Intelligent paper

Summary: US scientists have developed smart paper. This paper, embedded with RFID (radio frequency identification), could be used to track important documents such as bank notes or used for faster scanning of concert tickets.
Maybe this is getting us one step closer to physic paper.



BBC News:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22369628

Star Friendly Lamps

Summary: For those of us who love to look at the stars in the night sky, we often are disappointed by the limited amount of starts we can see due to the light pollution cause by city lights. Researchers have now realized what I would have thought to be blindingly obvious, conventional streetlamps need to be altered. If you look at a typical street lamp you will notice that, not only does it not light some of the street below it leaving dark spots on the road, it also lights up the sky around it. Until we get hovercrafts, this is pointless. Researchers have now realized that they can instead use LED lights to build streetlamps. Using some Aluminum, the light rays can be focused to shine entirely on the street with minimal light polluting our beautiful night sky. These researchers do not have a prototype yet so we will be waiting a while for these better street lamps, but some progress is better than no progress.


BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22292129

2 New Earths?

Summary: NASA scientists have found two new planets within the habitable zone of a star. These two planets, Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f, are the most earth-like so far. Though they are too far away to study closer with our current telescope technology, in the future we may be able to determine if these planets do indeed contain flowing water.


BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22200476

Curiosity and other updates

Summary: Curiosity has discovered that most of Mars's atmosphere has since departed into space. Scientists discovered this by looking at the chemical of argon. Argon reacts with very little so the only way the lighter isotopes will have given way to a majority of the heavier isotopes is by escaping into outer space. The article does not comment on what this means when trying to determine whether or not Mars ever had flowing water other than to say that scientists are still split.


BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22063337


Summary: The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) in the sky has made some observations that may give additional evidence to dark matter. Stay tuned.

BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22016504


Summary: The LHC is being upgraded so that is can find new particles. Not too much info at this moment.


BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21941666

Physics and Literature

Summary: Although physics and literature are not often mixed, there are places where these topics overlap. One physicist at CERN, JJ Gomez, has been overlapping these two interests.
He has previously written a story on his experience working at CERN and a book concerning the issues of potential energy sources. He is considering writing a new book focusing on nuclear energy. Right now, however, he is working on a book aimed at young adults. He hopes to introduce physics topics without all the complex facts. I look forward to seeing what he comes up with. Since he is a fan of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, I have high hopes for his book.

His previous works:
Book of short stories: La agonía de las libélulas (Agony of the dragonflies)
Materia Extraña
El ecologista nuclear (The Nuclear Environmentalist, now published in English)



CERN Courier: http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/52360

The end of Herschel's telescope

Summary: ESA's Herschel telescope, best known for its stunning images of nebulae like the Pillars of Creation, is set to take its last images later this month. this is a planned shut down. Due to the scientific instruments to take its images, the telescope needed to be constantly cooled to almost absolute zero temperatures. However, there is only so much coolant that can be flown with a satellite. The liquid is due to run out this month as expected.
Scientists are rushing to try and fit in as many observations as they can before the telescope ceases to function and they send it into orbit around the sun.
The images will be archived somewhere that they can be easily accessed.

BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21668712

Another puzzle piece in the Standard Model

Summary: Scientists have now detected D-mesons (a very small and elusive particle) oscillating between matter and antimatter. Weird, but super cool. This was predicted to occur since the other mesons have already been proven to exhibit this weird behavior. Furthermore, this evidence crosses the "five-sigma" level of statistical certainty that is needed to declare it an actual discovery.



BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21594357