Lifeboat Foundation

Three physicists won a $3 million Breakthrough prize for proving there is no fifth force (that we know of). And it all started with a series of table-top experiments using cheap equipment.

Eric Adelberger, Jens Gundlach and Blayne Heckel together lead the “Eöt-Wash Group,” which is devoted to precise tests of physical laws. They take their name from the early-1900s physicist Loránd Eötvös and the University of Washington, where they work. These Eöt-Wash researchers got their start in the mid-1980s, using a device known as a “torsion balance” to disprove claims of an undiscovered fifth force in physics. Since then, they’ve used more elaborate versions of the same device to test the true strength of gravity, detect the tug of dark matter in the Milky Way and search for theoretical physical effects like extra dimensions and “axion wind.”

Real Mars video

1.8 billion pixels! Amazing new Mars panorama from Curiosity.

For 10 years NASA has been capturing images of mars and they now reveal the planet’s amazing beauty.

Continue reading “Omlet Arcade – Mobile Game Livestreaming” »

Astronomers have detected a stinky gas on Venus called phosphine, and weirdly enough, it could be a sign of alien life in the planet’s clouds. It’s still too early to say for sure that Venus hosts life forms, but the discovery opens up a lot of questions about what’s happening on Earth’s neighbor.

A sample-return mission to our planetary neighbor should now be considered.

The blob is neither animal, plant, nor fungus. The remarkable species can find and digest food, form together with others, and pass on knowledge.

Earth-bound telescopes are transforming our understanding of the cosmos. But we think they look pretty out-of-this-world too…

Anti-bacterial efficiency close to 100% under 10-min sunlight and promising results in deactivation of coronaviruses.

Face masks have become an important tool in fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic. However, improper use or disposal of masks may lead to “secondary transmission.” A research team from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has successfully produced graphene masks with an anti-bacterial efficiency of 80%, which can be enhanced to almost 100% with exposure to sunlight for around 10 minutes. Initial tests also showed very promising results in the deactivation of two species of coronaviruses. The graphene masks are easily produced at low cost, and can help to resolve the problems of sourcing raw materials and disposing of non-biodegradable masks.

The research is conducted by Dr. Ye Ruquan, Assistant Professor from CityU’s Department of Chemistry, in collaboration with other researchers. The findings were published in the scientific journal ACS Nano, titled “Self-Reporting and Photothermally Enhanced Rapid Bacterial Killing on a Laser-Induced Graphene Mask.”

Rice physicists set far-more-accurate limits on speed of quantum information.

Nature’s speed limits aren’t posted on road signs, but Rice University physicists have discovered a new way to deduce them that is better — infinitely better, in some cases — than previous methods.

“The big question is, ‘How fast can anything — information, mass, energy — move in nature?’” said Kaden Hazzard, a theoretical quantum physicist at Rice. “It turns out that if somebody hands you a material, it is incredibly difficult, in general, to answer the question.”

Physicists from MIPT and the Russian Quantum Center, joined by colleagues from Saratov State University and Michigan Technological University, have demonstrated new methods for controlling spin waves in nanostructured bismuth iron garnet films via short laser pulses. Presented in Nano Letters, the solution has potential for applications in energy-efficient information transfer and spin-based quantum computing.

A particle’s spin is its intrinsic angular momentum, which always has a direction. In magnetized materials, the spins all point in one direction. A local disruption of this magnetic order is accompanied by the propagation of spin waves, whose quanta are known as magnons.

Unlike the electrical current, spin wave propagation does not involve a transfer of matter. As a result, using magnons rather than electrons to transmit information leads to much smaller thermal losses. Data can be encoded in the phase or amplitude of a spin wave and processed via wave interference or nonlinear effects.