Scientists Claim New State of Matter Created

Scientists claim to have created a form of aluminum that's nearly transparent to extreme ultraviolet radiation and which is a new state of matter.

It's an idea straight out of science fiction, featured in the movie "Star Trek IV."

The work is detailed in the journal Nature Physics.

The normal states of matter are solid, liquid and gas, and a fourth state, called plasma, is a superheated gas considered more exotic. Other experiments have created strange states of matter for brief periods. This one, too, existed only briefly.

"What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before," said professor Justin Wark of Oxford University's Department of Physics.

"Transparent aluminum is just the start," Wark said. "The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of 'miniature stars' created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth."


source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/scientistsclaimnewstateofmattercreated

In praise of astronomy

In praise of astronomy, the most revolutionary of sciences

On August 25th 1609 an Italian mathematician called Galileo
Galilei demonstrated his newly constructed telescope to the merchants
of Venice. Shortly afterwards he turned it on the skies. He saw
mountains casting shadows on the moon and realised this body was a
world, like the Earth, endowed with complicated terrain.

He saw the
moons of Jupiter--objects that circled another heavenly body in direct
disobedience of the church's teaching. He saw the moonlike phases of
Venus, indicating that this planet circled the sun, not the Earth, in
even greater disobedience of the priests. He saw sunspots,
demonstrating that the sun itself was not the perfect orb demanded by
the Greek cosmology that had been adopted by the church. But he also
saw something else, a thing that is often now forgotten. He saw that
the Milky Way, that cloudy streak across the sky, is made of stars.

That observation was the first hint that, not only is the Earth not the
centre of things, but those things are vastly, almost incomprehensibly,
bigger than people up until that date had dreamed.


source: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14213985

Furthest object said to pave way for probing early cosmos

An ex­plo­sion in space de­tected April 23 marks the most dis­tant, longest-a­go event and ob­ject known, as­tro­no­mers say.

Ob­jects seen fur­ther away in space al­so ap­pear as fur­ther back in time, since it takes time for their light to get he­re.

Al­though there have been a num­ber of such rec­ord-breakers in the past, as­tro­no­mers say each rec­ord paves the way for prob­ing ear­li­er and ear­li­er in­to the his­to­ry of the uni­verse, al­low­ing an un­prec­e­dent­ed un­der­stand­ing of its ev­o­lu­tion.

Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090428_grb

Tiny "invisibility cloak" is like a magic carpet

Researchers have created a "carpet cloak" that
conceals objects under it from detection using light
near the human-visible part of the spectrum.

Re­search­ers have cre­at­ed a ti­ny “car­pet cloak” that con­ceals ob­jects un­der it from de­tec­tion us­ing light near the hu­man-vis­i­ble part of the spec­trum. While the car­pet it­self is vis­i­ble, the bulge of the ob­ject un­derneath it “dis­ap­pears” from the view of in­stru­ments that use this near-infrared light.

Re­search­ers say they’re hope­ful that with more pre­cise fab­rica­t­ion their strat­e­gy should yield a true “in­vis­i­bil­ity car­pet” that works in the ar­ea of the col­or spec­trum uti­lized by hu­man eyes, and at a larg­er size.

The car­pet works such that shin­ing a beam of light on the bulge shows a re­flec­tion iden­ti­cal to that of a beam re­flected from a flat sur­face.

Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090504_carpet

Complex organic molecules detected in space

Sci­en­tists say they have de­tected two of the most com­plex mol­e­cules yet dis­cov­ered in space. Their com­put­er mod­els al­so in­di­cate still larg­er mol­e­cules may be out there, in­clud­ing the so-far elu­sive ami­no ac­ids, es­sen­tial for life as we know it.

The find­ings from the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Ra­dio As­tron­o­my in Bonn, Ger­ma­ny, Cor­nell Uni­ver­s­ity in New York, and the Uni­ver­s­ity of Co­logne, Ger­ma­ny, were pre­s­ented April 21 at the Eu­ro­pe­an Week of As­tron­o­my and Space Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­s­ity of Hert­ford­shire, U.K.

The re­search­ers used the IRAM 30-me­ter tel­e­scope in Spain to de­tect light emis­sions from mol­e­cules in the star-forming re­gion Sag­it­ta­ri­us B2, near the cen­ter of our gal­axy. The mol­e­cules were iden­ti­fied in a hot, dense gas cloud known as the Large Mol­e­cule Hei­mat, which con­tains a lu­mi­nous young star.


Source http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090421_organic

Physicists see the cosmos in a coffee cup

A professor and a graduate student say they have found a new "universal principle."

A pro­fes­sor and a grad­u­ate stu­dent have found a “u­ni­ver­sal prin­ci­ple” that they say un­ites the in­ter­play of light and shade on the sur­face of your cof­fee, with the way gra­vity dis­torts dis­tant ga­lax­ies’ light.

They think sci­en­tists will be able to use vi­ola­t­ions of this prin­ci­ple to map un­seen clumps of mys­te­ri­ous “dark mat­ter” in the uni­verse.

Light rays nat­u­rally re­flect off a curve like the in­side sur­face of a cof­fee cup in a curv­ing, ivy leaf pat­tern that comes to a point in the cen­ter and is bright­est along its edge.




Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090416_coffee

Martian mountain may answer big question:

One Martian volcano is about three times Mount
Everest's height. But it's the small details that
two geologists are looking at.

The Mar­tian vol­ca­no Olym­pus Mons is about three times Mount Ever­est’s height. But it’s the small de­tails that ge­ol­o­gists Pat­rick Mc­Gov­ern and Jul­ia Mor­gan are look­ing at in think­ing about wheth­er the Red Plan­et ev­er had – or still sup­ports – life.

In sim­u­lat­ing the moun­tain’s forma­t­ion by com­put­er, Mc­Gov­ern and Mor­gan reached the con­clu­sion that an­cient wa­ter may still be trapped un­derneath. Their find­ings are pub­lished in Febru­ary’s is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Ge­ol­o­gy.



Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090305_olympus