Awesome, it may only be for a fraction of a second but it is still very cool stuff.
Foxnews
It's one thing to make an object invisible, like Harry Potter's mythical cloak. But scientists have made an entire event impossible to see. They have invented a time masker.
Think of it as an art heist that takes place before your eyes and surveillance cameras. You don't see the thief strolling into the museum, taking the painting down or walking away, but he did. It's not just that the thief is invisible -- his whole activity is.
What scientists at Cornell University did was on a much smaller scale, both in terms of events and time. It happened so quickly that it's not even a blink of an eye. Their time cloak lasts an incredibly tiny fraction of a fraction of a second. They hid an event for 40 trillionths of a second, according to a study appearing in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.
We see events happening as light from them reaches our eyes. Usually it's a continuous flow of light. In the new research, however, scientists were able to interrupt that flow for just an instant.
Other newly created invisibility cloaks fashioned by scientists move the light beams away in the traditional three dimensions. The Cornell team alters not where the light flows but how fast it moves, changing in the dimension of time, not space.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Now You See It, Now You Don't: Time Cloak Created
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
‘Invisibility Cloak’ Uses Mirages to Make Objects Vanish
Once again Science Fiction becomes reality.
Wired
It happens when a big change in temperature over a small distance bends light rays so they’re sent towards the eye rather than bouncing off the surface. So if you see a pool of blue water in the middle of the desert it’s just the blue sky being redirected from the warm ground and sent directly into your eye. Your brain, being the clever little computer that it is, swaps this mad image out for something more sensible: a pool of water.
With that in mind, the researchers wanted to find a material that has an exceptional ability to conduct heat and quickly transfer it to surrounding areas to mimic the light-distorting temperature gradients of the desert. That material, they found, was sheets of carbon nanotubes.
The nanotubes — one-molecule-thick sheets of carbon wrapped up into cylindrical tube — have the density of air but the strength of steel. They’re also excellent conductors, making them an ideal material to exploit the “mirage effect.”
Through electrical stimulation, the transparent sheet of highly aligned nanotubes can be quickly heated to high temperatures. By transferring that heat to its surrounding areas, a steep temperature gradient is generated, which causes the light rays to bend away from the object concealed behind the device. Therefore, the object appears invisible.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
TEVATRON SHUTS DOWN AFTER 28-YEAR RUN
The End of an Era
Slowly America is losing ground in research and exploration.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Strange Particles May Travel Faster Than Light
This cosmic speed limit, 299,792,458 meters per second (about 700 million miles an hour), forms the backbone of Einstein's seminal Theory of Special Relativity, published in 1905. To rewrite this law would have broad-ranging implications, including even the possibility of time travel.
Could Einsteins theory finally be disproved?
Foxnews
Nothing goes faster than the speed of light. At least, we didn't think so.
New results from the CERN laboratory in Switzerland seem to break this cardinal rule of physics, calling into question one of the most trusted laws discovered by Albert Einstein.
Physicists have found that tiny particles called neutrinos are making a 454-mile (730-kilometer) underground trip faster than they should — more quickly, in fact, than light could do. If the results are confirmed, they could throw much of modern physics into upheaval.
The results come from the OPERA experiment, which sends sprays of neutrinos from CERN in Geneva to the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy. After analyzing the results from 15,000 particles, it seems the neutrinos are crossing the distance at a velocity 20 parts per million faster than the speed of light.
By making use of advanced GPS systems and atomic clocks, the researchers were able to determine this speed to an accuracy of less than 10 nanoseconds (.00000001 seconds)
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Fifty new alien worlds revealed
Always something new and exciting in space.
Cosmic Log/MSNBC
European astronomers have announced the discovery of more than 50 new planets beyond our solar system, including 16 that are just a notch above our own planet in mass. They say their record-breaking findings suggest that more than half of the stars like our sun possess planets, and that many of those worlds are less massive than Saturn.
The pick of the litter is a planet that's already been in the spotlight: HD 85512 b, a world at least 3.6 times as massive as Earth that's located 36 light-years away in the constellation Vela. HD 85512 b is the only one of the 16 super-Earths on today's list that is located in its star system's habitable zone. That's the area around a star where scientists believe water could exist in liquid form, which would make a rocky planet potentially livable.
HD 85512 b's status came to light a couple of weeks ago in a paper submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, but the team behind the discovery provided more details about that super-Earth and the dozens of other worlds in papers presented today at the Extreme Solar Systems II conference in Wyoming.
The findings came from the team behind the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS, which is installed at the European Southern Observatory's 11.8-foot (3.6-meter) La Silla Observatory in Chile.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Electric motor made from a single molecule
Amazing stuff.
Nano technology for internal medicine is one step closer to reality, one day they will be able to inject individuals with purposely designed little doctor type robots to attack diseases like cancer.
By modifying the molecule slightly, it could be used to generate microwave radiation or to couple into what are known as nano-electromechanical systems, Dr Sykes said.
BBC
Tiny rotors based on single molecules have been shown before, but this is the first that can be individually driven by an electric current.
"People have found before that they can make motors driven by light or by chemical reactions, but the issue there is that you're driving billions of them at a time - every single motor in your beaker," said Charles Sykes, a chemist at Tufts University in Massachusetts, US.
"The exciting thing about the electrical one is that we can excite and watch the motion of just one, and we can see how that thing's behaving in real time," he told BBC News.
Monday, August 22, 2011
World's oldest fossils discovered
Pre Oxygen Sulphur life !
Now think about that and look at all the Planets and exoplanets there are in the Universe and honestly say there is no life in it other than on Earth.
TG Daily
Scientists say they've found the world's oldest fossils, the remains of tiny creatures that lived 3.4 billion years ago in a pre-oxygen world.
‘At last we have good solid evidence for life over 3.4 billion years ago. It confirms there were bacteria at this time, living without oxygen,’ says Professor Martin Brasier of the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford.
The Earth was hotter than today, and dominated by volcanic activity. The oceans were as warm as a bath, and circulating currents were very strong. Land masses were small and the tidal range was huge.
And without plants or algae to photosynthesise and produce oxygen, very little oxygen was present. The early life appears to have been based on sulphur rather than oxygen for energy and growth.
"Such bacteria are still common today. Sulphur bacteria are found in smelly ditches, soil, hot springs, hydrothermal vents – anywhere where there’s little free oxygen and they can live off organic matter,’ says Brasier.
The microfossils were found in a remote part of Western Australia called Strelley Pool - the remains of the oldest beach or shoreline known on Earth - in some of the oldest sedimentary rocks that can be found anywhere.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Best Ways to Watch Perseid Meteor Shower, Despite Full Moon Interference
Last year they were phenomenal, this year not so good maybe.
But well worth getting up a bit early for.
IBTimes
While the several nights before the peak give you better chances to observe the beauty of meteors on the dark sky, it is too early to give up on the full moon-lit sky this weekend.
Turn your back on the bright moon, and look mainly to the northwest, below the summer triangle of Vega, Deneb, and Altair. Space.com also advised stargazers to look away from the radiant, because the longest and brightest meteors will be about 90 degrees away. The radiant is now located in the constellation Cassiopeia, not Perseus, with its characteristic "W" shape.
The best hours for the meteor shower to monopolize the night sky is after the moon has set and before the sun rises. Following the best viewing nights on Tuesday and Wednesday, Thursday night will also see a window of dark skies, while it's shorter. The meteor will be best seen from 3:29 a.m. to 3:56 a.m. in Boston, and 4:02 a.m. to 4:32 a.m. in Washington D.C. on Thursday, according to a table provided by Space.com.
On the very night of Friday to Saturday, 2 a.m. will be the peak of the Perseids, when over 100 meteors per hour will light up the sky.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Experimental Aircraft to Go From Zero to 13,000 in Hypersonic Test Launch
Awesome stuff, but I don't know if the Human body can take such speeds within Earths atmosphere...
The goal of the project is to eventually enable the U.S. military to strike anywhere in the world in less than an hour
Oh! That explains it.
Foxnews
An unmanned aircraft that can travel at the breakneck speed of 20 times the speed of sound will take off Wednesday from an Air Force base in California for a test flight.
The Falcon HTV-2 is an arrow-shaped aircraft that launches on a rocket, separates and then glides at hypersonic speeds of 13,000 mph through the Earth’s atmosphere. (To put it in perspective, it would take less than 12 minutes to fly from New York to Los Angeles.)
Wednesday’s launch marks the aircraft's second flight. In April 2010, the Falcon flew for nine minutes, including 130 seconds of Mach 22 to Mach 17 flight, according to DARPA, the military's research arm.
The goal of the second flight is to "validate our assumptions and gain further insight into extremely high Mach regimes that we cannot fully replicate on the ground," Air Force Maj. Chris Schulz said in a DARPA news release.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Abundant Antimatter Circles the Earth
The find could one day open the door to fueling spacecraft with the exotic particle, an idea already being explored from NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts.
Right out of Star Trek.
Funny how Science Fiction Always turns into Fact.
International Business Times
A band of anti-protons have been discovered ringing around the earth, researchers have found, adding to the list of particles Earth holds within its magnetic field.
Cosmic rays constantly rain in from space, colliding with earth's atmosphere and creating a spray of new particles. Scientists have observed antiparticles before, such as anti-protons, but this is the first time antiprotons have been observed.
Many of these particles become trapped inside Earth's Van Allen radiation belts, the donut shaped zones around Earth where particles spiral around the planet's magnetic field.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
NASA’s Juno explorer launches on its 5-year journey to Jupiter
Seeing as how their is no Space shuttle anymore, we at least have this to look forward too.
One of the greatest things America has ever done is explored space, and with budgets being cut the private sector will take over; Boeing is starting a space taxi service.
The Bulletin
LOS ANGELES — NASA’s spacecraft Juno lifted off Friday in an incandescent arc over the Atlantic Ocean, the start of a five-year, 1.7 billion-mile trip to Jupiter that scientists believe will unlock some of the secrets behind the origin of the solar system.
Juno launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida aboard an Atlas V rocket, soaring into warm, blue skies.
The craft then conducted two “burns” — bracketing a scheduled coast at 17,500 mph — to set it on the right trajectory.
Juno’s massive solar panels, configured like the spokes of a Ferris wheel, unfurled without a hitch, said Scott Bolton, the mission’s principal investigator and the director of space science at San Antonio’s Southwest Research Institute.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Salty water may flow on Mars
Water on Mars? Why not, their is water here and water in space.
Water = Life.
The Los Angeles Times
Salty water may flow on Mars in the form of strange, dark lines on the terrain that grow and fade with the seasons, according to recent images. The findings, reported in the journal Science, provide a new line of evidence that life could exist on the Red Planet.
The findings, released Thursday, describe images taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, currently circling the planet. The otherwise unremarkable lines on the planet's slopes grow more prominent during the warm season, proliferating from late Martian spring into early fall. This suggests they were made by volatile chemicals that can boil at relatively low temperatures, such as water and carbon dioxide, the authors wrote.
They look rather like flow lines that would be left by running water, ending in light-colored patches that could be material deposited by the flow, the authors added.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Swedish Man Builds Nuclear Reactor in His Kitchen
Just when you think you have heard Everything you read one of these items.
O.k., so the guy is a budding Nuclear Physicist and he decides to build his own "Functioning" Nuclear reactor that alone is pretty amazing, considering he did it in His kitchen; But there have been 38 previous nuclear reactors made in peoples homes.
The 32-year-old amateur physicist constructed the $40,000 homemade fusion reactor in his spare time, and became the 38th independent physicist in the word to achieve nuclear fusion from a self-built reactor and forms part of a growing community of "fusioneers."
Al Qaida and the "How to make a bomb in the Kitchen of your Mom" got nothin on this guy.
Foxnews
Swedish authorities have detained a man who attempted to build a nuclear reactor in his kitchen, Helsingborgs Dagblad reported Tuesday.
"I was arrested and sent to jail when the police and the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority searched my apartment," the unnamed nuclear enthusiast wrote on a blog detailing his project. "They took all my radioactive stuff, but I was released after a hearing. But I am still suspect for crime against the radiation safety law."
Police in the western town of Angelholm were alerted when he contacted Sweden's nuclear authority and asked if it was permitted for an individual to build a nuclear reactor in his home.
The unnamed enthusiast brought radioactive materials, as well as a Geiger counter which he ordered from the US. He also dismantled smoke detectors, which contain small amounts of nuclear material.
First Oxygen Molecules Found in Orion Nebula
Have you ever checked out the Orion Nebula through a Telescope?
It is one of the most amazing objects to check out, and now that Oxygen has been confirmed there it is even more amazing.
International Business Times
Astronomers have found the first ever molecules of oxygen deep in space in a region of the Orion nebula with the Herschel Space Observatory, prompting searches to ensue in other star-forming regions.
Herschel, a mission under the European Space Agency (ESA) using infrared technology, is the first to confirm the existence of molecular oxygen, or two bonded oxygen atoms, rarely found in space though the Swedish Odin telescope spotted an unconfirmed molecule in 2007. This finding marks certainty regarding oxygen molecules in outer space, a phenomenon, though predicted, continued to puzzle astronomers.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
'Trojan' asteroid shares Earth's orbit
Amazing things are always found in space, not that asteroids are just amazing; but finding one in the same orbit as Earth in 2011, thats amazing.
With all the technology floating out in space, 2010 TK7 (the new Asteroids official name) is only just discovered.
AFP
PARIS — Earth is not alone in its orbit around the Sun - a small 'Trojan' asteroid sits in front of our planet and leads it, according to British science revue Nature, which published the discovery Thursday.
This diminutive asteroid has a diameter of just 300 metres but is called a Trojan because of its particular position in a stable spot either in front of a planet or behind it. Because the asteroid and planet are constantly on the same orbit, they can never collide.
Jupiter, Mars and Neptune also have Trojan asteroids accompanying them, as do two of Saturn's moons.
NASA scientists discovered the asteroid, which lies 80 million kilometres (50 million miles) from Earth, using its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope.
Astronomers have long thought that Earth did have some Trojans but their discovery has proved elusive because of the difficulty of seeing them in daylight.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Advertise on NYTimes.com NASA Picks Rover Destination: Mountain on Mars
At least we will have this, at least for now.
NASA would like to continue with space exploration, aside from this they have also announced plans to put Astronauts on a Asteroid.
Funding, of course, stands to be cut from the NASA Budget leaving us with nothing to pay attention to in space. 
The New York Times
NASA’s next Mars rover — the ambitious, beleaguered, delayed Mars Science Laboratory finally has a destination.
Mission scientists announced Friday that the rover, a nuclear-powered vehicle the size of a small S.U.V., would head to Gale Crater, a 96-mile-wide depression near the Martian equator. What attracted them there is a mountain that rises upward nearly three miles at the center, making it taller, for example, than Mount Rainier outside Seattle.
“The thing about this mountain is it’s not a tall spire,” John P. Grotzinger, the project scientist, said at a news conference at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington. “It’s a broad, low, moundlike shape. What it means is we can drive up it with a rover. So this might be the tallest mountain anywhere in the solar system that we could actually climb with a rover.”
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Largest Reservoir of Water Discovered in Space
Sounds like a good place for a swim !
International Business Timeshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Astromomers found a reservoir of water in space that measures 140 trillion times the earth's ocean water.
It is also the farthest reservoir of water ever discovered in the universe, according to two teams of researchers.
The water surrounds a huge, feeding black hole called a "quasar" more than 12 billion light-years away. The quasar is powered by a giant black hole which gradually consumes a surrounding disk of gas and dust, while spewing out enormous amounts of energy.
Astronomers studied a quasar called APM 08279+5255, where the black hole is 20 billion times greater than the sun. They discovered water vapor distributed around the black holestretching out to hundreds of light-years in size.
Cern scientists suspect glimpse of Higgs boson
Getting Closer.
This will be big when they can finally confirm it.
Guardian.co.uk
Scientists may have caught their first glimpse of the elusive Higgs boson, which is thought to give mass to the basic building blocks of nature.
Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, the European particle physics lab near Geneva, announced the findings at a conference on Friday.
The world's most powerful atom smasher hunts for signs of new physics by slamming subatomic particles together at nearly the speed of light in an 18-mile round tunnel beneath the French-Swiss border.
Speaking at the meeting, teams working on two of the collider's huge detectors, Atlas and CMS, independently reported unusual bumps in their data that could be the first hints of the particle.
Physicists stressed that it was too early to know whether the signals were due to the missing particle.
Bumps that look like new discoveries can be caused by statistical fluctuations in data, flaws in computer models and other glitches, they said.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
What should be the Name of Pluto’s Fourth Moon?
Amazing after all these years and with the phenomenal telescopes that have been built in the years since Pluto was discovered, they discover a new moon.
International Business Times
Astronomers have discovered a fourth moon orbiting the distant planet of Pluto using the Hubble Space Telescope. The latest discovery has been temporarily named P4 and joins the planet's other three satellites; Charon, Nix and Hydra.
The finding has been the result of the ongoing work supporting NASA's New Horizons mission which is scheduled to fly through the Pluto system in 2015.
"I find it remarkable that Hubble's cameras enabled us to see such a tiny object so clearly from a distance of more than 3 billion miles (5 billion km)," stated Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who led this observing program with Hubble.
Although P4 is the temporary designation of Pluto's new satellite, astronomers and space researchers have been dwelling on all possible names for the fourth moon.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Dawn probe has date with asteroid
Unfortunately after the shuttle lands this will be the only space stuff we hear of.
not that it is not interesting or cool, it is just a step backwards for the space program.
BBC
The US space agency says its Dawn probe should now be in orbit around the asteroid Vesta.
The robotic satellite will be spending a year at the 530km-wide body before moving on to the "dwarf planet" Ceres.
New pictures on Dawn's approach to Vesta show the giant rock in unprecedented detail.
The asteroid looks like a punctured football, the result of a colossal collision sometime in its past that knocked off its south polar region.
Confirmation that Dawn is safely circling the rock should come on Sunday (GMT) when the probe is due to return data on its status.
