Sunday, July 29, 2012

New moon formation theory

Summary: Scientists have proposed new theories of the Moon's formation. Some think that a larger object than previously thought struck the young Earth, probably faster than earlier models predicted. However, only more data will show which theory is correct. BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19011013

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Dark Matter going Underground

Summary: A Dark Matter detecting experiment will be moving underground from it's current location at Fermilab in Chicago.

SymmetryMag: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/?p=16324

Monday, July 23, 2012

The passing of a hero

Sally Ride, the first American woman in space and one of my heroes, has passed 
away earlier today from pancreatic cancer. She was 61. 
 
 
BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18963939 

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/people/features/ride.html

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Dwarf helps form spiral galaxy

Summary: Astronomers have found a well formed spiral galaxy just 3 billion years after the big bang. It is extremely rare for a well formed spiral to appear this early due to how chaotic the universe still was at this point. It was helped along by a small dwarf galaxy orbiting it; this added an extra gravitational pull to form the spiral.




BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18891760

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Hubble discovers new Pluto moon

Summary: The Hubble space telescope has discovered a fifth moon around the dwarf planet Pluto. 



BBC News:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18803212

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

New particle found, possible Higgs

Summary: Scientists at CERN have announced the discovery of what seems to be a new particle. They do not know if it is the Higgs Boson, though it is in the right area, and they don't have a high enough degree of certainty to call it a formal discovery. However it is close enough to yield celebration all over the physics community. BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-18702455 Symmetry Mag: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2012/07/04/search-for-higgs-boson-at-large-hadron-collider-reveals-new-particle/ Video of press conference: cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1459604 Follow CERN on twitter for all the latest updates.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Fermilab reveals stronger hints about Higgs

Summary: More data from the Tevatron at Fermilab is narrowing the search for the Higgs Boson particle. Their data is pointing towards the particle being in the same "search region" of the LHC: between 115 and 135 GeV. BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18677808