Latest Physics Stories
Funds Support National Children's Literacy Program HOUSTON, April 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- CITGO Petroleum Corporation is renewing its sponsorship of Bess the Book Bus, one of the first Fueling Good winners and a nationwide advocate for literacy. Throughout 2013, Bess will travel to schools, community centers, shelters and after-school programs in more than 30 cities across the country, while also continuing to build and enhance school and classroom libraries. New this year, Bess is...
[ Watch the Video: AMS Time Lapse Installation ] John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online For decades scientists have wondered whether a mysterious form of matter – known simply as Dark Matter since it does not interact directly with light – makes up the majority of the “stuff” in the Universe. Researchers have pointed to the seminal work on the Bullet Cluster of galaxies as evidence that dark matter is a real substance. But similar observations of...
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman once declared that turbulence is “the most important unsolved problem in classical physics.” The phenomenon of turbulence is quite common, apparent in the flow of air in our atmosphere, or the rise of smoke from a cigarette. Yet, a mathematical description of turbulence has continued to escape scientists, despite having been studied for hundreds of years. In 1941 Soviet mathematician...
In recognition of National Stress Awareness Month, The Oxygen Plan Corporation makes online stress test available for all to learn their Stress Number®. Minneapolis, Minnesota (PRWEB) April 03, 2013 As many scramble to meet the deadline for filing the 2012 income tax returns, acute stress may be rising with it. According Dr. Donald E. Williams, board-certified clinical health psychologist (American Board of Professional Psychology/ABPP), and Chief Science Officer, The Oxygen Plan,...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online MIT researchers writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A say they found ionic wind thrusters may be a more efficient source of propulsion than conventional jet engines. Ionic wind, or electrohydrodynamic thrust, was first identified in the 1960s. The phenomenon takes place when a current passes between two electrodes, creating a wind in the air between. If enough voltage is applied, the wind produces a thrust...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Scientists are coming together this summer to try and collaborate on solving the mystery of dark matter. Probes of Dark Matter on Galaxy Scales 2013, will be held July 14–19 in Monterey, California. Scientists at the conference will be meeting to discuss their techniques for solving the secrets of dark matter in the universe. “The idea is to bring together people working on different probes of dark matter from dynamics, which...
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Jumping silicon atoms are the stars of an atomic scale ballet featured in a new Nature Communications study from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The ORNL research team documented the atoms' unique behavior by first trapping groups of silicon atoms, known as clusters, in a single-atom-thick sheet of carbon called graphene. The silicon clusters, composed of six atoms, were pinned in place by pores in the graphene sheet, allowing the...
University of Michigan The rare Green Pea galaxies discovered by the general public in 2007 could help confirm astronomers' understanding of reionization, a pivotal stage in the evolution of the early universe, say University of Michigan researchers. Reionization occurred a few hundred million years after the Big Bang as the first stars were turning on and forming the first galaxies. During this period, the space between the galaxies changed from an opaque, neutral fog to a transparent...
WASHINGTON, April 3, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is a statement from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on the first Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) results announced Wednesday at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. AMS is a cosmic ray particle physics detector on the exterior of the International Space Station. It was launched to the space station on space shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 mission on May 16, 2011. (Logo:...
Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres In their latest experiment, Prof. Andrea Cavalleri from the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter at the Hamburg-based Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) and Dr. Michael Gensch from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) investigated together with other colleagues from the HZDR, the United Kingdom, and Japan if and how superconductivity can be systematically controlled. The objective of their...
Latest Physics Reference Libraries
Nuclear fallout, or just simply fallout, known also as Black Rain, is the residual radioactive material that is propelled into the upper atmosphere after a nuclear black or a nuclear reaction that is conducted in an unshielded facility. It is so called because it "fall out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave have passed. It most commonly refers to the radioactive dust and ash that is created when a nuclear weapon explodes, but such dust can also come from a damaged nuclear...
Image Caption: The Hubble Extreme Deep Field (XDF) was completed in September 2012 and shows the farthest galaxies ever photographed by humans. Each speck of light in the photo is an individual galaxy, some of them as old as 13.2 billion years; the observable universe is estimated to contain more than 200 billion galaxies. Credit: NASA/Wikipedia What is Cosmology? I once commented to an acquaintance that I was fascinated by the field of Cosmology, and mused that if I had more time, I...
Image Caption: NGC 4414, a typical spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices, is about 56,000 light-years in diameter and approximately 60 million light-years distant. Credit: NASA/ESA/Wikipedia What is Astrophysics? For much of the modern age the term Astrophysics has been used synonymously with Astronomy. This interchange is so common that many textbooks even offer the two as having the same meaning. However, from a strictly historical perspective there are differences...
Image Credit: Meteorologist Joshua Kelly When meteorologists are forecasting for ocean-going vessels, there are a few terms that we need to understand. The first term is wavelength. Wavelength is defined as the distance between two crests or between two troughs as seen in the image above. The example above highlights the crest to crest concept of wavelength. The next term that we use is wave height, and to determine this, we first must look at the wave when it passes our station. When...
Solar cycles: what are they and why should we care about them? Solar cycles are made up of what are known as solar minimums (min) and solar maximums (max). We refer to a solar min at the time when the sun is not active with many sunspots, while a solar max is just the opposite when we see a large increase in sunspot activity. So how long do solar cycles last? Typically they run on what is known as an 11 year cycle from the max to the min and then start over again anew. As of 2012 we...
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![The Secret of a Snake\](/media/gallery/national-science-foundation-gallery/thumbs/thumbs_pf3292_cover9_h1.jpg "The Secret of a Snake\")
![The Secret of a Snake\](/media/gallery/national-science-foundation-gallery/thumbs/thumbs_pf3292_cover8_h.jpg "The Secret of a Snake\")
