Teach quantum mechanics at primary school

"My modest proposal, therefore, is to teach quantum mechanics at primary school to everyone, starting sometime around the age of five. Of course, not every child will get it. But then not every child gets music, or poetry. That doesn't stop us teaching those subjects.

But for many children the principles and ideas of quantum mechanics will sink into their subconsciouses, which will work their usual magic, making the ideas instinctive when some of those children, as adults, encounter them again."

http://adrianbowyer.blogspot.com/2011/02/kindersuperposition.html

Why 5, 8 and 24 Are the Strangest Numbers in the Universe

"If string theory is right, the octonions are not a useless curiosity; on the contrary, they provide the deep reason why the universe must have 10 dimensions: in 10 dimensions, matter and force particles are embodied in the same type of numbers—the octonions."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=octonions-web-exclusive

Cantor exhibition depicts how ancient world used color, how science reveals the faded past

"A Cantor Arts Center team led by undergraduate chemical engineering major Ivy Nguyen discovered minute traces of pigments that originally covered the original sculpture but were washed away by the millennia. Nguyen's team used 3D rapid prototypic technology to create replicas of the artwork, which is painted to look as the sculpture did in ancient times. Credit: L.A. Cicero"

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-cantor-depicts-ancient-world-science.html

First Demonstration of Time Cloaking

"Time cloaking is possible because of a kind of duality between space and time in electromagnetic theory. In particular, the diffraction of a beam of light in space is mathematically equivalent to the temporal propagation of light through a dispersive medium. In other words, diffraction and dispersion are symmetric in spacetime."

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26992/

Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end

"By suggesting that mass, time, and length can be converted into one another as the universe evolves, Wun-Yi Shu has proposed a new class of cosmological models that may fit observations of the universe better than the current big bang model. What this means specifically is that the new models might explain the increasing acceleration of the universe without relying on a cosmological constant such as dark energy, as well as solve or eliminate other cosmological dilemmas such as the flatness problem and the horizon problem."

http://www.physorg.com/news199591806.html

Antipodal Effects

"Seismic energy from a major meteorite impact would be expected to disrupt the surface on the opposite side of the Earth. Computer simulations conducted at Sandia National Laboratories in 1994 showed how the diverging shock wave from an impact reconverges along the axis of symmetry at the opposite point (antipode)."

http://www.newgeology.us/presentation35.html

The Coin Flip: A Fundamentally Unfair Proposition?

"The 50-50 proposition is actually more of a 51-49 proposition, if not worse. The sacred coin flip exhibits (at minimum) a whopping 1% bias, and possibly much more. 1% may not sound like a lot, but it's more than the typical casino edge in a game of blackjack or slots. What's more, you can take advantage of this little-known fact to give yourself an edge in all future coin-flip battles."

http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/the-coin-flip-a-fundamentally-unfair-proposition

Rubens' Tube: Real Life Sound Visualization with Fire and Propane

"A classic physics experiment called "Rubens' Tube" involves sound, a tube of propane, and fire. A length of pipe is perforated along the top and sealed at both ends. One seal is attached to a small speaker or frequency generator, the other to a supply of a flammable gas. The pipe is filled with the gas, and the gas leaking from the perforations is lit. If a constant frequency is used, a standing wave can form within the tube. When the speaker is turned on, the standing wave will create higher and lower pressure points along the tube. Where there is higher pressure due to the sound waves, more gas will escape from the perforations in the tube, and the flames will be higher at those points. In these cases, it is possible to determine the wavelength by simply measuring with a ruler."

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2009/01/rubens_tube_real_life_sound_visualization_with_fire_and_propane.html

Is time an illusion?

"In their quest for deeper theories of the universe, some researchers increasingly suspect that time is not a fundamental feature of nature, but rather an artefact of our perception."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19726391.500-is-time-an-illusion.html

"It is not reality that has a time flow, it is our very approximate knowledge of reality that has a time flow," says Rovelli. "Time is the effect of our ignorance."

"At reality's deepest level, then, it remains unknown whether time will hold strong or melt away like a Salvador Dali clock. Perhaps, as Rovelli and others suggest, time is all a matter of perspective - not a feature of reality but a result of your missing information about reality. So if your brain hurts when you try to understand time, relax. If you really knew, time might simply disappear."

LHC Webcam

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

Do nuclear decay rates depend on our distance from the sun?

"Here’s an interesting conundrum involving nuclear decay rates.

We think that the decay rates of elements are constant regardless of the ambient conditions (except in a few special cases where beta decay can be influenced by powerful electric fields).

So that makes it hard to explain the curious periodic variations in the decay rates of silicon-32 and radium-226 observed by groups at the Brookhaven National Labs in the US and at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesandstalt in Germany in the 1980s.

Today, the story gets even more puzzling. Jere Jenkins and pals at Purdue University in Indiana have re-analysed the raw data from these experiments and say that the modulations are synchronised with each other and with Earth’s distance from the sun. (Both groups, in acts of selfless dedication, measured the decay rates of silicon-32 and radium-226 over a period of many years.)

In other words, there appears to be an annual variation in the decay rates of these elements."


http://arxivblog.com/?p=596

The Periodic Table of Videos

"Tables charting the chemical elements have been around since the 19th century - but this modern version has a short video about each one."



http://www.periodicvideos.com/

Stephen Hawking's explosive new theory

"In this theory, the early universe can be described by a mathematical object called a wave function and, in a similar way to the light particle, the team proposed two years ago that this means that there was no unique origin to the cosmos: instead the wave function of the universe embraced a multitude of means to develop. "



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/06/26/scihawking126.xml

Particle Chart

http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~heroux/images/Particle_chart.jpg

Hints of 'time before Big Bang'

"Their model suggests that new universes could be created spontaneously from apparently empty space. From inside the parent universe, the event would be surprisingly unspectacular."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7440217.stm

Scientists Scan Striking Nanoscale Images

"This image captured in German labs by Thorsten Dziomba, shows GeSi quantum dots -- a mere 15 nanometers high and 70 nanometers in diameter."

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/02/nano_gallery_jmm

Lectures in Physics

"When you read a mystery novel, you know in advance what structure to expect: a crime, some detective work, and finally the unmasking of the evildoer. Likewise when Charlie Parker plays a blues, your ear expects to hear certain landmarks of the form regardless of how wild some of his notes are. Surveys of physics students usually show that they have worse attitudes about the subject after instruction than before, and their comments often boil down to a complaint that the person who strung the topics together had not learned what Agatha Christie and Charlie Parker knew intuitively about form and structure: students become bored and demoralized because the "march through the topics" lacks a coherent story line. You are reading the first volume of the Light and Matter series of introductory physics textbooks, and as implied by its title, the story line of the series is built around light and matter: how they behave, how they are different from each other, and, at the end of the story, how they turn out to be similar in some very bizarre ways."

http://www.vias.org/physics/

10 Futuristic Materials

Aerogel, Carbon nanotubes, Metamaterials, Bulk diamond, Bulk fullerenes, Amorphous metal, Superalloys, Metal foam, Transparent alumina, E-textiles

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/?p=714

Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation

"The Casimir force is a consequence of quantum mechanics, the theory that describes the world of atoms and subatomic particles that is not only the most successful theory of physics but also the most baffling.

The force is due to neither electrical charge or gravity, for example, but the fluctuations in all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening empty space between the objects and is one reason atoms stick together, also explaining a “dry glue” effect that enables a gecko to walk across a ceiling.

Now, using a special lens of a kind that has already been built, Prof Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin report in the New Journal of Physics they can engineer the Casimir force to repel, rather than attact. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1559579/Physicists-have-'solved'-mystery-of-levitation.html

Electron Caught On Film For The First Time

"With the use of a newly developed technology for generating short pulses from intense laser light, so-called attosecond pulses, scientists at the Lund University Faculty of Engineering in Sweden have managed to capture the electron motion for the first time."

http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/electron_caught_on_film_for_the_first_time