Follow TV Tropes

Following

General Physics Thread

Go To

rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#426: Oct 2nd 2015 at 12:18:47 AM

New polymer creates safer fuels: "Before embarking on a transcontinental journey, jet airplanes fill up with tens of thousands of gallons of fuel. In the event of a crash, such large quantities of fuel increase the severity of an explosion upon impact. Researchers have discovered a polymeric fuel additive that can reduce the intensity of postimpact explosions that occur during accidents and terrorist acts. Furthermore, preliminary results show that the additive can provide this benefit without adversely affecting fuel performance."

Scientists produce status check on quantum teleportation: "Mention the word 'teleportation' and for many people it conjures up 'Beam me up, Scottie' images of Captain James T Kirk. But in the last two decades quantum teleportation – transferring the quantum structure of an object from one place to another without physical transmission—has moved from the realms of Star Trek fantasy to tangible reality.

Quantum teleportation is an important building block for quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum network and, eventually, a quantum Internet. While theoretical proposals for a quantum Internet already exist, the problem for scientists is that there is still debate over which of various technologies provides the most efficient and reliable teleportation system. This is the dilemma which an international team of researchers, led by Dr Stefano Pirandola of the Department of Computer Science at the University of York, set out to resolve.

In a paper published in Nature Photonics, the team, which included scientists from the Freie Universität Berlin and the Universities of Tokyo and Toronto, reviewed the theoretical ideas around quantum teleportation focusing on the main experimental approaches and their attendant advantages and disadvantages."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#427: Oct 4th 2015 at 1:04:16 AM

Signals from empty space: "What are the properties of the vacuum, the absolute nothingness? So far, physicists have assumed that it is impossible to directly access the characteristics of the ground state of empty space. Now, a team of physicists has succeeded in doing just that. They demonstrated a first direct observation of the so-called vacuum fluctuations by using short light pulses while employing highly precise optical measurement techniques."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#428: Oct 8th 2015 at 8:25:01 PM

Perfectly accurate clocks turn out to be impossible: "Can the passage of time be measured precisely, always and everywhere? The answer will upset many watchmakers. A team of physicists from the universities of Warsaw and Nottingham have just shown that when we are dealing with very large accelerations, no clock will actually be able to show the real passage of time, known as 'proper time'.

The ideal clock is merely a convenient fiction, as theorists from the University of Warsaw (UW) and University of Nottingham (UN) have shown. In a study published in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity they demonstrate that in systems moving with enormous accelerations, building a clock that would precisely measure the passage of time is impossible for fundamental reasons."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#429: Oct 12th 2015 at 1:32:29 AM

Caution: Weird material shrinks when warm: "Most materials swell when warm, and shrink when cool. But some weird materials do the opposite. Although thermal expansion, and the cracking and warping that often result, occurs everyday — in buildings, electronics, and almost anything else exposed to wide temperature swings — physicists have trouble explaining why solids behave that way. New research into a material that has negative thermal expansion may lead to a better understanding of why materials change volume with temperature at all."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#430: Oct 15th 2015 at 8:44:49 PM

Quantum physics meets genetic engineering: "A team of researchers has used engineered viruses to provide quantum-based enhancement of energy transport. The work points the way toward inexpensive and efficient solar cells or light-driven catalysis."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#431: Oct 16th 2015 at 5:23:06 AM

... Wait, what? How in the name of God Almighty can you engineer a virus with modern technology so that it causes some quantum-physical effects? That sounds like something straight out of far-future scifi.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
AnotherGuy Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#433: Oct 16th 2015 at 3:23:22 PM

Quantum coherent-like state observed in a biological protein for the first time: "If you take certain atoms and make them almost as cold as they possibly can be, the atoms will fuse into a collective low-energy quantum state called a Bose-Einstein condensate. In 1968 physicist Herbert Fröhlich predicted that a similar process at a much higher temperature could concentrate all of the vibrational energy in a biological protein into its lowest-frequency vibrational mode. Now scientists in Sweden and Germany have the first experimental evidence of such so-called Fröhlich condensation."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
Reymma RJ Savoy from Edinburgh Since: Feb, 2015 Relationship Status: Wanna dance with somebody
RJ Savoy
#434: Oct 24th 2015 at 6:44:33 PM

A question has been bothering me: if a neutron star were to be broken up, say by rotation, what kind of nuclei would the neutrons stabilise into? I would guess a lot of deuterium and triterium, but that raises another point: the star that created it burned off most of its hydrogen, so what is the energy perspective? Is the energy required to break apart such a strong object enough to explain reversing the star's fusion?

Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#435: Oct 25th 2015 at 2:12:42 AM

Breaking apart a neutron star requires a tremendous amount of energy to push apart the neutrons that are hold together by gravity.

Neutron clusters are not very stable in practice, they tend to break apart into free neutrons. These in turn are also unstable and form hydrogen by beta decay.

Heavier elements can only form by neutrons binding to pre-existent nuclei or hydrogen formed during the decay of neutrons, depending upon how fast the disintegration happens - a fast process leaves no time for hydrogen to form and thus no deuterium or tritium, a slow one allows for it to form.

Also, in such a slow process neutron clusters may be held together for long enough by remaining gravity that they undergo beta decay instead of shedding neutrons.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
KnightofLsama Since: Sep, 2010
#436: Oct 25th 2015 at 2:07:37 PM

if a neutron star were to be broken up,

I think I've spotted the basic flaw in your premise. A neutron star's gravity is an automatic "I Win" against anything short of a black hole or maybe another neutron star. And in the case of a supernova caused by neutron star collisions, the end result is pretty much mass to energy conversion for a large chunk of both bodies.

Euodiachloris Since: Oct, 2010
#437: Oct 25th 2015 at 2:54:37 PM

<image of pouncing neutron star goes here — intended victim turns out to be a black hole> Awww, man! I thought you were a small pulsar!

rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#438: Oct 28th 2015 at 9:14:50 PM

Sonic tractor beam moves stuff with sound: "Scientists have built a novel sonic tractor beam that can lift and move objects using sound waves. High-amplitude sound waves are used to generate an acoustic hologram which can pick up and move small objects."

Lab scientists discover five new nuclei: "Lawrence Livermore scientists, in conjunction with international researchers, have discovered five new atomic nuclei to be added the chart of nuclides.

The study, conducted this fall, focuses on developing new methods of synthesis for super heavy elements. The newly discovered, exotic nuclei are one isotope each of heavy elements berkelium, neptunium and uranium and two isotopes of the element americium."

Change the shape, change the sound: Researchers develop algorithm to 3-D print vibrational sounds: "In creating what looks to be a simple children's musical instrument—a xylophone with keys in the shape of zoo animals—computer scientists at Columbia Engineering, Harvard, and MIT have demonstrated that sound can be controlled by 3D-printing shapes. They designed an optimization algorithm and used computational methods and digital fabrication to control acoustic properties—both sound and vibration—by altering the shape of 2D and 3D objects. Their work—'Computational Design of Metallophone Contact Sounds'—will be presented at SIGGRAPH Asia on November 4 in Kobe, Japan."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#439: Nov 2nd 2015 at 1:21:25 AM

Scientists get first glimpse of conductivity that could break size barriers for memory: "Scientists have made the first direct images showing that electrical currents can flow along the boundaries between tiny magnetic regions of a material that normally doesn't conduct electricity. The results could have major implications for magnetic memory storage."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#440: Nov 9th 2015 at 12:22:31 AM

Trampolining water droplets: "Materials that actively repel water and ice very strongly are sought after by the aviation industry and for many other technical applications. Researchers have now found out how to specifically design the rigid surfaces of such materials: by teaching water droplets how to trampoline."

Self-levitating displays: Mid-air virtual objects: "An interactive swarm of flying 3D pixels (voxels) is set to revolutionize the way people interact with virtual reality. The system, called BitDrones, allows users to explore virtual 3D information by interacting with physical self-levitating building blocks."

edited 11th Nov '15 1:06:06 AM by rmctagg09

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#441: Nov 11th 2015 at 1:05:53 AM

Creating a wide variety of new holograms: "Researchers have developed techniques that can be used to create ideal geometric phase holograms for any kind of optical pattern — a significant advance over the limitations of previous techniques. The holograms can be used to create new types of displays, imaging systems, telecommunications technology and astronomical instruments."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#442: Nov 16th 2015 at 2:48:32 AM

Lasers could rapidly make materials hotter than the Sun: "Lasers could heat materials to temperatures hotter than the centre of the Sun in only 20 quadrillionths of a second, according to new research."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#443: Nov 18th 2015 at 12:42:39 AM

X-ray microscope reveals 'solitons,' a special type of magnetic wave: "Researchers used a powerful, custom-built X-ray microscope to directly observe the magnetic version of a soliton, a type of wave that can travel without resistance. Scientists are exploring whether such magnetic waves can be used to carry and store information in a new, more efficient form of computer memory that requires less energy and generates less heat."

Team refrigerates liquids with a laser for the first time: "Since the first laser was invented in 1960, they've always given off heat, either as a useful tool, a byproduct or a fictional way to vanquish intergalactic enemies. Researchers are the first to solve a decades-old puzzle — figuring out how to make a laser refrigerate water and other liquids."

Spooky Action Is Real: Bizarre Quantum Entanglement Confirmed in New Tests: "Sorry to break it to you, Einstein, but it looks like the universe is one big dice game.

Two recent studies have confirmed that the "spooky action at a distance" that so upset Albert Einstein — the notion that two entangled particles separated by long distances can instantly affect each other — has been proven to work in a stunning array of different experimental setups."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#444: Nov 24th 2015 at 12:30:28 AM

Li-Fi has just been tested in the real world, and it's 100 times faster than Wi-Fi: "Expect to hear a whole lot more about Li-Fi - a wireless technology that transmits high-speed data using visible light communication (VLC) - in the coming months. With scientists achieving speeds of 224 gigabits per second in the lab using Li-Fi earlier this year, the potential for this technology to change everything about the way we use the Internet is huge.

And now, scientists have taken Li-Fi out of the lab for the first time, trialling it in offices and industrial environments in Tallinn, Estonia, reporting that they can achieve data transmission at 1 GB per second - that's 100 times faster than current average Wi-Fi speeds."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
Euodiachloris Since: Oct, 2010
#445: Nov 25th 2015 at 11:33:22 PM

[up][up]Ansible. Ansible. Ansible. *cough*

rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#446: Nov 26th 2015 at 1:23:20 AM

'Material universe' yields surprising new particle: "An international team of researchers has predicted the existence of a new type of particle called the type-II Weyl fermion in metallic materials. The discovery suggests a range of potential applications, from low-energy devices to efficient transistors."

New 'self-healing' gel makes electronics more flexible: "Researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind self-healing gel that repairs and connects electronic circuits, creating opportunities to advance the development of flexible electronics, biosensors and batteries as energy storage devices."

CERN collides heavy nuclei at new record high energy: "The world's most powerful accelerator, the 27 km long Large Hadron Collider (LHC) operating at CERN in Geneva established collisions between lead nuclei, this morning, at the highest energies ever. The LHC has been colliding protons at record high energy since the summer, but now the time has now come to collide large nuclei (nuclei of lead, Pb, consist of 208 neutrons and protons). The experiments aim at understanding and studying the properties of strongly interacting systems at high densities and thus the state of matter of the Universe shortly after the Big Bang."

Physicists set quantum record by using photons to carry messages from electrons almost 2 kilometers apart: "Researchers from Stanford have advanced a long-standing problem in quantum physics – how to send 'entangled' particles over long distances.

Their work is described in the online edition of Nature Communications.

Scientists and engineers are interested in the practical application of this technology to make quantum networks that can send highly secure information over long distances – a capability that also makes the technology appealing to governments, banks and militaries."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#447: Nov 26th 2015 at 4:02:01 AM

New 'self-healing' gel makes electronics more flexible
... So all of those near-future games with self-repairing military vehicles/mecha — at one of which uses a nanotech-based blood analogue for this purpose — are not so far-fetched?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#448: Nov 29th 2015 at 2:52:20 AM

A new form of real gold, almost as light as air: "Researchers have created a new type of foam made of real gold. It is the lightest form ever produced of the precious metal: a thousand times lighter than its conventional form and yet it is nearly impossible to tell the difference with the naked eye. There are many possible applications."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#449: Dec 4th 2015 at 2:02:14 AM

Physicists confirm thermodynamic irreversibility in a quantum system: "For the first time, physicists have performed an experiment confirming that thermodynamic processes are irreversible in a quantum system—meaning that, even on the quantum level, you can't put a broken egg back into its shell. The results have implications for understanding thermodynamics in quantum systems and, in turn, designing quantum computers and other quantum information technologies."

Researchers find new phase of carbon, make diamond at room temperature: "Researchers from North Carolina State University have discovered a new phase of solid carbon, called Q-carbon, which is distinct from the known phases of graphite and diamond. They have also developed a technique for using Q-carbon to make diamond-related structures at room temperature and at ambient atmospheric pressure in air.

Phases are distinct forms of the same material. Graphite is one of the solid phases of carbon; diamond is another.

'We've now created a third solid phase of carbon,' says Jay Narayan, the John C. Fan Distinguished Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at NC State and lead author of three papers describing the work. 'The only place it may be found in the natural world would be possibly in the core of some planets.'

Q-carbon has some unusual characteristics. For one thing, it is ferromagnetic – which other solid forms of carbon are not.

'We didn't even think that was possible,' Narayan says.

In addition, Q-carbon is harder than diamond, and glows when exposed to even low levels of energy."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (USA) (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#450: Dec 7th 2015 at 2:42:25 AM

Researchers make thinnest plates that can be picked up by hand: "Despite being thousands of times thinner than a sheet of paper and hundreds of times thinner than household cling wrap or aluminum foil, newly developed corrugated plates of aluminum oxide spring back to their original shape after being bent and twisted."

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

Total posts: 840
Top