has pierced the veils of two different hot Jupiters, finding some rather bizarre weather, at least by the mundane standards of our solar system. These worlds are more than curiosities; they’re evidence of how a star can influence an orbiting planet’s atmosphere.

Apr 9, 2022

Turning point for artificial intelligence, which may or may not be dominated by the large cloud providers

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Will the big tech companies dominate AI applications? Experts weighed the pros and cons in a recent online conference.

Apr 9, 2022

Why Scientists Are So Worried About the W Boson Right Now: ‘Something Is Amiss’

Posted by in category: particle physics

And that something could totally change one of the universe’s most fundamental frameworks.

Apr 9, 2022

Airlines that dropped mask requirements are now suffering staff shortages due to COVID-19

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

EasyJet said it had to scrap hundreds of flights due to staffers being infected with COVID-19.

Apr 9, 2022

Over 5,000 Previously Unknown Viruses Have Been Discovered Lurking in The Oceans

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

An analysis of the genetic material in the ocean has identified thousands of previously unknown RNA viruses and doubled the number of phyla, or biological groups, of viruses thought to exist, according to a new study our team of researchers has published in the journal Science.

RNA viruses are best known for the diseases they cause in people, ranging from the common cold to COVID-19. They also infect plants and animals important to people.

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Apr 9, 2022

Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Concept to Become a Reality with Alberta’s TransPod

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, transportation

TransPod has received funding for a high-speed link between Alberta’s two largest cities. Travel between destinations will take 20 minutes.

Apr 9, 2022

Could high-flying kites power your home?

Posted by in categories: computing, futurism

Nearly a dozen companies are betting on computer-controlled, airborne wind energy to electrify the future.

By Kurt Kleiner.

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