• Today’s physics news: SpaceX rocket blasts off for space station, Physicists claim new quantum-teleportation record and more

    Updated: 2012-05-22 10:56:53
    Today’s physics news: SpaceX rocket blasts off for space station, Physicists claim new quantum-teleportation record and more SpaceX rocket blasts off for space station Falcon 9 commercial rocket takes off from Cape Canaveral with supplies for the ISS Guardian Physicists claim new quantum-teleportation record Photon states teleported 97 km over lake Physics World The case [...]

  • Welcome to the Multiverse

    Updated: 2012-05-21 19:56:01
    Multiverse Mania makes the big time this week, with a cover story Welcome to the Multiverse by Brian Greene in Newsweek. While the title indicates that the Multiverse is here and part of our scientific world-view, the subtitle is a … Continue reading →

  • Today’s physics news: Kepler telescope studies star superflares and Science policy: Beyond the great and good

    Updated: 2012-05-18 11:20:03
    Today’s physics news: Kepler telescope studies star superflares and Science policy: Beyond the great and good Kepler telescope studies star superflares Nasa’s Kepler space telescope has provided fresh insight on the colossal explosions that can afflict some stars. BBC Science policy: Beyond the great and good Chief scientific advisers need better support and networks to [...]

  • Editor's Note: Life and Death | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2012-05-17 17:25:00
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  • Today’s physics news: Soyuz astronauts arrive at International Space Station, pulsar heavyweight champ challenges Einstein and more

    Updated: 2012-05-17 10:38:01
    Today’s physics news: Soyuz astronauts arrive at International Space Station, pulsar heavyweight champ challenges Einstein and more Soyuz astronauts arrive at International Space Station A Russian-made Soyuz craft carrying three astronauts has docked with the International Space Station, putting the crew in place for the imminent arrival of the first ever privately owned cargo ship [...]

  • Physics Lives films: Watch four physicists in their working lives

    Updated: 2012-05-17 10:14:15
    Physics Lives is a four part video series intended to showcase the rich variety of life as a university research physicist. The films demonstrate fascinating aspects of physics, while also making often complex themes accessible to a wider audience. Air Apparent: Mapping air pollutants Dr. Mark Richards investigates a problem that is linked to over [...]

  • Latest from the Rumor Mill

    Updated: 2012-05-17 01:18:38
    There’s at least one thing about string theory that has changed dramatically since my book was written back in 2002 or so. At the time I accumulated various numbers showing the way hiring in particle theory at leading institutions in … Continue reading →

  • The Smell of SUSY

    Updated: 2012-05-17 00:34:42
    The implications of the failure to find SUSY at the LHC are beginning to sink into the particle physics community: the paradigm that dominated the subject for the past 30 years has collapsed in the face of experimental (non)-evidence, threatening … Continue reading →

  • Today’s physics news: Geoengineering experiment cancelled amid patent row, Milestone for wi-fi with ‘T-rays’ and more

    Updated: 2012-05-16 12:11:25
    Today’s physics news: Geoengineering experiment cancelled amid patent row, Milestone for wi-fi with ‘T-rays’ and more Geoengineering experiment cancelled amid patent row Balloon-based ‘test bed’ for climate-change mitigation abandoned. Nature Milestone for wi-fi with ‘T-rays’ Researchers in Japan have smashed the record for wireless data transmission in the terahertz band, an uncharted part of the [...]

  • The Brain: Hidden Epidemic: 
Tapeworms Living Inside People's Brains | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2012-05-15 16:00:00
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  • Igor Frenkel 60th Birthday Conference

    Updated: 2012-05-14 16:57:05
    This week Yale is hosting a conference on Perspectives in Representation Theory, in honor of Igor Frenkel’s 60th birthday. I’m planning to take the train up there and attend some of the talks tomorrow and Wednesday. Frenkel has been a … Continue reading →

  • Paranormal Circumstances: One Influential Scientist's Quixotic Mission to Prove ESP Exists | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2012-05-14 16:40:00
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  • Discover Interview: The World's Most Celebrated Virus Hunter: Ian Lipkin | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2012-05-11 17:05:00
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  • A Sweet View of the Icarus of Comets | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2012-05-10 15:50:00
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  • Vital Signs: "We Can Take His Heart Out, Remove the Tumor, and Put It Back In" | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2012-05-09 14:35:00
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  • Phenomenology 2012

    Updated: 2012-05-09 01:20:54
    This week at the University of Pittsburgh the Phenomenology 2012 Symposium has talks reviewing the current situation in particle physics phenomenology. Not much new, but there is one plenary talk on string phenomenology, Cumrun Vafa’s Stringy Predictions for Particle Physics. … Continue reading →

  • 20 Things You Didn't Know About... Science 
Fraud | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2012-05-08 15:50:00
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  • Half Hour to Midnight

    Updated: 2012-05-05 18:24:31
    Matt Strassler posts here about a recent panel discussion of phenomenologists talking about the implications of the latest results from the LHC. You can listen to the thing for yourself, and see what Matt has to say at his blog, … Continue reading →

  • How I Contained the Mississippi | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2012-05-05 01:00:00
    A year ago, an unusually rainy spring caused the Mississippi River’s most serious flooding since 1927. Record-setting water levels threatened Memphis, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. It was up to Major General Michael Walsh, then commander of the 
Mississippi Valley division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to open floodgates and blow up levees, flooding some areas but averting catastrophe in major cities downstream. In his own words, here’s how he decided where to send the swelling waters. We knew it was going to be a challenging flood year. I was working in an operations center aboard the Mississippi, the largest motor vessel on the river: 241 feet long, with five decks.</p We have a comprehensive flood plan that dictates what to do when water reaches certain levels—where we need to allow controlled flooding to save cities downstream. By April 9 the flood gauges at Cairo, Illinois, which straddles the Missouri and Kentucky borders, exceeded allowable limits. We were supposed to open the nearby Birds Point–New Madrid Floodway when the water reached 61 feet, and on the night of May 1, the forecast level climbed to 63 feet. The decision was clear. If I didn’t open that floodway and relieve the pressure, levees would have broken somewhere else—but the angst level was very high. We planned to submerge 130,000 acres of farmland, and Missouri’s attorney general asked the Supreme Court to stop the operation, but the court refused the request. I gave the order and we blew up the floodway on May 2. Our first move removed about a fifth of the water flowing through that area, but we hadn’t gone far enough—we still had to open up the next floodway, the Bonnet Carré, just upstream of New Orleans. We opened it on May 9, in bright sunshine, with a few hundred people out to watch. Even then the river was flowing at record rates...

  • hearing differences: my TEDx Nashville talk

    Updated: 2012-05-04 07:30:50
    : : String Theory Media What We Do String Theory Media develops documentary and feature content about music and music-making for traditional and new . media Who We Are Craig Havighurst Founder writer producer Anne Cates Videographer Editor Contact Us String Theory Media 615.460.1236 2812-B Vaulx Lane Nashville , TN 37204 OUR VIDEO WORK Ralph Stanley Sam Bush Darrell Scott : Crooked Road Robert Plant Alison Krauss EPK The Infamous Stringdusters Kathleen Edwards Blue Highway String Theory Reading List James Barron : Piano Martha Bayles : Hole In Our Soul R Jourdain : Music , The Brain , And Ecstasy How Music Captures Our Imagination Thomas Levenson : Measure for Measure Archives May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011

  • Hot Science: Real-World Technology That Approaches "The Avengers" | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2012-05-03 15:50:00
    After a series of solo adventures, Marvel’s greatest superheroes will finally join forces on the big screen this Friday, May 4. In anticipation of the Avengers’ suiting up to save the day, we took a look at how today’s technology stacks up against the best weapons wielded by our favorite superhumans. Iron Man
Super Tech: A bespoke high-tech exoskeleton not only protects billionaire Tony Stark from supervillains, it also lets him fly faster than the speed of sound, lift up to 100 tons, and confirm dinner reservations through his AI assistant. Real-World Tech: U.S. soldiers may soon have robotic exoskeletons of their own. Defense giant Lockheed Martin’s model, now in testing, supports soldiers as they run at speeds of up to 10 miles per hour while carrying 200 extra pounds. Captain America
Super Tech: The Captain’s shield, made of an alloy with the alien metal vibranium, absorbs kinetic energy—so the strain of battle only makes it stronger. Real-World Tech: Scientists have yet to find a material that gets tougher from taking a hit. But in 2011 researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab unveiled the strongest, toughest substance ever: a microalloy of glass and the rare metal palladium...

  • The Beating Heart Donors | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2012-05-02 16:45:00
    in 1968, thirteen men gathered at the Harvard Medical School to virtually undo 5,000 years of the study of death. In a three-month period, the Harvard committee (full name: the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death) hammered out a simple set of criteria that today allows doctors to declare a person dead in less time than it takes to get a decent eye exam. A good deal of medical language was used, but in the end the committee’s criteria switched the debate from biology to philosophy. Before many years went by, it became accepted by most of the medical establishment that death wasn’t defined by a heart that could not be restarted, or lungs that could not breathe. No, you were considered dead when you suffered a loss of personhood. But before we see what substituting philosophy for science actually means to real patients, let’s look at the criteria the Harvard authors believed indicated that a patient had a “permanently nonfunctioning brain”: • Unreceptivity and unresponsivity. “Even the most intensely painful stimuli evoke no vocal or other response, not even a groan, withdrawal of a limb or quickening of respiration,” by the committee’s standard. • No movements or spontaneous breathing (being aided by a respirator does not count). Doctors must watch patients for at least one hour to make sure they make no spontaneous muscular movements or spontaneous respiration. To test the latter, physicians are to turn off the respirator for three minutes to see if the patient attempts to breathe on his own (the apnea test). • No reflexes. To look for reflexes, doctors are to shine a light in the eyes to make sure the pupils are dilated. Muscles are tested. Ice water is poured in the ears. • Flat EEG. Doctors should use electroencephalography, a test “of great confirmatory value,” to make sure that the patient has flat brain waves. The committee said all of the above tests had to be repeated at least 24 hours later with no change, but it added two caveats: hypothermia and drug intoxication can mimic brain death. And since 1968, the list of mimicking conditions has grown longer. Although the Harvard criteria were based on zero patients and no experiments were conducted either with humans or animals, they soon became the standard for declaring people dead in several states, and in 1981, the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) was sanctioned by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. The UDDA is based on the Harvard Ad Hoc Committee’s report. That a four-page article defining death should be codified by all 50 states within 13 years is staggering...

  • Is Einstein's Greatest Work All Wrong—Because He Didn't Go Far Enough? | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2012-05-01 17:35:00
    Julian Barbour cuts an unlikely figure for a radical. We sip afternoon tea at his farmhouse in the sleepy English village of South Newington, and he playfully quotes Faust: That I may understand whatever binds the world’s innermost core together, see all its workings, and its seeds. His love of Goethe’s classic poem, about a scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for unlimited knowledge, is apropos. Forty years ago, Barbour’s desire to uncover the innermost workings of the universe led him to make a seemingly reckless gamble. He sacrificed a secure and potentially prestigious career as an academic to strike out on independent research of his own. His starry-eyed quest: upending Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, and with it our understanding of gravity, space, and time. It was less than a century ago that Einstein was the most radical physics thinker around. With his general theory of relativity, he discarded the traditional notion of space and time as fixed and redefined them as flexible dimensions woven together to create a four-dimensional fabric that pervades the universe. In Einstein’s vision, this stretchy version of space-time is the source of gravity. The fabric bends and warps severely around massive objects such as the sun, drawing smaller objects such as planets toward them. The force that we perceive as gravity is the result. Yet Einstein’s fabric left a few loose threads that cosmologists have struggled to tie up ever since. For one, general relativity alone cannot explain the observed motions of galaxies or the way the universe seems to expand. If Einstein’s model of gravity is correct, around 96 percent of the cosmos appears to be missing. To make up the difference, cosmologists have posited two mysterious, invisible, and as yet unidentified ingredients: dark matter and dark energy, a double budget deficit that makes many scientists uncomfortable. Einstein also failed to deliver an all-encompassing theory of “quantum gravity”—one that reconciled the laws of gravity observed on the scale of stars and galaxies with the laws of quantum mechanics, the branch of physics that explains the behavior of particles in the subatomic realm. While other scientists tread softly around the edges of Einstein’s theory, hoping to tweak it into compliance, Barbour and a growing cadre of collaborators see a need for a bold march forward. They aim to demolish the space-time fabric that stands as Einstein’s legacy and remap the universe without it. This new cosmic code could eliminate the need to invoke dark matter and dark energy. Even more exciting, it could also open the door to the theory of quantum gravity that Einstein was never able to derive. If Barbour is right, some of the most fundamental things cosmologists think they know about the origin and evolution of the universe would have to be revised... Image: Galaxy cluster Abell 1689 seems to be held together by swaths of unseen dark matter; blue shows its theoretically inferred location. But could dark matter be an illusion? Courtesy of NASA

  • Impatient Futurist: Your Personal, Automated Mass Transit Vehicle Is on Its Way | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2012-04-30 17:00:00
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  • Star Breeding Grounds | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2012-04-29 01:50:00
    Vast clouds of star-forming gas and dust burst into view in this newly released image of the constellations Cassiopeia and Cepheus, taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite, or WISE. Space-based infrared telescopes like WISE allow astronomers to see past the hot, bright stars that dominate visible-light images and probe the subtle, cold regions of gas and dust where stars are born. The most frigid stuff, which can be –280 degrees Fahrenheit, appears red here; warmer objects look bluer...

  • help casey driessen get his kicks with fiddle sticks

    Updated: 2012-04-25 22:36:18

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