http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/physics/ en-us Fri, 18 Dec 2009 08:07:14 GMT Focus Forum 15 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2410219/posts The typical Hollywood action hero skirts death for a living. Time and again, scores of bad guys shoot at him from multiple directions but miss by a hair. Cars explode just a fraction of a second too late for the fireball to catch him before he finds cover. And friends come to the rescue just before a villain’s knife slits his throat. If any one of those things happened just a little differently, the hero would be hasta la vista, baby. Yet even if we have not seen the movie before, something tells us that he will make it to... Scientific American http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2410219/posts#comment Fri, 18 Dec 2009 08:07:14 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2404336/posts GENEVA – The world's largest atom smasher has recorded its first high-energy collisions of protons, a spokeswoman said Wednesday. Physicists hope those collisions will help them understand suspected phenomena such as dark matter, antimatter and ultimately the creation of the universe billions of years ago, which many theorize occurred as a massive explosion known as the Big Bang. The collisions occurred Tuesday evening as the Large Haldron Collider underwent test runs in preparation for operations next year, said Christine Sutton of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN. Two beams of circulating particles traveling in opposite directions at 1.18... AP on Yahoo http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2404336/posts#comment Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:07:22 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2403772/posts Gore vs. Palin on climate change Posted: Wednesday, December 09, 2009 10:41 AM by Mark Murray From NBC's Andrea Mitchell In an interview that will air on MSNBC at 1:00 pm ET today, Al Gore rebutted Sarah Palin's Washington Post op-ed and Facebook postings that question the science on climate change given the "Climate-gate" controversy. In response, Gore said that "the deniers are persisting in an era of unreality. The entire North Polar icecap is disappearing before our eyes... What do they think is happening?" He said we've seen record storms, droughts, fires -- and the effects taking place are... msnbc http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2403772/posts#comment Wed, 9 Dec 2009 16:29:55 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2401849/posts After 20 years in the making, the first physics results have come out of CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Physicists from the University of Birmingham played a key role in analyzing these collisions and producing the first results from the 27 km circular atom smasher near Geneva. Space Daily http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2401849/posts#comment Mon, 7 Dec 2009 05:08:01 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2401435/posts Recent revelations about Tiger Woods playdates have exploded his wholesome image in a Big Bang louder than the sound of an Esclade hitting a fire hydrant and tree. But it also has given a sales boost to "Get a Grip on Physics" by science writer John Gribbin. Photos released by the Florida Highway Patrol show the book in Woods' mangled car, amid shards of glass. That has been enough to lift the book to the 2,268th position on the Amazon sales list, up from 396,224th the previous day. Baltimore Sun http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2401435/posts#comment Sun, 6 Dec 2009 12:07:48 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2401249/posts Shortly after the first of the year (if not already), the Large Hadron Collider — the most powerful particle accelerator ever built — will smash protons together at record energies. If the Earth remains intact, doomsayers will once again have been falsified. Every time they forecast the demise of the planet, those prophets of Earthly annihilation prove themselves no more foresightful than mortgage bankers or phony psychics. ScienceNews http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2401249/posts#comment Sun, 6 Dec 2009 00:26:01 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2400134/posts It's been a terrible week for Tiger Woods, but the golf star's moment of madness at the steering wheel has brought a surge in sales for a book written by a science writer teaching at Sussex University. A series of pictures released by Florida police of Woods's wrecked SUV includes a shot of the back seat, complete with waterbottle, towel and furled umbrella. But there among the shards of tinted glass in the footwell sits a well-thumbed copy of a paperback with the golf-appropriate title clearly visible: Get a Grip on Physics. This incidental role in Woods's domestic drama has... guardian.co.uk http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2400134/posts#comment Fri, 4 Dec 2009 13:59:26 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2395852/posts Advocates and sympathetic politicians claiming that man-made global warming from use of carbon-based energy sources mandates international controls on economically prosperous nations were already worried that their victory is slipping. Now another blow has been struck against the basic "science" used to support their case. Following an extensive theoretical analysis, two German physicists have determined(pdf) that the term greenhouse gas is a misnomer and that the greenhouse effect appears to violate basic laws of physics. To briefly review, the entire argument for immediate political action on carbon-based emissions rests upon three premises, formulated over the last twenty years by scientists... American Thinker http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2395852/posts#comment Sat, 28 Nov 2009 15:33:53 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2394074/posts Was Newton right and Einstein wrong? It seems that unzipping the fabric of spacetime and harking back to 19th-century notions of time could lead to a theory of quantum gravity. Physicists have struggled to marry quantum mechanics with gravity for decades. In contrast, the other forces of nature have obediently fallen into line. For instance, the electromagnetic force can be described quantum-mechanically by the motion of photons. Try and work out the gravitational force between two objects in terms of a quantum graviton, however, and you quickly run into trouble—the answer to every calculation is infinity. But now Petr HoÅ™ava,... ScientificAmerican http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2394074/posts#comment Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:25:53 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2388571/posts Scientists have repaired the world's largest atom smasher and plan by this weekend to restart the fault-ridden Large Hadron Collider. The 'Big Bang' machine was launched with great fanfare last year before its spectacular failure from a bad electrical connection. This time the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is taking a cautious approach with the super-sophisticated equipment, said James Gillies, a spokesman. It cost about $10 billion, with contributions from many governments and universities around the world. Scientists expect to send beams of protons around the 27-kilometer (17-mile) circular tunnel housing the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC,... The Telegraph http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2388571/posts#comment Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:46:41 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2384723/posts People who think science is dull are wrong. Here are 10 reasons why.Physics is weird. There is no denying that. Particles that don’t exist except as probabilities; time that changes according to how fast you’re moving; cats that are both alive and dead until you open a box. We’ve put together a collection of 10 of the strangest facts we can find, with the kind help of cosmologist and writer Marcus Chown, author of We Need To Talk About Kelvin, and an assortment of Twitter users. The humanities-graduate writer of this piece would like to stress that this is... Telegraph http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2384723/posts#comment Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:51:26 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2382645/posts Sir Ambrose Fleming: Father of Modern Electronics --snip-- Sir John Ambrose Fleming was a leader in the electronics revolution that changed the world. As a professor at a major university, he carefully researched the evidence for Darwinism, concluding that the theory is not supported by science. He also influenced hundreds of students to evaluate the evidence in science for Darwinism. An outstanding scientist and creationist, he played a significant role in the development and maturation of the early creation movement. As Travers and Muhr wrote, he "had an unusually long and active life," and his life changed the world as... ACTS & FACTS http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2382645/posts#comment Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:50:41 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2380116/posts Why Evolutionary-Based Science Is A Menace To Scientific Research, Discovery, and Progress Evolutionary-based research always begins with the inaccurate and unscientific presupposition that the Theory of Evolution, i.e. the Big Bang, the spontaneous generation of life, and common descent, is true. Due to this systemic problem, scientific discovery and progress is severely hampered, not to mention the hundreds of millions of research dollars that are squandered every year. In a time in which almost ANY alternative thought is given a platform, the evolution industry is silencing dissenting scientific evidence, even when it’s from fellow evolutionists! See the growing list of... WHO IS YOUR CREATOR? http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2380116/posts#comment Fri, 6 Nov 2009 17:39:16 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2377183/posts Rethinking relativity: Is time out of joint? EVER since Arthur Eddington travelled to the island of Príncipe off Africa to measure starlight bending around the sun during a 1919 eclipse, evidence for Einstein’s theory of general relativity has only become stronger. Could it now be that starlight from distant galaxies is illuminating cracks in the theory’s foundation? .... Yet it is still not clear how well general relativity holds up over cosmic scales, at distances much larger than the span of single galaxies. Now the first, tentative hint of a deviation from general relativity has been found. While the evidence... New Scientist http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2377183/posts#comment Tue, 3 Nov 2009 05:29:43 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2374211/posts When the Fermi team did the calculations, using the most conservative estimates for how astrophysics plays into this, they determined that the mass scale must be at least 1.2 times the Planck mass, and by using reasonable but less conservative assumptions, they derived lower limits on the mass scale of up to 100 times the Planck mass. One way to interpret this is to say that there is no variation of the speed of light coming from any quantum gravity effects at less than 1.2 times the Planck mass. And given that some quantum gravity frameworks predict that effects should... Symmetry http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2374211/posts#comment Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:58:41 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2369031/posts Enlarge ImageConceptual bridge. This tiny silicon beam links light to vibration, potentially opening the way to technologies that combine optics and mechanics.Credit: M. Eichenfield et al., Nature, Advanced Online Publication (18 October 2009) A tiny ladderlike beam of silicon converts light into vibrations and vice versa with extremely high efficiency, physicists report. That may seem like an esoteric result, but the finding could open the way to new physics and someday serve as a key element in optical microcircuits akin to the electronic microcircuits in computer chips. Although the effect is ordinarily very small, light exerts forces on the... ScienceNOW Daily News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2369031/posts#comment Fri, 23 Oct 2009 06:34:00 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2364437/posts Mini-hole made of metamaterials ensnares microwave light.The artificial 'black hole' sucks up microwaves.Q. Cheng and T. J. Cui Physicists have created a black hole for light that can fit in your coat pocket. Their device, which measures just 22 centimetres across, can suck up microwave light and convert it into heat. The hole is the latest clever device to use 'metamaterials', specially engineered materials that can bend light in unusual ways. Previously, scientists have used such metamaterials to build 'invisibility carpets' and super-clear lenses. This latest black hole was made by Qiang Chen and Tie Jun Cui of Southeast University... Nature News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2364437/posts#comment Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:45:25 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2363706/posts In the past 5 years, no material has excited more interest from condensed matter physicists than graphene, a sheet of carbon only one atom thick. Electrons zing through the stuff in an unusual way, and they flow so easily that graphene could someday replace silicon and other semiconductors as the material of choice for microchips. Now, a team of physicists has taken a key step in fulfilling graphene's promise as a hotbed of exotic physics by showing that the electrons within it can team up to behave like particles with a fraction of the electron's charge. The effect is called... ScienceNOW Daily News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2363706/posts#comment Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:36:01 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2356330/posts Weekend Roundup --snip-- Picture Highlight: the new Herschel Space Telescope, is seeing first light and creating dramatic images of gas clouds in the Milky Way... CEH http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2356330/posts#comment Tue, 6 Oct 2009 23:57:21 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2356153/posts From left to right: Charles Kao, Willard Boyle and George Smith. (Reuters) Three scientists who harnessed the power of light in ways that turned the Internet into a global phenomenon and launched the digital-camera revolution were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.Charles Kao, who was born in Shanghai and has both U.K. and U.S. citizenships, received half the total prize money of $1.4 million. Dr. Kao was lauded for a breakthrough that led to fiber-optic cables, the thin glass threads that carry a vast chunk of the world's phone and data traffic.The other half of the prize is shared... Wall Street Journal http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2356153/posts#comment Tue, 6 Oct 2009 19:56:22 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2354111/posts US scientists have confirmed the discovery of element number 114, first made over a decade ago by a team in Russia. By smashing a high energy beam of calcium-48 ions into a plutonium-242 target, the US team managed to detect two nuclei of element 114, which is predicted by some to be bordering the so-called 'island of stability' for superheavy atoms.Yuri Oganessian and his team at Dubna, Russia, were the first to claim to have created nuclei of element 114 - but any such claim has to be thoroughly verified and the experiments repeated independently before the element can be considered for admission... Chemistry World http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2354111/posts#comment Sat, 3 Oct 2009 14:46:52 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2352126/posts Denver, Colo., Sep 30, 2009 / 03:35 pm (CNA).- Contemporary astrophysics hold the scientific key to prove the existence of God, but unfortunately very few know the scientific facts, said Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J, PhD, during a conference delivered on Sunday at the John Paul II Center for the New Evangelization in Denver, Colorado. The Honolulu-born Jesuit is the past president of Gonzaga University and is also well-known philosopher and physicist who is involved in bringing science and theology together. Fr. Spitzer is currently engaged in an ambitious project to explain the metaphysical consequences of the latest astrophysical discoveries,... CNA http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2352126/posts#comment Thu, 1 Oct 2009 01:47:54 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2352284/posts Laser pulses fired into hydrogen produces intense x-rays.Tom Tracy Photography / Alamy A team of physicists has built a small, powerful X-ray source — a prototype of the sort of machine they hope could replace much larger facilities.The technology has the potential to revolutionize everything from microbiology to materials science by giving scientists easier access to high-quality images of the things they are studying.Researchers use X-rays to probe all manner of things — from comet dust to fossilized animals trapped in amber. But making high-quality images requires much brighter and better controlled sources than those available in most institutions. So... Nature News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2352284/posts#comment Thu, 1 Oct 2009 07:26:56 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2351382/posts Many of us had just the grandest time conducting worthless research for the old monopolistic phone companies.  Dr. Steven Chu, our Secretary of Energy was one of the typical products of that era of unfocused industrial research.  He nurtured his career in what had become the most arrogant and unfocused lab of them all, Bell Laboratories.   If you landed one of those storied jobs as a newly minted Member of Technical Staff, you could expect to conduct research indistinguishable from that of any academic scientist supported by government agencies like the National Science Foundation. That a once glorious Bell Labs... American Thinker http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2351382/posts#comment Wed, 30 Sep 2009 06:22:35 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2350580/posts Enlarge ImagePeer pressure. Magnetic domains in steel (vertical bans) arise when neighboring electrons point their magnetic poles in the same direction. Credit: Zureks, Chris Vardon/Wikimedia It would be tough to stick it to your refrigerator, but an ultra-cold gas magnetizes itself just as do metals such as iron or nickel, a team of atomic physicists reports. That cool trick shows that the messy physics within solids can be modeled with pristine gases, the researchers say. But others are skeptical that the team has actually seen what they claim. Condensed matter physicists can tell you essentially all there is to... ScienceNOW Daily News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2350580/posts#comment Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:47:47 GMT