PhysOrg News Potpourri
Posted on Saturday, April 01, 2006 @ 18:16:02 UTC by vlad
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'MARCH MADNESS' EFFECTS OBSERVED IN ULTRACOLD GASES, March 31
Physicists at Harvard University, George Mason University and the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have discovered
new quantum effects in ultracold gases that may lead to improved
understanding of electrical conductivity in metals.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news63036341.html
SCIENTISTS OBSERVE SOLITARY VIBRATIONS IN URANIUM, March 30
Los Alamos scientists, working with collaborators from around the
world, recently observed experimental evidence of solitary vibrations
(solitons) in a solid. First observed as localized waves on the surface
of water more than a century ago, the concept of solitons in solids was
only theorized as possible two decades ago. The results of their
discovery of random localized vibrations in a 3-D solid will add new
knowledge to the field of solid-state physics and could have
implications for other areas of science and technology.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news62945897.html
MEASURING ELECTRICAL ARCS AT THE MICROMETER SCALE, March 30
Air is a great insulator-except when it becomes a conductor. Under
the right conditions, miniature lightning bolts of electricity will
"arc" through the air between two electrically conducting points.
Engineers can accurately predict how this happens on the macroscopic
scale-when electricity from a downed power line, for example, jumps to
a nearby metal object-but less is known about the process at the micro
scale.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news62952072.html
IBM RESEARCHERS DEVELOP NEW WAY TO EXPLORE AND CONTROL ATOM-SCALE MAGNETISM, March 31
IBM scientists have developed a powerful new technique for
exploring and controlling magnetism at its fundamental atomic level.
The new method promises to be an important tool in the quest not only
to understand the operation of future computer circuit and data-storage
elements as they shrink toward atomic dimensions, but also to lay the
foundation for new materials and computing devices that leverage
atom-scale magnetic phenomena.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news63005638.html
SCIENTISTS DEMONSTRATE QUANTUM NATURE OF ENTANGLEMENT SWAPPING, March 31
As if plain old quantum entanglement weren't strange enough for
modern physics, now physicists are entangling already entangled
particles. In entanglement swapping, one particle of an entangled pair
becomes entangled with a third particle, which itself becomes entangled
with the other particle in the first pair, even though the two never
interact. Here's how physicists are unraveling this behavior and
manipulating it for use in quantum communications and high-speed
computing.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news63037231.html
FRICTIONLESS MOTION OBSERVED IN WATER, March 30
Researchers at the University of Southern California and Brown
University say they have achieved near-frictionless motion in water by
using lasers to spin a molecule like a propeller. Free rotation can
occur in gases, where molecules are far apart. This is the first known
demonstration of friction turning off in a room temperature liquid, the
authors report in the Mar. 31 issue of Science.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news62951128.html
MINOS EXPERIMENT SHEDS LIGHT ON MYSTERY OF NEUTRINO DISAPPEARANCE, March 30
An international collaboration of scientists at the Department of
Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today the
first results of a new neutrino experiment. Sending a high-intensity
beam of muon neutrinos from the lab's site in Batavia, Illinois, to a
particle detector in Soudan, Minnesota, scientists observed the
disappearance of a significant fraction of these neutrinos.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news62941548.html
NEW STUDY SETS BENCHMARK PROPERTIES FOR POPULAR CONDUCTING PLASTIC, March 30
Steadily increasing the length of a purified conducting polymer
vastly improves its ability to conduct electricity, report researchers
at Carnegie Mellon University, whose work appeared March 22 in the
Journal of the American Chemical Society. Their study of regioregular
polythiophenes (RRPs) establishes benchmark properties for these
materials that suggest how to optimize their use for a new generation
of diverse materials, including solar panels, transistors in radio
frequency identification tags, and light-weight, flexible, organic
light-emitting displays.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news62938583.html
PROBING QUESTION: WHAT HEATS THE EARTH'S CORE?, March 30
Although we crust-dwellers walk on nice cool ground, underneath our
feet the Earth is a pretty hot place. Enough heat emanates from the
planet's interior to make 200 cups of piping hot coffee per hour for
each of Earth's 6.2 billion inhabitants, says Chris Marone, Penn State
professor of geosciences. At the very center, it is believed
temperatures exceed 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than the surface
of the sun.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news62952904.html
SCIENTISTS DISCOVER THE UNIVERSE'S STRONGEST MAGNETIC FIELD, March 30
Scientists from The University of Exeter and the International
University, Bremen have discovered what is thought to be the strongest
magnetic field in the Universe. In a paper in the journal Science, Dr
Daniel Price and Professor Stephan Rosswog show that violent collisions
between neutron stars in the outer reaches of space create this field,
which is 1000 million million times larger than our earth's own
magnetic field. It's thought that these collisions could be behind some
of the brightest explosions in the Universe since the Big Bang,
so-called short Gamma-ray bursts.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news62951279.html
ANOTHER VIEW OF MASS EXTINCTIONS IS HEARD, March 30
A University of Washington paleontologist says most mass
extinctions were caused by gradual climate change and not catastrophic
asteroid impacts.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news62921006.html
RAPID TEMPERATURE INCREASES ABOVE THE ANTARCTIC, March 31
Antarctica's atmosphere is heating up three times faster than the
earth average, British scientists said after a 30-year study released
Thursday.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news63005021.html
STRONGER STORMS FORECAST FOR EUROPE, March 30
Swiss and British scientists say European storms might grow
stronger and more frequent, significantly affecting infrastructure and
natural systems.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news62916049.html
BOUCHER CALLS FOR DOT-COM INVESTIGATION, March 30
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., is asking for a House committee to launch a formal investigation into operation of the dot-com domain.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news62912550.html
SPACECRAFTS WITNESS A NEW FACET OF EARTH'S MAGNETIC BEHAVIOUR, March 30
Five spacecraft from two ESA missions unexpectedly found themselves
engulfed by waves of electrical and magnetic energy as they travelled
through Earth's night-time shadow on 5 August 2004. The data collected
by the spacecraft are giving scientists an important clue to the
effects of 'space weather' on Earth's magnetic field.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news62919573.html
INTERNET GROWTH COOLING, BUT DEPENDENCE INCREASING: REPORT, March 30
Growth in the use of the Internet has come off its sizzling pace,
even as people become more dependent on cyberspace for work and
leisure, a global survey showed.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news62910886.html
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