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Which ancient Greek made the most important contributions to natural philosophy?
May 24, 2012
By James Dacey
Greece is rarely out of the news these days, but unfortunately that news is almost exclusively focused on the nation’s ongoing economic woes. It is a colossal understatement to say that the country is in a tricky situation right now: either remain in the Eurozone and accept a sustained period of deep austerity; or ditch the Euro and face a period of huge uncertainty while triggering financial shockwaves throughout the rest of Europe.
As the struggle to find a solution continues for the world’s leaders and top economists, I can’t help but wonder what the thinkers of ancient Greece would have made of the current situation. Would Plato or Aristotle have been able to take a break from considering the nature of reality to draw up a solution that benefits all? Or would this kind of affair be too rooted in the mundanities of the everyday world?
In this week’s Facebook poll we are looking back at the brains of ancient Greece by asking you the following question.
Which ancient Greek made the most important contributions to natural philosophy?
Archimedes
Aristotle
Democritus
Euclid
Plato
Pythagoras
Thales
Let us know by visiting our Facebook page. And please feel free to explain your response or suggest a different ancient Greek thinker by posting a comment on the Facebook poll.
In last week’s poll we asked “How significant would the discovery of the Higgs boson be?”. The majority of respondents (66%) chose the option that it would answer the most important question in particle physics. 26% of respondents chose the option that there are more important questions in particle physics. And the remaining 9% believe that it would answer the biggest outstanding question in physics.
Thank you for your participation and we look forward to hearing from you in this week’s poll.
DIY Higgs discovery
May 23, 2012
Make your own Brazil band. (Courtesy: Phillip Gibbs)
By Hamish Johnston
The Large Hadron Collider is up and running at a collision energy of 8 TeV and – barring any disasters – it looks as if it may well give us a mass for the Higgs boson by the end of the year.
But why wait for the official pronouncement from CERN when you can aggregate all the latest measurements yourself using the handy “viXra unofficial Higgs combination Java applet”, which you can download here?
The dashboard-style interface shows you the classic “Brazil band” plot and allows you to fiddle around with how data from different experiments are combined. The default setting is the “unofficial” combination used by viXra blogger Phillip Gibbs, but you can also use the “official” CERN settings, or even choose your own.
Now there’s no need to wait for the man with the beard to tell you when to break out the champagne – you can make that decision yourself.
Quantum teleportation record broken…again
May 22, 2012
By Hamish Johnston
Just yesterday we reported that physicists in China had shattered the record for quantum teleportation through free space by sending quantum states 97 km across a lake.
Now, a different team led by Anton Zeilinger (right) of the University of Vienna has extended this distance to 143 km by teleporting quantum states across the stretch of sea separating two of the Canary Islands. The team claims that its triumph takes the prospect of quantum teleportation to and from satellites one step closer.
Quantum teleportation involves sending a quantum state between two parties – from Alice to Bob – without actually sending a particle in that state. The process involves one quantum channel of communication between the two, along which one half of an entangled pair of photons is sent from Alice to Bob. Also required is a conventional communication channel, through which Alice can send Bob information about a measurement that she has made on a particle in the quantum state that she wants to teleport to Bob. Bob then uses this information to manipulate his entangled photon so that it is in the teleported state.
Zeilinger and co-workers teleported quantum states from La Palma to Tenerife, and to pull it off they had to develop several new technologies including a new source of entangled photon pairs and “ultra-low-noise” single-photon detectors. Timing also proved to be a challenge, because the 10 ns uncertainty in GPS timing signals was not good enough to achieve the teleportation. Instead, the team had to develop a new “entanglement-assisted clock synchronization” technique that relies on the detection of the entangled photons by Alice and Bob.
Beyond the technical challenges, the team say it had to contend with “exceptionally bad weather conditions” from May to July 2011 when the experiment was done, which included everything from sandstorms to snow.
The fact the team was able to overcome these technical and meteorological challenges bodes well for the ultimate goal of the research – the ability to teleport quantum states back and forth to satellites in low Earth orbits (LEOs). Although most LEO satellites are positioned about three times the distance between Tenerife and La Palma, the atmosphere is much thinner – and therefore much less disruptive – for most of that distance. As a result, teleportation to a satellite might actually be easier than sending photons across a stretch of sea.
This latest result is described in a preprint on the arXiv server.
How significant would the discovery of the Higgs boson be?
May 17, 2012
By James Dacey
His eponymous particle may be famously elusive, but Peter Higgs has been seemingly omnipresent in Bristol over the past couple of days. He has spent today at Physics World headquarters, having appeared last night at the Bristol Festival of Ideas, and he has just shot off to the University of Bristol to meet with academics and give a special colloquium. Last night he also managed to squeeze in an appearance on the local news programme BBC Points West, which documented Higgs returning to Cotham School, where he was a pupil for five years. You can read full details of Higgs’ Bristol trip in this blog entry by Physics World editor Matin Durrani, who spent time with Higgs today to record an interview that will be appearing on physicworld.com.
In Higgs’ talk last night, he was joined on stage by the science editor of the Observer, Robin McKie, and naturally the questions turned to the particle that now bears his name. When asked about how he came up with his boson, Higgs lived up to his famous modesty, explaining how the idea had emerged without grand designs from his work on a problem relating to superconductivity. He seemed slightly embarrassed that the particle has been named after him when there were several other theorists working on the same issues.
Higgs was also humble when questioned about how he felt about the vast investments that have been made in constructing particle accelerators to hunt (in part) for the fruit of his work. When asked by a member of the audience whether he would celebrate the discovery of his boson, Higgs replied in his typically understated manner that he has a bottle of champagne left over from Christmas, but he that he hadn’t yet “put it in the fridge”.
In this week’s Facebook poll we want to know how you feel about the hunt for the Higgs boson.
How significant would the discovery of the Higgs boson be?
It would answer the biggest outstanding question in physics
It would answer the most important question in particle physics
There are other more important questions in particle physics
Let us know by visiting our Facebook page. And please feel free to explain your response by posting a comment on the Facebook poll.
In last week’s poll we asked “What is your primary source of online physics news?”. 78% of respondents said they get the majority of their updates from specialist news sites. 9% said they rely on general news sites. 6% use social media, another 6% rely on blogs, and just 1% get their news via Internet radio and podcasts.
Thank you for your participation and we look forward to hearing from you in this week’s poll.
Higgs spotted in Bristol
May 17, 2012
(Courtesy: Dirk Dahmer)
By Matin Durrani
It’s been a hectic few days for 82-year-old Peter Higgs.
The retired Edinburgh University particle theorist, after whom the famous boson is named, has been in Bristol for the last two days undertaking a series of public engagements.
First up was a visit yesterday to Cotham School, where Higgs was a pupil for five years during the Second World War when his father – a BBC engineer – was posted to the city. Higgs is in fact not the only great physicist the school has produced – the other stellar pupil was Paul Dirac, whose name the young Higgs used to see displayed prominently on the school’s honours boards. Higgs, who was back at the school for the first time since the war, signed autographs as he opened a new science block, appropriately named The Dirac–Higgs Science Centre, accompanied by the media.
In the evening, the self-effacing Higgs then took part in an event at St George’s Bristol that was part of the city’s Festival of Ideas. In front of an audience of several hundred people, he was joined on stage by Graham Farmelo, author of the award-winning Dirac biography The Strangest Man, who outlined Dirac’s achievements and his links with Bristol. Higgs then took part in a conversation with Observer science editor Robin McKie, who asked him, among other things, how he would celebrate if the Higgs boson is found. To much amusement, Higgs replied that he had “a leftover bottle of champagne from Christmas” but that he hadn’t yet “put it in the fridge”.
Today, Higgs paid a visit to IOP Publishing, where I interviewed him for Physics World. Inspired by questions posted by readers on our Facebook page and sent to us via Twitter, I quizzed Higgs about his early work on symmetry breaking, his thoughts about the search for the Higgs at CERN and his wider views on physics. We’ll be posting the interview online in the next month or two, so stay tuned for that.
Higgs still remains embarrassed at having a particle named after him, feeling that it places too much of the credit on him at the expense of other theorists. But during our interview, even he on occasion dropped the “so-called” from the “so-called Higgs boson”, the “so-called Higgs field” and the “so-called Higgs mechanism”. It just gets tiring after a while, I suppose.
As I write, the indefatigable Higgs is off to give a colloquium in the main lecture theatre at the physics department at the University of Bristol, entitled “My life as a boson”. Over lunch I asked Higgs if that wouldn’t be the perfect title for his autobiography. Self-effacing as ever, Higgs replied that, when it came to writing books, he was simply “too lazy”. So if you want to hear more about his life, you’ll have to wait for the Physics World interview.
How to cook up a new topological insulator
May 14, 2012
By Hamish Johnston
First predicted in 2005 and confirmed in the lab in 2007, topological insulators (TI) are perhaps the hottest material in condensed-matter physics these days. As well as constituting a new phase of quantum matter that should keep physicists busy for some time, the material has recently been shown to harbour quasiparticles resembling Majorana fermions. First predicted by the Italian physicist Ettore Majorana in 1937, such particles could be used to store and transmit quantum information without being perturbed by the outside world. As such, they could find use in the quantum computers of the future.
It’s not surprising that scientists worldwide are working hard to discover and study new variants of TIs. However, researchers at Duke University in the US believe that, until now, discoveries have been based on trial and error.
To encourage a more systematic approach, Stefano Curtarolo (right) and colleagues have created a “master ingredient list” that describes the properties of more than 2000 compounds that could be combined to make TIs. The clever bit of the work is a mathematical formulation that helps database users search for potential TIs that are predicted to have certain desirable properties.
The system is based on Duke’s Materials Genome Repository, which has already been used to develop both scintillating and thermoelectric materials.
According to Curtarolo, the system gives practical advice about the expected properties of a candidate material – for example, whether it will be extremely fragile or robust.
Commenting on the fragile materials, Curtarolo says “We can rule those combinations out because what good is a new type of crystal if it would be too difficult to grow, or if grown, would not likely survive?”
The research is also described in a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology.
Physics in 100 seconds
May 11, 2012
Ready, steady, GO!
James Dacey
“What is dark matter?…you’ve got up to 100 seconds to answer…your time starts…NOW!”
This was the challenge facing Luke Davies (above) during a day of filming at the University of Bristol, where academics were asked to give super-condensed lectures on some of the biggest questions in physics. Participants at this UK university were armed with nothing more than a whiteboard and a couple of marker pens. And just to make the experience that bit more thrilling/nerve-racking, speakers were faced with a countdown alarm that sounded once their time was up.
The idea is to compile a series of short films for physicsworld.com that will provide introductions to topics across the whole spectrum of physics and its related disciplines. Films are presented by various physicists and cover everything from antimatter to fracking to black holes. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the presentation about recognizing penguins in a crowd. From behind the camera, I certainly learned an awful lot about an awful lot!
The scientists appeared to get a lot from the day too. Several of them commented about what a vast departure it was from their usual experiences of presenting: standing in front of students and lecturing for an hour or so. Clearly 100 seconds is not very much time to explain topics as complex and detailed as dark energy or the Higgs boson, but everybody rose to the challenge and it was fascinating to observe the different styles that people adopted.
These films will be appearing on physicsworld.com over the coming weeks.
What is your primary source of online physics news?
May 10, 2012
By James Dacey
These days, pretty much every major newspaper, science magazine or broadcaster has an associated website and these sites almost always provide the breaking news stories before their printed counterparts. In addition, the Internet is awash with blogs, podcasts and social-media sites, where it is often the scientists themselves who are first break new developments to the outside world.
When it comes to slightly longer news and analysis articles, just a few years ago printed media was still the first choice for most people, as reading at length from an antiquated screen could leave you with serious eyesore. What’s more, busy people on the go didn’t always have immediate access to a computer or an Internet connection to access their chosen news websites. Today the situation is different. Screens have improved and the proliferation of Internet connectivity, combined with the advent of smartphones and tablets, means that many people can access many forms of news, at any time, nearly anywhere.
We want to know where you get most of your updates when it comes to physics news. Let us know via this week’s Facebook poll.
What is your primary source of online physics news?
General news sites
Specialist media sites
Blogs
Social media
Internet radio/podcasts
To share your online habits, please visit our Facebook page. And, if you get the majority of your physics news from a different source, then please let us know what that is by posting a comment on the Facebook poll.
In last week’s poll we were interested to know how you see astronomy in relation to physics. We asked “Do you consider astronomy to be a distinct academic discipline from physics?”
The results are in and 70% of you think that astronomy is not a distinct academic discipline from physics.
Michael Danielides voted with the majority and commented that an astrophysics lecturer once told him that astronomy and astrophysics were both branches of theoretical physics, “because you can’t interfere with the ongoing experiment”.
Thank you for all your participation and we look forward to hearing from you in this week’s poll.
Share your astrophotography
May 10, 2012
Courtesy: Nose in a book, via Flickr
By James Dacey
To tie in with next month’s transit of Venus, in which our sister planet passes across the face of the Sun, we want you to submit your astronomy photos to our Flickr group. The images could be of star trails, the Moon, meteor showers, the night skies – or, even better, of the transit of Venus itself, which will occur on 5/6 June.
To take part please submit photos to our Flickr group by Saturday 16 June, after which we will choose a selection of our favourite images to be showcased on physicsworld.com.
Please also feel free to include a caption to explain your photo. You may have photographed a rare astronomical event, or perhaps you travelled to a remote location in search of clear skies.
In our previous photo challenge, we asked readers to submit images on the theme of “doing physics”. We had some great submissions, which conveyed the excitement of new physics in the making, with both theorists and experimentalists featuring. You can see a selection of these photos in this showcase.
Exoplanet burning bright…
May 9, 2012
An artist’s impression of the 55 Cancri system, with 55 Cancri e nearly lost
in the glare of its star. (Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
By Tushna Commissariat
Exoplanetary scientists will rejoice to hear that NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has managed to detect and analyse the tiny amount of infrared light that comes directly from a super-Earth exoplanet for the first time. About a few dozen super-Earths – planets that are 2–10 times more massive than the Earth – have been officially detected and countless other possible candidates have been found.
The exoplanet in question – known as 55 Cancri e – belongs to the 55 Cancri star-system, which is a measly 41 light-years away from the Earth – a small distance by astronomical scales. Indeed, 55 Cancri is so bright and close that it can be seen with the naked eye on a clear, dark night. The system is known to have five planets, with 55 Cancri e being the closest to its parent star. The planet is about eight times more massive than the Earth, completes its orbit in a dizzying 18 h – the shortest orbit known for an exoplanet – and is tidally locked, so one side always faces the star.
Previous studies of the planet revealed that 55 Cancri e is an extreme exoplanet with a rocky core surrounded by a layer of water in a “supercritical” state – the water is heated to such a degree that it is somewhere in-between a liquid and a gas – and topped off by a blanket of steam. In the new study, Spitzer measured the amount of infrared light that comes from the planet itself by looking at the slight dip in total light intensity when the planet undergoes an occultation – that is, when it circles behind the face of its parent star. When viewed in infrared, the planet is brighter relative to its star as its scorching surface heat blazes in the infrared end of the spectrum. This information reveals the temperature of a planet and, in some cases, its atmospheric components. Most other current planet-hunting methods obtain indirect measurements of a planet by observing its effects on the star’s light. In this case, the data revealed that the star-facing side of the exoplanet is more than 2000 K – hot enough to melt metal.
“Spitzer has amazed us yet again,” says Bill Danchi, who works on the Spitzer programme in Washington, DC. “The spacecraft is pioneering the study of atmospheres of distant planets and paving the way for NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to apply a similar technique to potentially habitable planets.”
