Backlog of Articles

I've been really busy with my studies but I have been still finding articles. These are no longer recent but for the sake of record keeping I would still like to post them on here for your reading pleasure.

Giant Black Hole at the Heart of a Dwarf Galaxy
Physics World

Leap Forward in Quantum Teleportation
Business Insider

First Images from India's spacecraft
BBC News

Complex Organic Molecules, Now Found in Space
BBC News

The Water-ice of Mercury
BBC News

Death Star Moon has confusing innards
BBC News

New Distance Record for Tractor Beams
BBC News

Water on a Neptune sized exoplanet
BBC News

India and US to collaborate on Mission
NASA

Hidden Valleys of the Moon
BBC News

Comets, Coming to a Printer Near You

Have you ever bemoaned your lack of a model of a comet? Feel your bedroom is incomplete without one? Worry no more; you can now 3D print your own. The ESA has released a model of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the duck shaped comet Rossetta will be Landing on.
BBC News

Nobel Prize to Blue LEDs
BBC News

I'm Not the Only Crazy One

Summary: Brian Cox, cute and funny English physicist, has recently spoke on BBC radio about his belief in the multiverse theory. This is the fun theory that there are infinitely many worlds in existence. This would be such that there is a world in which Schrodinger's cat is alive, one in which he is dead, and a world for every other state of well being in between. This generally makes physicists happy because that means the wave form does not have to collapse. Sure, some outcomes are more likely to happen, but there is a world for each and every outcome.

Personally, I love this theory and am constantly trying to plan a short sci-fi novel around that idea.


BBC News

Smorgasbord of Articles

I have not had much time of late to write up, or even read some of these articles and while I hope to catch up over my break, I do not wish to deprive you of them any longer than necessary. So here are a bunch of potentially interesting articles.

Quantum 'world record' smashed
New invisibility cloak type designed
Physics probes 'splashback' problem
Freak space rock spins dusty trail
India Mars probe makes first burn
Olympic torch in first spacewalk
Laser ripping apart spacetime to create ghosts
New Super-Black Material
Superconducting video camera seeing in living color

Lightest Tripod Ever

Summary: High precision measurements require optical elements to be super-duper stable to researchers has proposed using light beams reflected off of three mirrors to suspend a fourth mirror in the air to be used in measurements. It sounds crazy until you remember that (A) the suspended mirror is only two millimeters in diameter and (B) the reason this might be possible is quantum mechanics so of course it sounds crazy.



American Physical Society

Levitons: A Kinda Sorta Particle

Summary: Physicists in France and Switzerland have seen a new type of quasiparticle they called the leviton. This particle was predicted back in 1996. The ability to make these particles on demand could lead to quantum-electronics circuits that involve sending singular electrons through these circuits. I'm not sure exactly what the practical use it, but it sounds cool.


Physics World

The Good Kind of Tangled Phone Lines

Summary: The Japanese telecom company NTT has hit a new milestone in quantum entanglement. As a reminder, quantum entanglement is locking two particles together to have the exact same properties (spin, momentum, and polarization) for the duration of their entanglement. This means that you only have to look at one particle to know the state of the other. If the particles are far apart, this becomes an incredibly efficiant way to transfer data, which is what NTT hopes to achieve. Their experiment used two protons separated by 150 kilometers of optical fiber. Not only is this special because of the distance, this is also a new medium through which the data was passed. It would not be efficient yet, but down the line, who knows.



Extreme Tech