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Curious Cat Science and Egineering blog full tag cloud
Did our cosmos exist before the big bang?
In classical cosmology, a phenomenon called inflation caused the universe to expand at incredible speed in the first fractions of a second after the big bang. This inflationary phase is needed to explain why the temperature of faraway regions of the universe is almost identical, even though heat should not have had time to spread that far - the so-called horizon problem. It also explains why the universe is so finely balanced between expanding forever and contracting eventually under gravity - the flatness problem. Cosmologists invoke a particle called the inflaton to make inflation happen, but precious little is known about it.
Related: Cosmology Questions Answered - Quantum Mechanics Made Relatively Simple Podcasts - 10 Most Beautiful Physics Experiments - Extra-Universal Matter
I started maintaining a list of Congressmen with PhDs and graduate degrees in science, engineering and math awhile back.
Please comment with any additions that you know of.
The following were re-elected:
Vernon Ehlers, Michigan, physics PhD; Rush Holt, New Jersey, physics PhD; John Olver, Massachusetts, chemistry PhD; Brian Baird, Washington, psychology PhD; Bill Foster, Illinois, physics PhD.
Other scientists, engineers and mathematicians that were reelected include: Ron Paul, Texas, biology BS, MD; Jerry McNerney, California, mathematics PhD; Dan Lipinski, Illinois, mechanical engineering BS, engineering-economic systems MS; Todd Akin, Mississippi, management engineering BS;Cliff Stearns, Florida, electrical engineering BS; Louise Slaughter, New York, microbiology BS; Joe Barton, Texas, industrial engineering BS, Pete Stark, California, engineering BS, Mike Honda, California.
Lost: Nancy Boyda, Kansas (BS chemistry).
Newly elected: Bill Cassidy, Louisiana (BS Biochemistry, MD); Pete Olson, Texas (BA computer science); Kurt Schrader, Oregon (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine); Martin Heinrich, New Mexico (BS engineering), Gregg Harper, Mississippi (BS chemistry), Joseph Cao, Mississippi (BA physics); Brett Guthrie, Virginia (BS mathematical economics); Erik Paulsen, Minnesota, mathematics BA; Parker Griffith, Alabama (BS chemistry, MD); Cynthia Lummis, Wyoming (BS animal science and biology).
Before you leap to the conclusion that scientists are taking over Congress, remember 2 things: 1) I have probably been missing plenty that were in congress already and 2) this is still a total of less than 10% with even a BS in science, math or engineering. I attempted to determine the status of all those newly elected this year.
Please comment, if you know of others in Congress with science and engineering backgrounds. If we get this list to be relative close to accurate then we can start tracking the total representation in congress and see if it is increasing, decreasing or randomly fluctuating over time.
Related: Scientists and Engineers in Congress - China’s Technology Savvy Leadership - Science and Engineering in Politics - The A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science
Dark Matter Proof Found Over Antarctica?
Either way, the unusual particles are exciting for astrophysicists, who say they could someday confirm or deny decades of unproven theories. “In the first case, we have now seen for the first time a nearby source of cosmic rays.
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Cosmic rays are not beams per se but are any protons, electrons, and other subatomic particles that careen toward Earth from a variety of sources, including the supernova explosions that mark the deaths of stars.
Most of the cosmic electrons that reach Earth are low-energy, because the highest-energy ones fizzle the fastest and don’t last long enough to get here.
Related: Dark Cosmos - Finding Dark Matter - Explaining the Missing Antimatter - More Mysterious Space Phenomenon - Cosmology Questions Answered
Unknown “Structures” Tugging at Universe, Study Says
The theory could rewrite the laws of physics. Current models say the known, or visible, universe - which extends as far as light could have traveled since the big bang - is essentially the same as the rest of space-time (the three dimensions of space plus time).
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Not everyone is ready to rewrite physics just yet. Astrophysicist Hume Feldman of the University of Kansas has detected a similar, but weaker, flow. He said the Kashlinsky team’s study is “very interesting, very intriguing, [but] a lot more work needs to be done.
“It’s suggestive that something’s going on, but what exactly is going on? It basically tells us to investigate,” he said. David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton University, echoed the sentiment. “Until these results are reanalyzed by another group, I have strong doubts about the validity of the conclusions of this paper,” he wrote in an email.
Very interesting stuff and another example of the scientific process of discovery.
Related: More Mysterious Space Phenomenon - Laws of Physics May Need a Revision - Everything that we measure is within the Universe
One of the things I really hope this blog helps accomplish is to show how science progresses (which explains why I use that tag so often, 3rd most, other popular tags: animals (most used), engineers 2nd, fun and webcasts tied for 4th).
Science is a process of continual learning as curiosity leads us to seek better understanding. On a small scale this can mean a person learning more about knowledge already understood by others. But it also means the scientific community facing new questions and coming up with new explanations for the new questions raised by observations (and testing those new explanations…). Mysterious New ‘Dark Flow’ Discovered in Space
“We found a very significant velocity, and furthermore, this velocity does not decrease with distance, as far as we can measure,” Kashlinsky told SPACE.com. “The matter in the observable universe just cannot produce the flow we measure.”
Related: Laws of Physics May Need a Revision - Great Physics Webcast Lectures - Challenging the Science Status Quo - Parasite Rex
A full investigation is underway, but it is already clear that the sector will have to be warmed up for repairs to take place. This implies a minimum of two months down time for LHC operation. For the same fault, not uncommon in a normally conducting machine, the repair time would be a matter of days.
Related: CERN Pressure Test Failure - At the Heart of All Matter - New Yorker on CERN’s Large Hadron Collider - What Makes Scientists Different 
Enjoy. Ok, you might not want to go download this groups other tracks (if you do there aren’t any, by the way) but it is a fun LHC adventure. By Katherine McAlpine and others at CERN.
Related: science is fun - posts about CERN - Brian Cox Particle Physics Webcast - Great Physics Webcast Lectures
Those advances came, in large measure, from the United States. The coming decades may be different.
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A third of the scientists working at the LHC hail from outside the 20 states that control CERN. America has contributed 1,000 or so researchers, the largest single contingent from any non-CERN nation.
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The U.S. contribution amounts to $500 million—barely 5 percent of the bill. The big bucks have come from the Europeans. Germany is picking up 20 percent of the tab, the British are contributing 17 percent, and the French are giving 14 percent.
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The most worrying prospect is that scientists from other countries, who used to flock to the United States to be where the action is, are now heading to Europe instead.
This is a point I have made before. The economic benefits of investing in science are real. The economic benefits of having science and engineering centers of excellence in your country are real. That doesn’t mean you automatically gain economic benefit but it is a huge advantage and opportunity if you act intelligently to make it pay off.
Related: Invest in Science for a Strong Economy - Diplomacy and Science Research - Asia: Rising Stars of Science and Engineering - Brain Drain Benefits to the USA Less Than They Could Be - posts on funding science exploration - posts on basic research - At the Heart of All Matter
Science’s 10 Most Beautiful Experiments by George Johnson
In the late 1500’s, everyone knew that heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones. After all, Aristotle had said so. That an ancient Greek scholar still held such sway was a sign of how far science had declined during the dark ages.
Galileo Galilei, who held a chair in mathematics at the University of Pisa, was impudent enough to question the common knowledge. The story has become part of the folklore of science: he is reputed to have dropped two different weights from the town’s Leaning Tower showing that they landed at the same time. His challenges to Aristotle may have cost Galileo his job, but he had demonstrated the importance of taking nature, not human authority, as the final arbiter in matters of science.
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Young’s double-slit experiment applied to the interference of single electrons
Though it is not simply made of particles, neither can it be described purely as a wave. In the first five years of the 20th century, Max Planck and then Albert Einstein showed, respectively, that light is emitted and absorbed in packets — called photons. But other experiments continued to verify that light is also wavelike.
It took quantum theory, developed over the next few decades, to reconcile how both ideas could be true: photons and other subatomic particles — electrons, protons, and so forth — exhibit two complementary qualities; they are, as one physicist put it, ”wavicles.”
Eratosthenes’ measurement of the Earth’s circumference -the librarian at Alexandria in the third century B.C. estimated the circumference of the planet
Related: Book, The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments by George Johnson (not the same experiments) - Home Experiments: Quantum Erasing - Particles and Waves - theory of knowledge - scientific experiments
Quantum Teleportation from xkcd.
Related: What Makes Scientists Different - Teleportation Science - Ninja Professors - Programmers (comic) - Adventures in Synthetic Biology
Read a very nice biography from Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics for Werner Heisenberg, the founder of quantum mechanics, and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle:
He relied instead on what can be observed, namely the light emitted and absorbed by the atoms. By July 1925 Heisenberg had an answer, but the mathematics was so unfamiliar that he was not sure if it made any sense. Heisenberg handed a paper on the derivation to his mentor, Max Born, before leaving on a month-long lecture trip to Holland and England and a camping trip to Scandinavia with his youth-movement group. After puzzling over the derivation, Born finally recognized that the unfamiliar mathematics was related to the mathematics of arrays of numbers known as “matrices.” Born sent Heisenberg’s paper off for publication. It was the breakthrough to quantum mechanics.
Related: 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics - photo, 1927 - Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science by David Lindley - 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics - posts on physics
MIT physicists shed light on key superconductivity riddle
In their latest work, published online on July 6 in Nature Physics, they suggest that the pseudogap is not a precursor to superconductivity, as has been theorized, but a competing state. If that is true, it could completely change the way physicists look at superconductivity, said Hudson.
“Now, if you want to explain high-temperature superconductivity and you believe the pseudogap is a precursor, you need to explain both. If it turns out that it is a competing state, you can instead focus more on superconductivity,” he said.
Related: Mystery of High-Temperature Superconductivity - Superconducting Surprise - Florida State lures Applied Superconductivity Center from Wisconsin
Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo
Magnetic Movie was shot in NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratories at UC Berkeley for Chanel 4 in association with the Arts Council of England.
Magnetic Movie is the aquavit, something not precisely scientific but grants us an uncanny experience of geophysical and cosmological forces.
Cool video: I must admit I am confused at how extensive the artistic license taken with the animation is.
Related: SciVee Science Webcasts - The Art and Science of Imaging - Art of Science 2006 - Nikon Small World Photos
Using a light touch to measure protein bonds
With this technique, the researchers can get a precise measurement of the force holding the proteins together, which is on the order of piconewtons (10-12 newtons).
Related: Neuroengineers Use Light to Silence Overactive Neurons - Slowing Down Light - Foldit, the Protein Folding Game
Experts unveil ‘cloak of silence’
Related: Engineering Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak - New Hearing Mechanism - Human Sonar: Echolocation - Video Goggles
The Shaw Prize awards $1 million in each of 3 areas: Astronomy; Life Science and Medicine; and Mathematical Sciences. The award was established in 2002 by Run Run Shaw who was born in China and made his money in the movie industry. The prize is administered in Hong Kong and awards those “who have achieved significant breakthrough in academic and scientific research or application and whose work has resulted in a positive and profound impact on mankind.” The 2008 Shaw Laureates have been selected.
Astronomy
Professor Reinhard Genzel, Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, in recognition of his outstanding contribution in demonstrating that the Milky Way contains a supermassive black hole at its centre.
In 1969, Donald Lynden-Bell and Martin Rees suggested that the Milky Way might contain a supermassive black hole. But evidence for such an object was lacking at the time because the centre of the Milky Way is obscured by interstellar dust, and was detected only as a relatively faint radio source. Reinhard Genzel obtained compelling evidence for this conjecture by developing state-of-the-art astronomical instruments and carrying out a persistent programme of observing our Galactic Centre for many years, which ultimately led to the discovery of a black hole with a mass a few million times that of the Sun, in the centre of the Milky Way.
Supermassive black holes are now recognized to account for the luminous sources seen at the nuclei of galaxies and to play a fundamental role in the formation of galaxies.
Mathematical Sciences
Vladimir Arnold, together with Andrei Kolmogorov and Jurgen Moser, made fundamental contributions to the study of stability in dynamical systems, exemplified by the motion of the planets round the sun. This work laid the foundation for all subsequent developments right up to the present time.
Arnold also produced extremely fruitful ideas, relating classical mechanics to questions of topology. This includes the famous Arnold Conjecture which was only recently solved.
In classical hydrodynamics the basic equations of an ideal fluid were derived by Euler in 1757 and major steps towards understanding them were taken by Helmholtz in 1858, and Kelvin in 1869. The next significant breakthrough was made by Arnold a century later and this has provided the basis for more recent work.
Ludwig Faddeev has made many important contributions to quantum physics. Together with Boris Popov he showed the right way to quantize the famous non-Abelian theory which underlies all contemporary work on sub-atomic physics. This led in particular to the work of ′t Hooft and Veltman which was recognized by the Nobel Prize for Physics of 1999.
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