If you throw a ball at a wall, it’s going to bounce back at you – that’s classical physics at work. But of course, the world of quantum physics is much spookier, so if you did the same with a particle, there’s a chance that it will suddenly appear on the other side. This is thanks to a phenomenon known as quantum tunneling, and now a team of physicists has measured just how long that process takes.
Scientists at CERN have today announced that they’re 99.99% sure that they’ve found a new sub-atomic particle, and that it is likely to be the elusive Higgs boson – often referred to as the “God Particle”. That’s all well and good, but what does it all mean? Let’s break it down…
In what may be the most exciting news of the week, University of Texas at Austin researchers have engineered a solar-powered device that absorbs moisture from the air and turns it into clean water.
Outer space is a tough environment for living organisms: no atmosphere, no oxygen, no gravity, a ton of radiation, and extreme temperatures.
But the German Aerospace Center just made a bombshell discovery: as part of a project called the Biology and Mars Experiment, they found that samples of organisms including bacteria, algae, lichens and fungi survived on the exterior of the International Space Station for 533 days.
Time may be a human construct but that hasn’t stopped physicists from perfecting it.
JILA’s 3D Quantum Gas Atomic Clock Offers New Dimensions in Measurement https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2017/10/jilas-3-D-quan…easurement “JILA physicists have created an entirely new design for an atomic clock, in which strontium atoms are packed into a tiny three-dimensional (3D) cube at 1,000 times the density of previous one-dimensional (1-D) clocks. In doing so, they are the first to harness the ultra-controlled behavior of a so-called “quantum gas” to make a practical measurement device.”
Jun Ye: Let There Be Light (and Thus, Time)
Dr. Jun Ye, professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a fellow of both the National Institute of Standards and Technology and JILA, explains how lasers are used to manipulate atoms inside and out for ultra-precise clocks.
Ultra-Accurate Clocks Lead Search for New Laws of Physics.
About the Presenter: After getting his Ph.D. in physics from UC San Diego, Garrett moved to Maui, seeking an optimum balance between surfing and his theoretical research. While pursuing an unanswered question at the heart of Quantum Field Theory, he began to develop what he called “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything,” which proposed a unified field theory combining particle physics and Albert Einstein’s theory of gravitation. His story and work have been featured at TED, in Outside Magazine, The New Yorker, Surfer, and recently in Scientific American.
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Kugelblitz! Powering a Starship With a Black Hole https://www.space.com/24306-interstellar-flight-black-hole-power.html “Interstellar flight certainly ranks among the most daunting challenges ever postulated by human civilization. The distances to even the closest stars are so stupendous that constructing even a scale model of interstellar distance is impractical. For instance, if on such a model the separation of the Earth and sun is 1 inch (2.5 centimeters), the nearest star to our solar system (Proxima Centauri) would be 4.3 miles (6.9 kilometers) away!”
Kugelblitz Black Holes: Lasers & Doom https://futurism.com/kugelblitz-black-holes-lasers-doom “A kugelblitz black hole could theoretically be created by aiming lasers vastly more powerful than anything we have today at a single point. Logically, one could assume that turning off the lasers would ‘turn off’ the black hole? Well, that’s not quite right”
“In recent years, astronomers explored that possibility with a bizarre star, known to astronomers as KIC 8462852 – more popularly called Tabby’s Star for its discoverer Tabetha Boyajian. This star’s strange light was originally thought to indicate a possible Dyson sphere. That idea has been discarded, but, in 2018, other possibilities emerged, such as that of using the Gaia mission to search for Dyson spheres.“ ____________________
Elements is more than just a science show. It’s your science-loving best friend, tasked with keeping you updated and interested on all the compelling, innovative and groundbreaking science happening all around us. Join our passionate hosts as they help break down and present fascinating science, from quarks to quantum theory and beyond.