What I post on this blog, mostly anything and everything. I am going to try and post more personal things as that is the purpose of a blog after all.
Photo reblogged from Future of Science with 75 notes
Earthworms that shit quantum technology!
“When things get small–like millionths-of-an-inch small–they get very interesting. The ordinary rules of physics we’re used to fade back as the oddness of quantum physics looms large. Engineers have taken advantage of this fact by fashioning tiny bits of matter, known as quantum dots, that behave in all sorts of useful ways. For example, quantum dots made from cadmium telluride will respond to ultraviolet light by giving off a flash of visible light–the color depending on their size. If you attach certain molecules to cadmium telluride quantum dots, they will latch onto certain targets, making it possible to detect trace amounts of substances ranging from pesticides to cancer cells.”
“As versatile as cadmium telluride quantum dots are, however, they’re not easy to make. It’s especially tedious to fashion them so that they’re not toxic to living cells, since both cadmium and tellurium are nasty metals. In the latest issue of Nature Nanotechnology, a group of scientists at Kings College London offer a remarkably easy way to make them. In earthworms.”
(Read more: The Quantum Earthworm – Phenomena)
Photo reblogged from The Science of Reality with 17 notes
Milky Way Appears to be Void of Dark Matter
“The Mystery of Dark Matter Deepens - A New Solution for the Missing Mass Problem Must be Found.”“The most accurate study so far of the motions of stars in the Milky Way has found no evidence for dark matter in a large volume around the Sun. According to widely accepted theories, the solar neighbourhood was expected to be filled with dark matter, a mysterious invisible substance that can only be detected indirectly by the gravitational force it exerts.
A new study by a team of astronomers in Chile has found that these theories just do not fit the observational facts. This may mean that attempts to directly detect dark matter particles on Earth are unlikely to be successful.
A team using the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, along with other telescopes, has mapped the motions of more than 400 stars up to 13 000 light-years from the Sun. From this new data they have calculated the mass of material in the vicinity of the Sun, in a volume four times larger than ever considered before.
“The amount of mass that we derive matches very well with what we see — stars, dust and gas — in the region around the Sun,” says team leader Christian Moni Bidin (Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Concepción, Chile). “But this leaves no room for the extra material — dark matter — that we were expecting. Our calculations show that it should have shown up very clearly in our measurements. But it was just not there!”
Dark matter is a mysterious substance that cannot be seen, but shows itself by its gravitational attraction for the material around it. This extra ingredient in the cosmos was originally suggested to explain why the outer parts of galaxies, including our own Milky Way, rotated so quickly, but dark matter now also forms an essential component of theories of how galaxies formed and evolved.”
Continue.
Photo reblogged from Quantumaniac with 130 notes
Tachyons
A purely speculative particle, which is presumed to travel faster than light. According to Einstein’s equations of special relativity, a particle with an imaginary rest mass and a velocity greater than c would have a real momentum and energy. Ironically, the greater the kinetic energy of a tachyon, the slower it travels, approaching c asymptotically (from above) as its energy approaches infinity. Alternatively, a tachyon losing kinetic energy travels faster and faster, until as the kinetic energy approaches zero, the speed of the tachyon approaches infinity; such a tachyon with zero energy and infinite speed is called transcendent.
Special relativity does not seem to specifically exclude tachyons, so long as they do not cross the lightspeed barrier and do not interact with other particles to cause causality violations. Quantum mechanical analyses of tachyons indicate that even though they travel faster than light they would not be able to carry information faster than light, thus failing to violate causality. But in this case, if tachyons are by their very nature indetectable, it brings into question how real they might be.
