Astronomy and Physics News – Oct. 23, 2011
Subjects covered this week:
1. Update on Superluminal Neutrinos
2. Faster-than-light neutrino puzzle claimed solved by special relativity 3. Historic 1
stLaunch of Legendary Soyuz from South America
4. GAIA – A Billion Eyes on the Skies 5. 1 Clock with 2 times
6. American Physical Society responds to Texas closures 7. This state-of-the-art classroom makes physics fun 8. Dark matter mystery deepens
9. Using new technique, scientists uncover a delicate magnetic balance for superconductivity
10. Can gamma-ray bursts destroy life on Earth?
11. Why there's no such thing as north and south
Update on superluminal neutrinos
Physicsworld.com
New data from OPERA's sister experiment ICARUS have failed to yield any evidence for superluminal neutrinos. More precisely, ICARUS has shown that neutrinos traveling from CERN to Gran Sasso do not emit electron–positron pairs. Emission of such pairs is expected if the neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light, according to a preprint published recently by Andrew Cohen and Sheldon Glashow.
MORE
Faster-than-light neutrino puzzle claimed solved by special relativity
Technology Review
Ronald van Elburg at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands has suggested that one effect that the OPERA team seems to have overlooked: the relativistic motion of the GPS clocks. Although the speed of light does not depend on the the frame of reference, the time of flight does. In this case, there are two frames of reference: the experiment on the ground and the clocks in orbit. If these are moving relative to each other, then this needs to be factored in. MORE
Historic 1st Launch of Legendary Soyuz from South America
First Soyuz blastoff from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 21 October 2011 with first two Galileo IOV navigation satellites. Credits:Thilo Kranz/DLR - Special to Universe Today
Russia’s legendary Soyuz rocket soared skywards today (Oct.21) on its historic 1st ever blastoff from a new European space base in the equatorial jungles of South America. The history making liftoff of the Soyuz ST-B launcher from French Guiana occurred at exactly 6:30:26 a.m. EST (10:30:26 GMT) and lofted the first two operational satellites of Europe’s new Galileo GPS navigation system.
The flawless liftoff of the Soyuz booster from the ELS pad in French Guiana marked the first time that a Soyuz was launched from outside of the six existing pads in Russia and Kazakhstan. The joint Russian- European project was started back in 2004 and culminated with today’s launch of the Soyuz-VSO1 mission. (...)
Read the rest of Historic 1st Launch of Legendary Soyuz from South America (609 words)
GAIA – A Billion Eyes On The Skies
Artist Concept of GAIA - Credit: ESA
Its name is GAIA and it’s perhaps the most ambitious project which has ever faced the European Space Agency. Scheduled to launch in 2013, this new breed of space telescope will stately progress to Lagrange
Point 2, where it will spend the next five years. Its mission? To create the largest and most precise three dimensional chart of our Galaxy by providing unprecedented positional and radial velocity
measurements for about one billion stars in our Galaxy and throughout the Local Group. (...) Read the rest of GAIA – A Billion Eyes On The Skies (681 words)
1 clock with 2 times
Vienna, Austria (SPX) Oct 21, 2011 - The unification of quantum mechanics and Einstein's general relativity is one of the most exciting and still open questions in modern physics. General relativity, the joint theory of gravity, space and time gives predictions that become clearly evident on a cosmic scale of stars and galaxies. Quantum effects, on the other hand, are fragile and are typically observed on small scales, e.g. w ... more
American Physical Society responds to Texas closures
APS
The president of the American Physical Society has sent a letter to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board that urges the THECB to carefully consider the repercussions that will ensue from terminating the ability to offer BA or BS degrees at a number of low-enrollment physics programs in Texas. Chief amongst the repercussions are the loss of departments that can effectively educate high school physics teachers, and the impact on Hispanic and African-American students as the affected universities disproportionally serve these communities, with doubled or tripled rates of graduation by underrepresented groups from the programs slated for closure compared to Texas public institutions as a whole. MORE
This state-of-the-art classroom makes physics fun
Orlando Sentinel The new "studio" classroom at Bishop Moore Catholic High in Orlando, Fla., is not only a showcase for state-of-the-art technology, but also for the belief that students learn best if teachers ask questions, present problems, prod them to think and then get out of the way and let them work. Bishop Moore's new classroom is modeled on a concept begun more than a decade ago in the physics department at North Carolina State University. It has since spread to more than 100 colleges and universities, from Clemson to Florida State to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MORE
Dark matter mystery deepens
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
A recent study has found that in two nearby galaxies the dark matter is distributed uniformly over a relatively large region, several hundred light-years across. This contradicts the prediction that the density of dark matter should increase sharply toward the centers of these galaxies. The new
measurements imply that either normal matter affects dark matter more than expected, or dark matter isn't "cold," i.e., slow-moving. MORE
Using new technique, scientists uncover a delicate magnetic balance for superconductivity
ScienceDaily
A modified scanning tunneling microscope where researchers can pull or push electrons into a material has allowed a team at Cornell University's Laboratory for Atomic and Solid State Physics to visualize what happens when they change the electronic structure of a "heavy fermion" compound made of uranium, ruthenium and silicon. Using this technique they have found that while at higher-temperatures magnetism is detrimental to superconductivity, at low temperatures in heavy fermion materials,
magnetic atoms are a necessity. MORE
Can gamma-ray bursts destroy life on Earth?
LiveScience via msbnc.com
The persistence of life on Earth may depend on massive explosions on the other side of the galaxy, according to a new theory that suggests gamma-ray bursts could have played a part in some of our
planet's major extinction events. Gamma-ray bursts — thought to occur when two stars collide — can release tons of high-energy gamma-ray radiation into space. Researchers have found that such blasts could be contributing to the depletion of the Earth's ozone layer. Disruption of the ozone layer lets ultraviolet light filter down to the surface of the Earth, where it can change organisms by mutating their genes. Now, researchers are beginning to connect the timing of these gamma-ray bursts to extinctions on Earth that can be dated through the fossil record. MORE
Why there's no such thing as north and south
Scientific American The human mind often confuses familiarity with understanding. That is why many of us who studied science or engineering or mathematics in college find it hard to convince ourselves that electromagnetism — one of the four fundamental forces of nature — does not have a preferred handedness. (which in particular implies that one cannot use the laws of electromagnetism to explain our concept of left and right to far away aliens, or explain it to martians over the phone, as Richard Feynman put it). MORE