physics – Techdirt (original) (raw)

DailyDirt: Where Has All The Matter Gone?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are vast amounts of stuff that no one knows anything about. Everything in the universe that we can see — that reflects light or glows on it own because it’s hot — only amounts to about 5% of the known mass of the universe. So… what’s going on with the other 95% of “stuff” that’s out there? Maybe there are exotic particles we haven’t discovered yet that are everywhere, but we just don’t know it. Physicists call this stuff “dark matter” and “dark energy” — and there could be a whole “dark sector” of dark matter doing things that we just can’t see. But we’re getting some hints for some of the stuff we can’t see by observing and measuring the outcomes of rare astronomical events — and by creating simulations of what possible undiscovered particles might do to the formation of galaxies and other distant space objects. Here are just a few projects that might explain how the universe works someday.

Astronomers detected a fast radio burst (FRB) last year (of which only 16 had been observed before), and this time, they were prepared to try to pinpoint the origin. Studying this phenomenon can help more accurately measure how much “ordinary matter” there is in the universe, and this signal points to where the “missing half” of all ordinary matter might be. (It still doesn’t account for the 95% of “non-ordinary matter” that makes up the rest of the universe.) [url]
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is a particle detector on the outside of the International Space Station that’s looking at cosmic rays from all over the galaxy. It has detected a curious excess of positrons that might originate from dark matter collisions, but the evidence so far doesn’t quite point to a specific dark matter particle. [url]
Dark matter doesn’t behave like ordinary matter — and we can’t see it (hence its name). Dark matter has mass, and it might interact with itself in ways we currently don’t understand. A bunch of proposed particles could account for the vast majority of mass in the universe — such as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (aka WIMPs), but no one knows yet how about 95% of the universe’s mass behaves. [url]

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Filed Under: alpha magnetic spectrometer, astronomy, cosmic rays, dark energy, dark matter, dark sector, fast radio burst, frb, iss, mysteries, physics, science, weakly interacting massive particles, wimps

DailyDirt: Skipping Across The Water

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Skipping objects like stones across a calm lake is fun when you’re a kid, but it also involves some interesting physics that could be useful for other applications. The Water Bouncing Ball toy can turn anyone into a pretty good “stone” skipper (though, maybe not hitting a record-setting 88 skips). Understanding how objects can skip across water could lead to better ways to travel across water, possibly making shipments cheaper or faster.

An elastic ball can deform into an “ideal” disc-like shape when it skips and hits the surface of a pool of water. Studying the Waboba could result in better aquatic toys, but it could also help design a new kind of water-skipping vehicle or Wallis bomb. [url]
The South American basilisk lizard can “walk” on water by taking 20 steps per second (about 3 mph). This lizard’s feet need to slap the water and produce an air cavity that keeps the reptile from sinking for about 10-20 yards, and if a person could pull off this trick, he/she would probably need to be running at about 65 mph. [url]
Some researchers recommend skipping a stone so that it hits the water at a 20 degree angle. Physics researchers built a machine that threw aluminum discs across a pool of water with varying speeds and angles, and if the technique can be perfected, it might be a bit depressing to see another machine beating a human record by an insanely large margin. [url]

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Filed Under: basilisk lizard, jesus lizard, physics, skipping stones, waboba, walking on water, wallis bomb, water bouncing ball

DailyDirt: Always More To Discover…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The universe is just incredibly vast and full of stuff we’re only scratching the surface of detecting. Every so often, though, there are some folks who think we’ve learned it all — or that there’s not much more left to figure out. But there’s always more. The pace of technology might not advance fast enough for us to be able to continue to discover new things at the rate we’ve been doing so, but the “peak science” event probably hasn’t happened yet (or may not happen at all).

The Higgs boson was detected in 2012, but there might be a heavier elementary particle that could disrupt the Standard Model in physics. The evidence is far from conclusive, but more data is on the way, and physicists should be able to determine if this new blip is some weird instrument fluke or a real particle in the near future. [url]
Pessimistic physicists could argue that experimental particle physics is over — the Standard Model is verifiable, and if we can’t find more particles, it could be very difficult to come up with more explanations for things that we can never actually measure. Isn’t it convenient that physicists are recently finding more particles? [url]
Physicists had a pretty good year in 2015. The field of physics got an upgrade to the Large Hadron Collider, more telescopes looking for gravity waves and dark matter, and recognition for over 1,300 physicists working on the understanding of neutrinos. Also, plans for a new International Linear Collider could lead to a next-generation particle accelerator — for smashing electrons and positrons — built in Japan. [url]

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Filed Under: higgs boson, ilc, international linear collider, large hadron collider, lhc, neutrino, peak science, physics, science, standard model

Awesome Stuff: Great Desk Toy, Or Greatest Desk Toy?

from the magnetism! dept

Move over Newton’s Cradle, there’s a new physics-based desk toy in town: Ferroflow, the automatic ferrofluid sculpture.

The Good

A few years ago, ferrofluid became a brief online sensation when a video of Sachiko Kodama’s synchronized sculptures went viral. It was one of those “I could stare at this for hours” moments, with the shapes and movements of the ferrofluid in a shifting magnetic field proving utterly beautiful and captivating. Magnetism is unique as a feature of the physical world that we encounter daily in plenty of mundane situations and yet which still produces effects that are un-intuitive to our brains on a basic level — and the seemingly-unnatural shapes that ferrofluid takes bring that fact to the forefront.

In short: ferrofluid is cool, and the Ferroflow brings it to your house or office in all its glory. The device produces its own ever-shifting magnetic field to keep the fluid in constant, lava-lamp-like motion, and also lets you take control via a single adjustment knob. Beyond that, it’s nothing fancy, because it doesn’t need to be: good desk toys, from the iconic Newton’s Cradle to the various once-popular displays of oil and water, are less about elaborate mechanisms and more about teasing out curious and entertaining aspects of nature in the simplest way possible.

The Bad

Okay, so this isn’t going to change the world — in fact, it’s quite the indulgence, given the cost of the unit: 240atfullprice,withjustahandfulofslightlydiscountedearly−birddealsstillavailable.Ifyou(quitesensibly)thinkthat’sfartoomuchtospendonatoylikethis,thereisanalternative:theMiniFerroflow,thatstripstheconceptdowntoevenbarerbones.There’snoautomaticmodeandnocontrolknob:it’sjustasealedvialofferrofluidandacoupleofloosemagnetstomanipulateitwith.Theresultingshapesandsplashesarenolessfascinating,though,and240 at full price, with just a handful of slightly discounted early-bird deals still available. If you (quite sensibly) think that’s far too much to spend on a toy like this, there is an alternative: the Mini Ferroflow, that strips the concept down to even barer bones. There’s no automatic mode and no control knob: it’s just a sealed vial of ferrofluid and a couple of loose magnets to manipulate it with. The resulting shapes and splashes are no less fascinating, though, and 240atfullprice,withjustahandfulofslightlydiscountedearly−birddealsstillavailable.Ifyou(quitesensibly)thinkthat’sfartoomuchtospendonatoylikethis,thereisanalternative:theMiniFerroflow,thatstripstheconceptdowntoevenbarerbones.There’snoautomaticmodeandnocontrolknob:it’sjustasealedvialofferrofluidandacoupleofloosemagnetstomanipulateitwith.Theresultingshapesandsplashesarenolessfascinating,though,and35 is a far less balk-worthy price.

The Safe, Presumably

This is a bit of an aside, but if we’re talking about magnetic toys, let’s take a moment to remember the death of Buckyballs. For the unfamiliar, these were a super-popular toy consisting of nothing but a bunch of powerful spherical magnets and all the amazing shapes they could form. They were fun and satisfying to manipulate. They also, unfortunately, led to a lot of genuine horror stories about internal injuries caused to children who swallowed them, which set off an ongoing dispute between the manufacturer and the government. It got pretty ugly, and though it seems like Buckyballs should still be available for older kids and adults, they aren’t — the toy was recalled and removed from the market last year. The Ferroflow probably won’t be lining the shelves of toy stores and thus is unlikely to face any similar conflict — but I bring it up because the whole saga is an interesting study in safety regulation, personal responsibility, and choosing how to react when your toy starts injuring children.

Filed Under: awesome stuff, ferrofluid, magnets, physics

DailyDirt: Customized (Super) Atomic Particles…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Chemists haven’t quite mastered manipulating atoms and molecules, but physicists are making some progress in making/discovering all kinds of new particles — and not just sub-atomic scale particles. We’ve mentioned “super heavy hydrogen” before, but there are a few other unnatural bits of matter brewing in labs, too. Check out a few of them below.

Powerful X-ray pulses can blast away the guts of atoms, making hollow atoms. Giant Rydberg atoms, antimatter atoms (e.g. antihydrogen) and elements beyond Ununoctium (atomic #118) are extremely difficult to observe (or create in the first place), but these particles might prove useful someday. But even if they don’t, it’s interesting to see how far we can push the boundaries of atoms and groups of sub-atomic particles. [url]
Magnetic superatoms are clusters of atoms with electrons in orbitals that surround the entire cluster instead of just the individual atoms. A stable magnetic superatom VNa8 can be synthesized — but not in macroscopic quantities yet. These kinds of superatoms could have spintronics applications, but it’s really too early to make any kind of useful device out of these things. [url]
A variant of atomic force microscopy can produce images of atomic bonds in molecules with amazing detail, gaining picometer resolution. Imaging at this scale could help develop molecular electronics and keep Moore’s law from faltering more than it already has. [url]

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Filed Under: afm, antimatter, chemistry, hollow atoms, molecular electronics, moore's law, particles, physics, rydberg atoms, spintronics, super heavy hydrogen, superatoms, vna8

DailyDirt: When He's Underwater Does He Get Wet? Nobody Knows. Particle Man.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The field of modern particle physics seems like an exclusive club. Fundamental particles are literally everywhere, but it’s not quite practical to observe a Higgs Boson in your kitchen. Sure, you could build your own cloud chamber and see some cosmic rays, but making your own TeV particle collider takes a bit more expertise. Maybe experimental evidence for theoretical physics is highly overrated anyway.

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has just observed a class of particles called pentaquarks. The existence of this kind of particle has been theorized for decades, and now we have evidence that can help us better understand these elusive pentaquarks as well as other fundamental particles. [url]
The LHC also detected some new baryons earlier this year — aka “zi-b-prime” and “zi-b-star”. These particles were also predicted years ago and now have estimated properties based on quantum chromodynamics (QCD) calculations confirmed by experimental measurements. [url]
The ‘glueball’ is a particle consisting of two or more gluons, and it has yet to be found. A class of unconventional glueballs might be easier to observe — made of three gluons instead of two — and are called ‘oddballs’ because physicists are fond of cute names for particles. [url]
An exotic particle called a Majorana fermion is its own antiparticle and is surprisingly stable (ie. it doesn’t annihilate itself). Some physicists predict that Majorana fermions might serve as quantum computing qubits, but so far they only seem to be easily found at the ends of atomic-scale superconducting wires — not quite the most convenient materials to build a quantum computer out of. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: antiparticle, baryons, cern, glueballs, gluons, guts, large hadron collider, lhc, majorana fermion, oddballs, particle physics, pentaquark, physics, qcd, quantum chromodynamics, qubits

DailyDirt: Science With (And Without) Verification

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The scientific method has undoubtedly advanced the growth of knowledge, but with the enormous amount of data that can be collected now, it can be difficult to turn all that information into reliable and understandable facts. On the other hand, science is also pushing the boundaries of what can possibly be measured — but can we still call it science if we’re proposing unknowable multiverses and spatial dimensions that can never be explored? Almost anyone can publish their crazy ideas — and sometimes those sketchy papers submitted to arxiv.org lead to successful work proving an infinite number of twin primes. Do the crackpots outnumber the “real” scientists? Does it matter?

Advances in cosmology are pulling away from experimental verification. Some theorists argue that their theories to explain the universe may not be verifiable by observations — and that it doesn’t matter. They assert we’re in a “post-empirical” period for understanding fundamental physics. [url]
Verification of experimental results is a fundamental aspect of science, right? Providing more funding for researchers to perform replication experiments may be increasingly necessary to ensure our scientific knowledge isn’t merely based on anecdotes (or bad experiments or biased analysis). [url]
Will traditional scholarly journals have a future? There’s a growing movement to decentralize the peer review and publication process that doesn’t require a for-profit scholarly journal. Yay? [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: arxiv, cosmology, crackpots, experiments, journals, knowledge, multiverses, peer review, physics, prime numbers, replication, science, scientific method, verification

DailyDirt: Closer To Understanding Superconductivity

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The phenomenon of superconductivity could be extremely useful — if the materials that exhibit the behavior could do so at ambient conditions. The first material discovered to conduct electricity with no resistance was mercury in 1911, but mercury requires temperatures below 10 °K to do this. In 1986, a high temperature superconductor was found that seemed to work around liquid nitrogen temperatures. We’ve made some progress pushing the limits of the superconductors we’ve made so far, and it looks like we may be on the cusp of a much better understanding these materials and how they work. Here are just a few links on the matter.

Superconductivity at room temperature has been an unattainable goal for decades (or almost a century), until recently. Using short infrared laser pulses, a ceramic material was made superconducting at room temperature… for only a few picoseconds. [url]
Over 60,000 papers have been published on so-called high temperature superconductors since 1986, but the phenomenon is not well understood at all. The “high temperatures” above -237 °C are still pretty chilly, but it’s been hard to find examples of different superconductors that could help elucidate the mechanism. Researchers have recently discovered a new class of superconducting material, but we’re still a long way from really understanding what’s going on. [url]
Physicists are starting to come up with better explanations for superconductivity and how it occurs. There doesn’t seem to be any good reasons why superconductivity can’t persist at room temperatures, but there may very well be practical barriers that we just haven’t found yet. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: materials, mercury, physics, science, superconductivity, ybco

DailyDirt: Quantum Computers Are Both Here And Not Here…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Quantum computers are starting to become a commercial reality as multiple companies start to take advantage of the strange laws of quantum physics to solve complex mathematical problems. The hardware is difficult enough to build, but assuming the hardware actually exists, programmers now have to figure out how to write software for qubits. Here are just a few links on these new computers that aren’t quite ready to replace desktop PCs.

Lockheed Martin bought a D-Wave Systems quantum computer in 2011, and there are a few other customers and partners trying to develop for this particular computer. NASA, Google, and Aerospace Concepts are testing out these new-fangled machines to solve optimization problems and machine learning, among other things quantum information can tackle. [url]
The availability of ultra-pure silicon could make it a bit easier to build quantum computers, and now a straightforward process for obtaining 99.9999% pure silicon is practical. Pure silicon is a good substrate for holding a qubit, as substrate impurities negatively affect the performance of quantum manipulations. [url]
Google has played around with D-Wave quantum computers to study computer vision problems with a few qubits. In 2007, D-Wave had a 16-qubit system, and now it has a 512-qubit computer. It’s improving with time, but it’s not entirely clear when this system is better than a traditional x86 processor. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: algorithm, hardware, physics, quantum computer, qubit, silicon
Companies: aerospace concepts, d-wave, google, lockheed martin, nasa

Disappointing: DMCA Being Used To Make Feynman Lectures On Physics Less Accessible

from the too-bad dept

I’m going to assume that many of you are familiar with Richard Feynman. If you’re not, please get out from under the rock you’ve been living under and go learn something. While he’s probably most well-known in the public for his (not always 100% truthful) collection of stories, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, folks of a geekier persuasion are much more aware of his contributions to science and, in particular, the famed Feynman Lectures on Physics. It took way too many years to get those lectures online after (you guessed it) a fight over copyrights. However, online the lectures went and now it appears that publisher Perseus is unfortunately using the DMCA to block attempts to make the works accessible via Kindle or EPUB formats.

Eric Hellman posted the story at the link above, with this being the key part:

Vikram Verma, a software developer in Singapore, wanted to be able to read the lectures on his kindle. Although PDF versions can be purchased at $40 per volume, no versions are yet available in Kindle or EPUB formats. Since the digital format used by kindle is just a simplified version of html, the transformation of web pages to an ebook file is purely mechanical. So Verma proceeded to write a script to do the mechanical transformation – he accomplished the transformation in only 136 lines of ruby code, and published the script as a repository on Github.

Despite the fact that nothing remotely belonging to Perseus or Caltech had been published in Verma’s repository, it seems that Perseus and/or Caltech was not happy that people could use Verma’s code to easily make ebook files from the website. So they hauled out the favorite weapon of copyright trolls everywhere: a DMCA takedown.

You can see the DMCA here as well as the counternotice, which notes that the software doesn’t contain any copyrighted materials (though there’s some confusion over who owns the copyright, Caltech or Perseus). Hellman, while admitting he’s not a lawyer, further suggests the DMCA takedown is invalid because it’s just code… but then further notes that the Feynman Lectures website has put in some code to block the script — and that Verma has coded around this:

In the meantime, the Feynman Lectures website has taken some steps to break Verma’s script. For example, instead of a link to http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II\_28.html (my favorite chapter), the table of contents now has a link to javascript:Goto(2,18). This will take about 10 minutes for Verma to work around. In addition, the website now has a robot exclusion (except for Googlebot).

Of course, that introduces a new (and unfortunate) problem. As problematic as it is, the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA, 17 USC 1201 makes it against the law to get around any “technological measure” no matter how stupid or weak, and thus the effort by the website to block it may introduce a new problem, though likely different than what Perseus initially claimed in its takedown.

Making things even more convoluted, the editor of the Feynman Lectures, Michael Gottlieb, jumped into the fray and made things even more confusing and misleading:

The online edition of The Feynman Lectures Website posted at www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu and www.feynmanlectures.info is free-to-read online. However, it is under copyright. The copyright notice can be found on every page: it is in the footer that your script strips out! The online edition of FLP can not be downloaded, copied or transferred for any purpose (other than reading online) without the written consent of the copyright holders (The California Institute of Technology, Michael A. Gottlieb, and Rudolf Pfeiffer), or their licensees (Basic Books). Every one of you is violating my copyright by running the flp.mobi script. Furthermore Github is committing contributory infringement by hosting your activities on their website. A lot of hard work and money and time went into making the online edition of FLP. It is a gift to the world – one that I personally put a great deal of effort into, and I feel you are abusing it. We posted it to benefit the many bright young people around the world who previously had no access to FLP for economic or other reasons. It isn’t there to provide a source of personal copies for a bunch of programmers who can easily afford to buy the books and ebooks!! Let me tell you something: Rudi Pfeiffer and I, who have worked on FLP as unpaid volunteers for about a decade, make no money from the sale of the printed books. We earn something only on the electronic editions (though, of course, not the HTML edition you are raping, to which we give anyone access for free!), and we are planning to make MOBI editions of FLP – we are working on one right now. By publishing the flp.mobi script you are essentially taking bread out of my mouth and Rudi’s, a retired guy, and a schoolteacher. Proud of yourselves? That’s all I have to say personally. Github has received DMCA takedown notices and if this script doesn’t come down pretty soon they (and very possibly you) might be hearing from some lawyers. As of Monday, this matter is in the hands of Perseus’s Domestic Rights Department and Caltech’s Office of The General Counsel.

Michael A. Gottlieb Editor, The Feynman Lectures on Physics New Millennium Edition www.feynmanlectures.info www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu

This is icky on multiple levels. First of all, Gottlieb is engaging in slight copyfraud in overclaiming what his copyright enables him to block. Further it is not necessarily the case that anyone, let alone “everyone” is “violating [Gottlieb’s] copyright” merely by running the script. There are plenty of legitimate reasons why running that script may be perfectly legitimate, and legal cases that have suggested place and time shifting content is a legal fair use would certainly come into play here. Furthermore, the argument that Github is somehow contributorily liable is highly questionable, and Gottlieb really ought to talk to a copyright lawyer before making such a leap.

But from there to shift into how important it is to make the work available to the world… just seems strange. If that’s the case, why is he freaking out so much?

Either way, the whole situation seems unfortunate, but once again, that’s what you get with our crazy copyright law and the DMCA takedown process.