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New research shows Universe expansion pace isn’t as fast as assumed earlier

The Universe is expanding and any student of astronomy will vouch to this fact. However according to a team of astronomers the acceleration of the universe may not be as quick as it was assumed earlier.

A team of astronomers have discovered that certain types of supernova are more varied than earlier thought of and in the process have led to the biggest mystery of the universe-how fast is the universe expanding after the big bang?

Peter A. Milne of the University of Arizona said, “We found that the differences are not random, but lead to separating Ia supernovae into two groups, where the group that is in the minority near us are in the majority at large distances — and thus when the universe was younger, there are different populations out there, and they have not been recognized. The big assumption has been that as you go from near to far, type Ia supernovae are the same. That doesn’t appear to be the case.”

The discovery throws new light on the currently accepted view of the universe expanding at a faster and faster rate pulled apart by an unknown force called dark energy this observation resulted in 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics.

Milne said, “The idea behind this reasoning, is that type Ia supernovae happen to be the same brightness — they all end up pretty similar when they explode. Once people knew why, they started using them as mileposts for the far side of the universe.The faraway supernovae should be like the ones nearby because they look like them, but because they’re fainter than expected, it led people to conclude they’re farther away than expected, and this in turn has led to the conclusion that the universe is expanding faster than it did in the past.”

The researchers felt that the accelerating universe can be explained on the basis of color difference in between two groups of supernova leaving less acceleration than earlier assumed and in the process will require lesser dark energy.

Milne said, “We’re proposing that our data suggest there might be less dark energy than textbook knowledge, but we can’t put a number on it, until our paper, the two populations of supernovae were treated as the same population. To get that final answer, you need to do all that work again, separately for the red and for the blue population.

Type la supernovae are considered as a benchmark for far away sources of light they do have a fraction of variability which has limited our knowledge of the size of the universe.

The distance of objects with the aid of our binocular vision and the best space-based telescopes and most sophisticated techniques works out in the range of ten or twenty thousand light years.

However as compared to the vastness of space, this is just pea nuts.

For Distances greater than that it is imperative to compare the absolute and observed brightness of well understood objects and to use the difference to determine the object’s distance.

In astronomy it is difficult to find an object of known brightness since there are examples of both bright and dim stars and galaxies. However there is one event which can be used to work out its absolute brightness. Supernovas are the final stages of a dying star and it explodes with such violence, the flash can be seen across the vast universe.

Type la Supernovae occurs in a binary star system when a white dwarf scoops off mass from its fellow star. This reproducible mechanism gives a well determined brightness and therefore scientists term such Type la supernovae as ‘standard candles’.

Astronomers found that the Type la supernovae is so uniform that it has been designated as cosmic beacons and used to assess the depths of the universe. It is now revealed that they fall into different populations and are not very uniform as previously thought. .

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Shortest Total Lunar Eclipse of the Century Visible Early Saturday

April 3, 2015 / Greg Giles / 0 Comments

Excerpt from space.com
By Calia Cofield

Don't forget to look skyward in the early hours of Saturday morning (April 4), to catch a glimpse of the shortest total lunar eclipse of the century.

The moon will be completely swallowed by Earth's shadow for just 4 minutes and 43 seconds on Saturday morning, according to NASA officials. During that time, the moon may change from its normal grayish hue to a deep, blood red. The total eclipse begins at 6:16 a.m. EDT (1016 GMT). You can watch a live webcast of the eclipse on the Slooh Observatory website, Slooh.com, or here at Space.com courtesy of Slooh, starting at 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT).
That color change can make for a dramatic display, especially for humans in the distant past, NASA officials said.

"For early humans, [a lunar eclipse] was a time when they were concerned that life might end, because the moon became blood red and the light that the moon provided at night might have been taken away permanently," Mitzi Adams, an astronomer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, said during a news conference today (April 3). "But fortunately, [the light] always returned."

The April 4 eclipse is the third in a series of four total lunar eclipses — known as a lunar tetrad — visible in the United States. Each of the eclipses is separated by about 6 months. The final installment of this four-eclipse series will occur on Sept. 28. Saturday's lunar eclipse follows closely behind the total solar eclipse that took place on March 20.

Earth's shadow has an outer ring, called the penumbra, and an inner core, called the umbra. Where the moon passes into the penumbra, it appears dark, as if a bite had been taken out of it. When the moon passes though the umbra, it turns a deep, red color.

A total lunar eclipse occurs when the moon is totally submerged in the umbra. On Saturday, the moon will begin to enter the umbra at about 6:16 a.m. EDT (1016 GMT) but will not be completely covered by the shadow until about 7:57 EDT (1157 GMT), after the moon has set in most locations east of the Mississippi River.

While the total eclipse will last less than five minutes, the moon will be partially submerged in the umbra for about one hour and 40 minutes. The dark shadow of the penumbra will first be visible on the moon's surface starting at about 5:35 a.m. EDT (0935 GMT), according to Sky and Telescope magazine.

Viewers west of the Mississippi River will be able to see the total lunar eclipse, starting at about 4:57 a.m. PDT (1157 GMT). Skywatchers in Hawaii and western Alaska will be able to watch the entire eclipse, from the moon's entrance to its exit from the penumbra.

Viewing Guide for Total Lunar Eclipse, April 4, 2015

This world maps shows the regions where the April 4 total lunar eclipse will be visible. The best viewing locations are in the Pacific Ocean.

This weekend's eclipse is extremely short because the moon is only passing through the outskirts of the umbra. (The shortest total lunar eclipse in recorded history, according to Adams, was in 1529 and lasted only 1 minute and 41 seconds).

The eclipse will not be visible in Europe or most of Africa. The partial eclipse will be visible in all except the easternmost parts of South America. The best viewing locations for the total eclipse will be in the Pacific region, including eastern Australia, New Zealand and other parts of Oceania.

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10 Pictures of Europe’s Shameful “Human Zoos”

April 2, 2015 / Steven Laniers Metaphysical Directory - Main Article Directory / 0 Comments

It was not too long ago that people from France, Belgium, Germany, and other countries came to visit humans who were locked up in cages. In these zoos, humans were on exhibit in front of a large audience, locked in with animals at a local zoo. Hundreds of thousands of people would visit these minorities who were on display like animals. The humans zoos were a large attraction, as 18 million came to visit the World Fair in 1889, held in Paris. Over four hundred Aboriginals [...]

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How Quantum Physics will change your life and amaze the world!

March 20, 2015 / Greg Giles / 0 Comments

Excerpt from educatinghumanity.com "Anyone not shocked by quantum mechanics has not yet understood it."Niels Bohr10 Ways Quantum Physics Will Change the WorldEver want to have a "life do over", teleport, time travel, have your computer wor...

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Does Death Exist? New Theory Says ‘No’

March 15, 2015 / Greg Giles / 0 Comments

Excerpt from robertlanza.com

Many of us fear death. We believe in death because we have been told we will die. We associate ourselves with the body, and we know that bodies die. But a new scientific theory suggests that death is not the terminal event we think.
One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the “many-worlds” interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the ‘multiverse’). A new scientific theory – called biocentrism – refines these ideas. There are an infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling – the ‘Who am I?’- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn’t go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other?
Consider an experiment that was recently published in the journal Science showing that scientists could retroactively change something that had happened in the past. Particles had to decide how to behave when they hit a beam splitter. Later on, the experimenter could turn a second switch on or off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle did in the past. Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it is you who will experience the outcomes that will result. The linkages between these various histories and universes transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time. Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply holo-projecting either this or that result onto a screen. Whether you turn the second beam splitter on or off, it’s still the same battery or agent responsible for the projection.
According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air – if you take everything away, what’s left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You can’t see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.
Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, “Now Besso” (an old friend) “has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us…know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Immortality doesn’t mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether.
This was clear with the death of my sister Christine. After viewing her body at the hospital, I went out to speak with family members. Christine’s husband – Ed – started to sob uncontrollably. For a few moments I felt like I was transcending the provincialism of time. I thought about the 20-watts of energy, and about experiments that show a single particle can pass through two holes at the same time. I could not dismiss the conclusion: Christine was both alive and dead, outside of time.
Christine had had a hard life. She had finally found a man that she loved very much. My younger sister couldn’t make it to her wedding because she had a card game that had been scheduled for several weeks. My mother also couldn’t make the wedding due to an important engagement she had at the Elks Club. The wedding was one of the most important days in Christine’s life. Since no one else from our side of the family showed, Christine asked me to walk her down the aisle to give her away.
Soon after the wedding, Christine and Ed were driving to the dream house they had just bought when their car hit a patch of black ice. She was thrown from the car and landed in a banking of snow.
“Ed,” she said “I can’t feel my leg.”
She never knew that her liver had been ripped in half and blood was rushing into her peritoneum.
After the death of his son, Emerson wrote “Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.”
Whether it’s flipping the switch for the Science experiment, or turning the driving wheel ever so slightly this way or that way on black-ice, it’s the 20-watts of energy that will experience the result. In some cases the car will swerve off the road, but in other cases the car will continue on its way to my sister’s dream house.
Christine had recently lost 100 pounds, and Ed had bought her a surprise pair of diamond earrings. It’s going to be hard to wait, but I know Christine is going to look fabulous in them the next time I see her.

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A Complete Guide to the March 20th Total Solar Eclipse

March 12, 2015 / Greg Giles / 0 Comments

Totality! The 2012 total solar eclipse as seen from Australia. Credit and copyright: www.hughca.com.

Excerpt from universetoday.com

The first of two eclipse seasons for the year is upon us this month, and kicks off with the only total solar eclipse for 2015 on Friday, March 20^th.

And what a bizarre eclipse it is. Not only does this eclipse begin just 15 hours prior to the March equinox marking the beginning of astronomical spring in the northern hemisphere, but the shadow of totality also beats path through the high Arctic and ends over the North Pole.

An animation of the March 20th eclipse. Credit: NASA/GSFC/AT Sinclair.

Already, umbraphiles — those who chase eclipses — are converging on the two small tracts of terra firma where the umbra of the Moon makes landfall: the Faroe and Svalbard islands. All of Europe, the northern swath of the African continent, north-central Asia and the Middle East will see a partial solar eclipse, and the eclipse will be deeper percentage-wise the farther north you are .
2015 features four eclipses in all: two total lunars and two solars, with one total solar and one partial solar eclipse. Four is the minimum number of eclipses that can occur in a calendar year, and although North America misses out on the solar eclipse action this time ’round, most of the continent gets a front row seat to the two final total lunar eclipses of the ongoing tetrad on April 4^th and September 28^th.

How rare is a total solar eclipse on the vernal equinox? Well, the last total solar eclipse on the March equinox occurred back in 1662 on March 20^th. There was also a hybrid eclipse — an eclipse which was annular along a portion of the track, and total along another — on March 20^th, 1681. But you won’t have to wait that long for the next, as another eclipse falls on the northward equinox on March 20^th, 2034.

The path of the March 20th eclipse across Europe, including start times for the partial phases, and the path of totality, click to enlarge. For more maps showing the percentage of occlusion, elevation, and more, click here. Credit: Michael Zeiler/GreatAmercianEclipse.com.

Note that in the 21^st century, the March equinox falls on March 20^th, and will start occasionally falling on March 19^th in 2044. We’re also in that wacky time of year where North America has shifted back to ye ‘ole Daylight Saving (or Summer) Time, while Europe makes the change after the eclipse on March 29^th. It really can wreak havoc with those cross-time zone plans, we know…
The March 20^th eclipse also occurs only a day after lunar perigee, which falls on March 19^th at 19:39 UT. This is also one of the closer lunar perigees for 2015 at 357,583 kilometres distant, though the maximum duration of totality for this eclipse is only 2 minutes and 47 seconds just northeast of the Faroe Islands.

Views from selected locales in Europe and Africa. Credit: Stellarium.

This eclipse is number 61 of 71 in solar saros series 120, which runs from 933 to 2754 AD. It’s also the second to last total in the series, with the final total solar eclipse for the saros cycle occurring one saros later on March 30^th, 2033.

What would it look like to sit at the North Pole and watch a total solar eclipse on the first day of Spring? It would be a remarkable sight, as the disk of the Sun skims just above the horizon for the first time since the September 2014 equinox. Does this eclipse occur at sunrise or sunset as seen from the pole? It would be a rare spectacle indeed!

An equinoctal eclipse as simulated from the North Pole. Credit: Stellarium.

Practicing eclipse safety in Africa. Credit: Michael Zeiler/GreatAmericanEclipse.com

Safety is paramount when observing the Sun and a solar eclipse. Eye protection is mandatory during all partial phases across Europe, northern Asia, North Africa and the Middle East. A proper solar filter mask constructed of Baader safety film is easy to construct, and should fit snugly over the front aperture of a telescope. No. 14 welder’s goggles are also dense enough to look at the Sun, as are safety glasses specifically designed for eclipse viewing. Observing the Sun via projection or by using a pinhole projector is safe and easy to do.

A solar filtered scope ready to go in Tucson, Arizona. Credit: photo by author.

Weather is always the big variable in the days leading up to any eclipse. Unfortunately, March in the North Atlantic typically hosts stormy skies, and the low elevation of the eclipse in the sky may hamper observations as well. From the Faroe Islands, the Sun sits 18 degrees above the horizon during totality, while from the Svalbard Islands it’s even lower at 12 degrees in elevation. Much of Svalbard is also mountainous, making for sunless pockets of terrain that will be masked in shadow on eclipse day. Mean cloud amounts for both locales run in the 70% range, and the Eclipser website hosts a great in-depth climatology discussion for this and every eclipse.

The view of totality and the planets as seen from the Faroe Islands. Credit: Starry Night.

But don’t despair: you only need a clear view of the Sun to witness an eclipse!

Solar activity is also another big variable. Witnesses to the October 23^rd, 2014 partial solar eclipse over the U.S. southwest will recall that we had a massive and very photogenic sunspot turned Earthward at the time. The Sun has been remarkably calm as of late, though active sunspot region 2297 is developing nicely. It will have rotated to the solar limb come eclipse day, and we should have a good grasp on what solar activity during the eclipse will look like come early next week.

And speaking of which: could an auroral display be in the cards for those brief few minutes of totality? It’s not out of the question, assuming the Sun cooperates. Of course, the pearly white corona of the Sun still gives off a considerable amount of light during totality, equal to about half the brightness of a Full Moon. Still, witnessing two of nature’s grandest spectacles — a total solar eclipse and the aurora borealis — simultaneously would be an unforgettable sight, and to our knowledge, has never been documented!

We also put together some simulations of the eclipse as seen from Earth and space:

Note that an area of southern Spain may witness a transit of the International Space Station during the partial phase of the eclipse. This projection is tentative, as the orbit of the ISS evolves over time. Be sure to check CALSky for accurate predictions in the days leading up to the eclipse.

The ISS transits the Sun during the eclipse around 9:05 UT as seen from southern Spain. Credit: Starry Night.

Can’t make it to the eclipse? Live in the wrong hemisphere? There are already a few planned webcasts for the March 20^th eclipse:

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Warp in spacetime lets astronomers watch the same star explode four times

March 8, 2015 / Greg Giles / 0 Comments

Excerpt from csmonitor.com

Thanks to a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured four images of the same supernova explosion.

For the first time, a cosmic magnifying glass has allowed scientists to see the same star explosion four times, possibly offering a revealing glimpse into these explosive stellar deaths and the nature of the accelerating universe.

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have captured four images of a supernova explosion in deep space thanks to a galaxy located between Earth and the massive star explosion. You can see how Hubble saw the supernova in this NASA video. The galaxy cluster warped the fabric of space and time around it — like a bowling ball placed on a bed sheet — allowing scientists to see the supernova in four images.

"It was predicted 50 years ago that a supernova could be gravitationally lensed like this, but it's taken a long time for someone to find an example," lead study author Patrick Kelly, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley told Space.com. "It's fun to have been able to find the first one."

The supernova, which was discovered on Nov. 11, 2014, is located about 9.3 billion light-years away from Earth, near the edge of the observable universe. The researchers have named the distant supernova SN Refsdal in honor of the late Norwegian astrophysicist Sjur Refsdal, a pioneer of gravitational lensing studies. Due to gravitational lensing, "the supernova appears 20 times brighter than its normal brightness," study co-author Jens Hjorth, head of the Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, said in a statement.

The lensing galaxy, which is about 5 billion light-years from Earth, is part of a large cluster of galaxies known MACS J1149.6+2223. In 2009, astronomers discovered that this cluster was the source of the largest known image of a spiral galaxy ever seen through a gravitational lens.

The four images of the supernova each appeared separately over the course of a few weeks. This is because light can take various paths around and through a gravitational lens, arriving at Earth at different times.

Using gravity as a lens

Gravity is created when matter warps the fabric of reality. The greater the mass of an object, the more space-time curves around that object and the stronger its gravitational pull, the discovery enshrined in Einstein's theory of general relativity, which celebrates its centennial this year.

As a result, gravity can also bend light like a lens, meaning objects see n behind powerful gravitational fields, such as those of massive galaxies, are magnified. Gravitational lensing was first discovered in 1979, and today gravitational lenses can help astronomers see features otherwise too distant and faint to detect with even the largest telescopes.

"These gravitational lenses are like a natural magnifying glass. It's like having a much bigger telescope," Kelly said in a statement. "We can get magnifications of up to 100 times by looking through these galaxy clusters."

When light is far from a gravitationally lensing mass, or if the gravitationally lensing mass is not especially large, only "weak lensing" occurs, barely distorting the light. However, when the light comes from almost exactly behind the gravitationally lensing mass, "strong lensing" can happen.

When a strongly lensed object occupies a large patch of space — for instance, if it's a galaxy — it can get smeared into an "Einstein ring" surrounding a gravitationally lensing mass. However, strong lensing of small, pointlike items — for instance, super-bright objects known as quasars — often produces multiple images surrounding the gravitationally lensing mass, resulting in a so-called "Einstein cross."

The observations of SN Refsdal mark the first time astronomers on Earth have witnessed strong lensing of a supernova, with four images of an exploding star arrayed as an Einstein cross.

An expanding universe

These new findings could help scientists measure the accelerating rate at which the universe is expanding, researchers say.

A computer model of the lensing cluster suggests the scientists missed chances to see the lensed supernova 50 and 10 years ago. However, the model also suggests more images of the explosion will repeat again within the next 10 years.

The timing of when all these images of the supernova arrive depends on the gravitational pull of the matter generating the gravitational lens. So, by measuring those times, the researchers hope to map how visible normal matter and invisible dark matter is distributed in the lensing galaxy.

Dark matter is currently one of the greatest mysteries in science, a poorly understood substance thought to make up five-sixths of all matter in the universe. A better understanding of how dark matter is behaving in this gravitationally lensing cluster might help shed light on the material's nature, Kelly said.

Analyzing when the images arrive could also help scientists pinpoint the rate at which the universe is expanding. Although there are already several ways to measure the cosmic expansion rate, "there has been a lot of heated debate between different methods, so it'd be interesting to see how this new technique might affect the area," Kelly said. "It's always nice to have completely independent measurements of the same quantity."

The scientists detailed their findings in the March 6 issue of the journal Science.

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‘God Particle’ analogue spotted outside a supercollider: Scientists find Higgs mode in a superconductor

February 25, 2015 / Greg Giles / 0 Comments

The God Particle, which is believed to be responsible for all the mass in the universe, was discovered in 2012 using a Cern's supercollider. In this image two high-energy photons collide. The yellow lines are the measured tracks of other particles produced in the collision, which helped lead to the discovery of the God particle.

Excerpt from dailymail.co.uk

God Particle is believed to be responsible for all the mass in the universe
Particle was discovered in 2012 using a Cern's supercollider in Geneva
uperconductor experiment suggests the particle could be detected without the huge amounts of energy used at by the Large Hadron Collider
LHC is due to come back online next month after an upgrade that has given it a big boost in energy

Scientists have discovered a simulated version of the elusive 'God particle' using superconductors.

The God Particle, which is believed to be responsible for all the mass in the universe, was discovered in 2012 using a Cern's supercollider.

The superconductor experiment suggests that the Higgs particle could be detected without the huge amounts of energy used at by the Large Hadron Collider.

The results could help scientists better understand how this mysterious particle – also known as the Higgs boson – behaves in different conditions.

'Just as the Cern experiments revealed the existence of the Higgs boson in a high-energy accelerator environment, we have now revealed a Higgs boson analogue in superconductors,' said researcher Aviad Frydman from Bar-Ilan University.

Superconductors are a type of metal that, when cooled to low temperatures, allow electrons to pass through freely.

'The Higgs mode was never actually observed in superconductors because of technical difficulties - difficulties that we've managed to overcome,' Professor Frydman said.

The superconductor experiment suggests that the Higgs particle could be detected without the huge amounts of energy used at by the Large Hadron Collider (pictured)

WHAT IS THE GOD PARTICLE?

The 'God Particle', also known as the Higgs boson, was a missing piece in the jigsaw for physicists in trying to understand how the universe works.

Scientists believe that a fraction of a second after the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe, an invisible energy field, called the Higgs field, formed.

This has been described as a kind of 'cosmic treacle' across the universe.

As particles passed through it, they picked up mass, giving them size and shape and allowing them to form the atoms that make up you, everything around you and everything in the universe.

This was the theory proposed in 1964 by former grammar school boy Professor Higgs that has now been confirmed.

Without the Higgs field particles would simply whizz around space in the same way as light does.

A boson is a type of sub-atomic particle. Every energy field has a specific particle that governs its interaction with what's around it.

To try to pin it down, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva smashed together beams of protons – the 'hearts of atoms' – at close to the speed of light, recreating conditions that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang.

Although they would rapidly decay, they should have left a recognisable footprint. This footprint was found in 2012.

The main difficulty was that the superconducting material would decay into something known as particle-hole pairs.

Large amounts of energy – which are usually needed to excite the Higgs mode - tend to break apart the electron pairs that act as the material's charge.

Professor Frydman and his colleagues solved this problem by using ultra-thin superconducting films of Niobium Nitrite (NbN) and Indium Oxide (InO) as something known as the 'superconductor-insulator critical point.'

This is a state in which recent theory predicted the decay of the Higgs would no longer occur.

In this way, they could still excite a Higgs mode even at relatively low energies.

'The parallel phenomenon in superconductors occurs on a different energy scale entirely - just one-thousandth of a single electronvolt,' Professor Frydman added.

'What's exciting is to see how, even in these highly disparate systems, the same fundamental physics is at work.'

The different approach help solve one of the longstanding mysteries of fundamental physics.

The discovery of the Higgs boson verified the Standard Model, which predicted that particles gain mass by passing through a field that slows down their movement through the vacuum of space.

Although they would rapidly decay, the also left a recognisable footprint.

Professor Higgs, 83, has been waiting since 1964 for science to catch up with his ideas about the Higgs boson

According to Professor Frydman, observation of the Higgs mechanism in superconductors is significant because it reveals how a single type of physical process behaves under different energy conditions.

'Exciting the Higgs mode in a particle accelerator requires enormous energy levels - measured in giga-electronvolts, or 109 eV,' Professor Frydman says.

'The parallel phenomenon in superconductors occurs on a different energy scale entirely - just one-thousandth of a single electronvolt.

'What's exciting is to see how, even in these highly disparate systems, the same fundamental physics is at work.'

The LHC is due to come back online in March after an upgrade that has given it a big boost in energy.

'With this new energy level, the (collider) will open new horizons for physics and for future discoveries,' CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said in a statement.

'I'm looking forward to seeing what nature has in store for us.'

Cern's collider is buried in a 27-km (17-mile) tunnel straddling the Franco-Swiss border at the foot of the Jura mountains.

The LHC in Geneva will come back online in March after an upgrade that has given it a big boost in energy

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Birth of the Nibiru Legend? Astronomers Say Alien Star System Buzzed Our Sun

February 19, 2015 / Greg Giles / 0 Comments

Scholz's star - shown in this artist's impression - is currently 20 light-years away. But it once came much closerExcerpt from bbc.comAn alien star passed through our Solar System just 70,000 years ago, astronomers have discovered. No othe...

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Mysterious plumes in Mars’ atmosphere baffle astronomers

February 17, 2015 / Greg Giles / 0 Comments

Excerpt from thespacereporter.com

Astronomers are baffled by images of plumes rising from Mars’ atmosphere in images taken by amateur astronomers in March and April 2012.

The plumes were present for about 10 days though their shapes and sizes changed rapidly during that time, from finger-like tendrils to spherical blobs.

Researchers have proposed several possible explanations for the plumes, which are discussed in an article just published in the journal Nature.

Each of the theories being considered poses problems. One theory, for instaqnce, proposes the plumes are caused by the same magnetic influence that causes the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, on Earth. The movement of electrically charged particles from the Sun, driven by the solar wind towards Earth’s poles, results in these particles colliding with molecules of gas. These collisions produce the strange lights known as aurorae.

In the study, the researchers admit, “Mars aurorae have been observed near where the plume occurs, a region with a large anomaly in the crustal magnetic field that can drive the precipitation of solar wind particles into the atmosphere.”

The problem with this theory is this would only happen if the Sun released an exceptional amount of energetic particles during the time the plumes were seen. Yet the level of solar output in 2012 was nowhere near sufficient to release such a powerful stream of particles, the authors of the paper acknowledge.

They move on to consider another option, namely that the plumes might be clouds high in the Martian atmosphere.

A highly reflective cloud of either water ice, carbon dioxide ice, or dust particles could explain the plumes. But according to computer models, the presence of these clouds “would require exceptional deviations from standard atmospheric circulation models to explain cloud formations at such high altitudes,” explained the paper’s lead author, Agustin Sanchez-Lavega of the Universidad del Pais Vasco in Spain.

The plumes were seen approximately 120 miles (200 km) from Mars’ surface, which is problematic because the highest Martian clouds are seen is 60 miles (100 km) above the planet’s surface. The only way water can condense so far up is if the temperature in that part of Mars’ atmosphere drops 370 degrees Fahrenheit, or 50 degrees Kelvin, below its norm.

Condensation of carbon dioxide would require twice this temperature drop.

A third theory posits the flumes are caused by atmospheric dust. A wind powerful enough to transport dust 111 miles (180 km) above Mars’ surface could occur only around noon, when the Sun’s heat would be strong enough to create such wind currents.

However, the plumes were seen not at noon but in the mornings along the terminator that separates the planet’s day and night sides.
Recently, data from the Hubble Space Telescope was found showing the plumes back in 1997.

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Every Black Hole Contains a New Universe

February 11, 2015 / Greg Giles / 0 Comments

At the center of spiral galaxy M81 is a supermassive black hole about 70 million times more massive than our sun.

Excerpt from insidescience.org

A physicist presents a solution to present-day cosmic mysteries.

By:

Nikodem Poplawski, Inside Science Minds Guest Columnist

(ISM) -- Our universe may exist inside a black hole. This may sound strange, but it could actually be the best explanation of how the universe began, and what we observe today. It's a theory that has been explored over the past few decades by a small group of physicists including myself.

Successful as it is, there are notable unsolved questions with the standard big bang theory, which suggests that the universe began as a seemingly impossible "singularity," an infinitely small point containing an infinitely high concentration of matter, expanding in size to what we observe today. The theory of inflation, a super-fast expansion of space proposed in recent decades, fills in many important details, such as why slight lumps in the concentration of matter in the early universe coalesced into large celestial bodies such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies.

But these theories leave major questions unresolved. For example: What started the big bang? What caused inflation to end? What is the source of the mysterious dark energy that is apparently causing the universe to speed up its expansion?

The idea that our universe is entirely contained within a black hole provides answers to these problems and many more. It eliminates the notion of physically impossible singularities in our universe. And it draws upon two central theories in physics.

Nikodem Poplawski displays a "tornado in a tube." The top bottle symbolizes a black hole, the connected necks represent a wormhole and the lower bottle symbolizes the growing universe on the just-formed other side of the wormhole. Credit: Indiana University

In this picture, spins in particles interact with spacetime and endow it with a property called "torsion." To understand torsion, imagine spacetime not as a two-dimensional canvas, but as a flexible, one-dimensional rod. Bending the rod corresponds to curving spacetime, and twisting the rod corresponds to spacetime torsion. If a rod is thin, you can bend it, but it's hard to see if it's twisted or not.

The first is general relativity, the modern theory of gravity. It describes the universe at the largest scales. Any event in the universe occurs as a point in space and time, or spacetime. A massive object such as the Sun distorts or "curves" spacetime, like a bowling ball sitting on a canvas. The Sun's gravitational dent alters the motion of Earth and the other planets orbiting it. The sun's pull of the planets appears to us as the force of gravity.

The second is quantum mechanics, which describes the universe at the smallest scales, such as the level of the atom. However, quantum mechanics and general relativity are currently separate theories; physicists have been striving to combine the two successfully into a single theory of "quantum gravity" to adequately describe important phenomena, including the behavior of subatomic particles in black holes.

A 1960s adaptation of general relativity, called the Einstein-Cartan-Sciama-Kibble theory of gravity, takes into account effects from quantum mechanics. It not only provides a step towards quantum gravity but also leads to an alternative picture of the universe. This variation of general relativity incorporates an important quantum property known as spin. Particles such as atoms and electrons possess spin, or the internal angular momentum that is analogous to a skater spinning on ice.

Spacetime torsion would only be significant, let alone noticeable, in the early universe or in black holes. In these extreme environments, spacetime torsion would manifest itself as a repulsive force that counters the attractive gravitational force coming from spacetime curvature. As in the standard version of general relativity, very massive stars end up collapsing into black holes: regions of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape.

Here is how torsion would play out in the beginning moments of our universe. Initially, the gravitational attraction from curved space would overcome torsion's repulsive forces, serving to collapse matter into smaller regions of space. But eventually torsion would become very strong and prevent matter from compressing into a point of infinite density; matter would reach a state of extremely large but finite density. As energy can be converted into mass, the immensely high gravitational energy in this extremely dense state would cause an intense production of particles, greatly increasing the mass inside the black hole.

The increasing numbers of particles with spin would result in higher levels of spacetime torsion. The repulsive torsion would stop the collapse and would create a "big bounce" like a compressed beach ball that snaps outward. The rapid recoil after such a big bounce could be what has led to our expanding universe. The result of this recoil matches observations of the universe's shape, geometry, and distribution of mass.

In turn, the torsion mechanism suggests an astonishing scenario: every black hole would produce a new, baby universe inside. If that is true, then the first matter in our universe came from somewhere else. So our own universe could be the interior of a black hole existing in another universe. Just as we cannot see what is going on inside black holes in the cosmos, any observers in the parent universe could not see what is going on in ours.

The motion of matter through the black hole's boundary, called an "event horizon," would only happen in one direction, providing a direction of time that we perceive as moving forward. The arrow of time in our universe would therefore be inherited, through torsion, from the parent universe.

Torsion could also explain the observed imbalance between matter and antimatter in the universe. Because of torsion, matter would decay into familiar electrons and quarks, and antimatter would decay into "dark matter," a mysterious invisible form of matter that appears to account for a majority of matter in the universe.

Finally, torsion could be the source of "dark energy," a mysterious form of energy that permeates all of space and increases the rate of expansion of the universe. Geometry with torsion naturally produces a "cosmological constant," a sort of added-on outward force which is the simplest way to explain dark energy. Thus, the observed accelerating expansion of the universe may end up being the strongest evidence for torsion.

Torsion therefore provides a theoretical foundation for a scenario in which the interior of every black hole becomes a new universe. It also appears as a remedy to several major problems of current theory of gravity and cosmology. Physicists still need to combine the Einstein-Cartan-Sciama-Kibble theory fully with quantum mechanics into a quantum theory of gravity. While resolving some major questions, it raises new ones of its own. For example, what do we know about the parent universe and the black hole inside which our own universe resides? How many layers of parent universes would we have? How can we test that our universe lives in a black hole?

The last question can potentially be investigated: since all stars and thus black holes rotate, our universe would have inherited the parent black hole’s axis of rotation as a "preferred direction." There is some recently reported evidence from surveys of over 15,000 galaxies that in one hemisphere of the universe more spiral galaxies are "left-handed", or rotating clockwise, while in the other hemisphere more are "right-handed", or rotating counterclockwise. In any case, I believe that including torsion in geometry of spacetime is a right step towards a successful theory of cosmology.

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How Would the World Change If We Found Alien Life?

February 8, 2015 / Greg Giles / 0 Comments

Excerpt from space.com
By by Elizabeth Howell

In 1938, Orson Welles narrated a radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds" as a series of simulated radio bulletins of what was happening in real time as Martians arrived on our home planet. The broadcast is widely remembered for creating public panic, although to what extent is hotly debated today.

Still, the incident serves as an illustration of what could happen when the first life beyond Earth is discovered. While scientists might be excited by the prospect, introducing the public, politicians and interest groups to the idea could take some time.

How extraterrestrial life would change our world view is a research interest of Steven Dick, who just completed a term as the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair of Astrobiology. The chair is jointly sponsored by the NASA Astrobiology Program and the John W. Kluge Center, at the Library of Congress.

Dick is a former astronomer and historian at the United States Naval Observatory, a past chief historian for NASA, and has published several books concerning the discovery of life beyond Earth. To Dick, even the discovery of microbes would be a profound shift for science.

"If we found microbes, it would have an effect on science, especially biology, by universalizing biology," he said. "We only have one case of biology on Earth. It's all related. It's all DNA-based. If we found an independent example on Mars or Europa, we have a chance of forming a universal biology."

Dick points out that even the possibilities of extraterrestrial fossils could change our viewpoints, such as the ongoing discussion of ALH84001, a Martian meteorite found in Antarctica that erupted into public consciousness in 1996 after a Science article said structures inside of it could be linked to biological activity. The conclusion, which is still debated today, led to congressional hearings.

"I've done a book about discovery in astronomy, and it's an extended process," Dick pointed out. "It's not like you point your telescope and say, 'Oh, I made a discovery.' It's always an extended process: You have to detect something, you have to interpret it, and it takes a long time to understand it. As for extraterrestrial life, the Mars rock showed it could take an extended period of years to understand it."

The ALH84001 meteorite, which in a 1996 Science publication was speculated to be host to what could be ancient Martian fossils. That finding is still under dispute today.

Mayan decipherments

In his year at the Library of Congress, Dick spent time searching for historical examples (as well as historical analogies) of how humanity might deal with first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. History shows that contact with new cultures can go in vastly different directions.

Hernan Cortes' treatment of the Aztecs is often cited as an example of how wrong first contact can go. But there were other efforts that were a little more mutually beneficial, although the outcomes were never perfect. Fur traders in Canada in the 1800s worked closely with Native Americans, for example, and the Chinese treasure fleet of the 15th Century successfully brought its home culture far beyond its borders, perhaps even to East Africa.

Even when both sides were trying hard to make communication work, there were barriers, noted Dick.

"The Jesuits had contact with Native Americans," he pointed out. "Certain concepts were difficult, like when they tried to get across the ideas of the soul and immortality."

A second look by the Mars Global Surveyor at the so-called Viking “Face on Mars” in Cydonia revealed a more ordinary-looking hill, showing that science is an extended process of discovery.

Indirect contact by way of radio communications through the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), also illustrates the challenges of transmitting information across cultures. There is historical precedence for this, such as when Greek knowledge passed west through Arab translators in the 12th Century. This shows that it is possible for ideas to be revived, even from dead cultures, he said.

It's also quite possible that the language we receive across these indirect communications would be foreign to us. Even though mathematics is often cited as a universal language, Dick said there are actually two schools of thought. One theory is that there is, indeed, one kind of mathematics that is based on a Platonic idea, and the other theory is that mathematics is a construction of the culture that you are in.

"There will be a decipherment process. It might be more like the Mayan decipherments," Dick said.

The ethics of contact

As Dick came to a greater understanding about the potential c impact of extraterrestrial intelligence, he invited other scholars to present their findings along with him. Dick chaired a two-day NASA/Library of Congress Astrobiology Symposium called "Preparing for Discovery," which was intended to address the impact of finding any kind of life beyond Earth, whether microbial or some kind of intelligent, multicellular life form.

The symposium participants discussed how to move beyond human-centered views of defining life, how to understand the philosophical and theological problems a discovery would bring, and how to help the public understand the implications of a discovery.

"There is also the question of what I call astro-ethics," Dick said. "How do you treat alien life? How do you treat it differently, ranging from microbes to intelligence? So we had a philosopher at our symposium talking about the moral status of non-human organisms, talking in relation to animals on Earth and what their status is in relation to us."

Dick plans to collect the lectures in a book for publication next year, but he also spent his time at the library gathering materials for a second book about how discovering life beyond Earth will revolutionize our thinking.

"It's very farsighted for NASA to fund a position like this," Dick added. "They have all their programs in astrobiology, they fund the scientists, but here they fund somebody to think about what the implications might be. It's a good idea to do this, to foresee what might happen before it occurs."

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Top 10 Ridiculously Common Science Myths

November 30, 2014 / Greg Giles / 0 Comments

listverse.com
There is nothing better than a bit of mythbusting (which accounts for the popularity of the television program of the same name), so here we are again, presenting you with a new list of terribly common misconceptions and myths – this time about science.

Evolutionary Improvements

The Myth: Evolution causes something to go from “lower” to “higher”
While it is a fact that natural selection weeds out unhealthy genes from the gene pool, there are many cases where an imperfect organism has survived. Some examples of this are fungi, sharks, crayfish, and mosses – these have all remained essentially the same over a great period of time. These organisms are all sufficiently adapted to their environment to survive without improvement.
Other taxa have changed a lot, but not necessarily for the better. Some creatures have had their environments changed and their adaptations may not be as well suited to their new situation. Fitness is linked to their environment, not to progress.

Humans Pop In Space

The Myth: When exposed to the vacuum of space, the human body pops
This myth is the result of science fiction movies which use it to add excitement or drama to the plot. In fact, a human can survive for 15 – 30 seconds in outer space as long as they breathe out before the exposure (this prevents the lungs from bursting and sending air into the bloodstream). After 15 or so seconds, the lack of oxygen causes unconsciousness which eventually leads to death by asphyxiation.

Brightest Star

The Myth: Polaris is the brightest star in the northern hemisphere night sky
Sirius is actually brighter with a magnitude of ?1.47 compared to Polaris’ 1.97 (the lower the number the brighter the star). The importance of Polaris is that its position in the sky marks North – and for that reason it is also called the “North Star”. Polaris is the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor and, interestingly, is only the current North Star as pole stars change over time because stars exhibit a slow continuous drift with respect to the Earth’s axis.

Five Second Rule

The Myth: Food that drops on the floor is safe to eat if you pick it up within five seconds
This is utter bunkum which should be obvious to most readers. If there are germs on the floor and the food lands on them, they will immediately stick to the food. Having said that, eating germs and dirt is not always a bad thing as it helps us to develop a robust immune system. I prefer to have a “how-tasty-is-it” rule: if it is something really tasty, it can sit there for ten minutes for all I care – I will still eat it.

Dark side of the Moon

The Myth: There is a dark side of the moon
Actually – every part of the moon is illuminated at sometime by the sun. This misconception has come about because there is a side of the moon which is never visible to the earth. This is due to tidal locking; this is due to the fact that Earth’s gravitational pull on the moon is so immense that it can only show one face to us. Wikipedia puts it rather smartly thus: “Tidal locking occurs when the gravitational gradient makes one side of an astronomical body always face another; for example, one side of the Earth’s Moon always faces the Earth. A tidally locked body takes just as long to rotate around its own axis as it does to revolve around its partner. This synchronous rotation causes one hemisphere constantly to face the partner body.”

Brain Cells

The Myth: Brain cells can’t regenerate – if you kill a brain cell, it is never replaced
The reason for this myth being so common is that it was believed and taught by the science community for a very long time. But in 1998, scientists at the Sweden and the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California discovered that brain cells in mature humans can regenerate. It had previously been long believed that complex brains would be severely disrupted by new cell growth, but the study found that the memory and learning center of the brain can create new cells – giving hope for an eventual cure for illnesses like Alzheimer’s.

Pennies from Heaven

The Myth: A penny dropped from a very high building can kill a pedestrian below
This myth is so common it has even become a bit of a cliche in movies. The idea is that if you drop a penny from the top of a tall building (such as the Empire State Building) – it will pick up enough speed to kill a person if it lands on them on the ground. But the fact is, the aerodynamics of a penny are not sufficient to make it dangerous. What would happen in reality is that the person who gets hit would feel a sting – but they would certainly survive the impact.

Friction Heat

The Myth: Meteors are heated by friction when entering the atmosphere
When a meteoroid enters the atmosphere of the earth (becoming a meteor), it is actually the speed compressing the air in front of the object that causes it to heat up. It is the pressure on the air that generates a heat intense enough to make the rock so hot that is glows brilliantly for our viewing pleasure (if we are lucky enough to be looking in the sky at the right time). We should also dispel the myth about meteors being hot when they hit the earth – becoming meteorites. Meteorites are almost always cold when they hit – and in fact they are often found covered in frost. This is because they are so cold from their journey through space that the entry heat is not sufficient to do more than burn off the outer layers.

Lightning

The Myth: Lightning never strikes the same place twice
Next time you see lightning strike and you consider running to the spot to protect yourself from the next bolt, remember this item! Lightning does strike the same place twice – in fact it is very common. Lightning obviously favors certain areas such as high trees or buildings. In a large field, the tallest object is likely to be struck multiple times until the lightning moves sufficiently far away to find a new target. The Empire State Building gets struck around 25 times a year.

Gravity in Space

The Myth: There is no gravity in space
In fact, there is gravity in space – a lot of it. The reason that astronauts appear to be weightless because they are orbiting the earth. They are falling towards the earth but moving sufficiently sideways to miss it. So they are basically always falling but never landing. Gravity exists in virtually all areas of space. When a shuttle reaches orbit height (around 250 miles above the earth), gravity is reduced by only 10%.
Inspired by an excellent LiveScience Article. This article is licensed under the GFDL because it contains quotations from Wikipedia.

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Tag: occurs (page 2 of 7)

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