Latest Magnetic field Stories
NEW ORLEANS, June 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Robert Hunt, of Linear Power, Ltd., appeared before the Saint Bernard Parish Council in LA during their session on June 1st while the "Top Kill" was still underway where he warned the council that BP's plan to cut the riser pipe would increase the flow of oil two to three fold, which government experts now confirm has happened. Hunt stated that he had pleaded with BP to take immediate action to employ his plan to use strong magnets to stop the leaking...
While attempting to solve one mystery about iron oxide-based nanoparticles, a research team working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) stumbled upon another one. But once its implications are understood, their discovery* may give nanotechnologists a new and useful tool.The nanoparticles in question are spheres of magnetite so tiny that a few thousand of them lined up would stretch a hair's width, and they have potential uses both as the basis of better data storage...
Over the last century, astronomers have become very aware of how just dynamic the Sun really is. One of the most dramatic manifestations of this is a coronal mass ejection (CME) where billions of tons of matter is thrown into space. If a CME reaches the Earth it creates inclement "˜space weather' that can disrupt communications, power grids and the delicate systems on orbiting satellites. This potential damage means there is a keen interest in understanding exactly what triggers a CME...
Despite the fact that bats are active after sunset, they rely on the sun as their most trusted source of navigation. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology found that the greater mouse-eared bat orients itself with the help of the earth's magnetic field at night and calibrates this compass to the sun's position at sunset (published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, PNAS, March 29th, 2010)Since the 1940s it has been known that bats use echolocation...
UCLA team couples quantum dots, silicon for room-temperature functionalityAs the electronics industry works toward developing smaller and more compact devices, the need to create new types of scaled-down semiconductors that are more efficient and use less power has become essential.In a study to be published in the April issue of Nature Materials (currently available online), researchers from UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science describe the creation of a new...
Brown University physicist Vesna Mitrovic and colleagues at Brown and in France have discovered magnetic waves that fluctuate when exposed to certain conditions in a superconducting material. The discovery may help scientists understand more fully the relationship between magnetism and superconductivity at the quantum level. Results are published in Physical Review Letters.At the quantum level, the forces of magnetism and superconductivity exist in an uneasy relationship. Superconducting...
Iron containing short nerve branches in the upper beak of birds may serve as a magnetometer to measure the vector of the Earth magnetic field (intensity and inclination) and not only as a magnetic compass, which shows the direction of the magnetic field lines. Already several years ago, the Frankfurt neurobiologists Dr.Gerta Fleissner and her husband Prof. Dr. Günther Fleissner have discovered these structures in homing pigeons and have, in close cooperation with the experimental physicist...
A team of astronomers, led by Dr. Wouter Vlemmings at Bonn University, has used the MERLIN radio telescope network centered on the Jodrell Bank Observatory to show that magnetic fields play an important role during the birth of massive stars. Magnetic fields are already known to strongly influence the formation of lower-mass stars like our Sun. This new study reveals that the way in which high-mass and low-mass stars form may be more similar than previously suspected. The scientists report...
An innovative cardiac scanner will dramatically improve the process of diagnosing heart conditions.The portable magnetometer* is being developed at the University of Leeds, with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) playing a key role.Due to its unprecedented sensitivity to magnetic fluctuations the device will be able to detect a number of conditions, including heart problems in fetuses, earlier than currently available diagnostic techniques such as...
The Earth's magnetic field protects our planet from most of the permanent flow of particles from the solar wind. Fissures in this magnetic shield are known to occur, enabling the solar wind to penetrate our near-space environment. A study based on data collected by the four ESA Cluster satellites and the CNSA/ESA Double Star TC-1 spacecraft, provides new insight into the location and duration of these ruptures in the Earth's magnetic shield.This study reports the observation of fissures on...
