Posts tagged physics

Solar Plasma Aurora Storm to Hit Earth Tomorrow!

Aug 3rd

Posted by scott fagan in News

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Astroboffins are warning that a mighty “eruption” of superhot plasma has been blasted out of the Sun directly at the Earth. The plasma cloud is expected to reach Earth beginning tomorrow, possibly causing strange phenomena - including a mighty geomagnetic storm..

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Posted in Space, 3rd August 2010 11:40 GMT
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Astroboffins are warning that a mighty “eruption” of superhot plasma has been blasted out of the Sun directly at the Earth. The plasma cloud is expected to reach Earth beginning tomorrow, possibly causing strange phenomena - including a mighty geomagnetic storm which could see the Northern Lights aurorae extend as far south as Blighty or the northern USA.

Duck’s eye view of the plasma shotgun blast

According to boffins analysing results delivered from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite, Sunday saw a massive convulsion involving almost the entire face of the Sun facing Earth. The event was apparently centred on Sunspot 1092, a huge solar pimple so large as to be visible without the aid of a telescope.

It appears that the sunspot may have triggered a huge “coronal mass ejection” in which huge amounts of superhot plasma were spurted towards Earth accompanied by…

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Solar Plasma Aurora Storm to Hit Earth Tomorrow!

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Scientists Find Chemical ‘Memory’ Molecule

Aug 1st

Posted by xtropha78 in News

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Scientists in Israel say they’ve identified a chemical in the human brain that helps brain cells store new memories and allows them to “stick.”

…TEL AVIV, Israel, July 29 (UPI) — Scientists in Israel say they’ve identified a chemical in the human brain that helps brain cells store new memories and allows them to “stick.”
A study by researchers at Tel Aviv University says a natural molecule occurring in the brain, called Aminobutyric acid, could be the main factor in regulating how many new memories one can generate and permanently store, a university release said Thursday.
Memories are stored in highly variable synaptic connections between neurons in the brain, study leader Dr. Inna Slutsky said, and the variability ultimately determines whether and how memories are stored.
The key to the variability is the naturally occurring GABA, Slutsky said.
Higher concentrations of GABA near a synapse induced a stronger activation of its receptors. As a result, GABA makes this synapse more liable to the formation of new memories, she said….

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Scientists Find Chemical ‘Memory’ Molecule

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Model Describes Universe with No Big Bang, No Beginning

Jul 31st

Posted by nimbyx in News

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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 …

…Is the overall entropy of the universe constant? If the universe has been around for eternity then it must. If so how? Quite easily. One half of observable Universe (this one smaller then the human creatures) expands and it gains entropy. The remaining one collapses due its gravity into more dense state, thus balancing entropy of Universe. Everyone can observe it. From dense aether theory follows, the middle of the entropic scale would be defined exactly by wavelength of cosmic microwave noise. Universe should exhibit red shift, when being observed in shorter wavelengths - and blue shift for longer wavelengths, for example the radiowaves. Nothing actually expands or collapses here, though - it’s a geometric phenomena resulting from transverse wave spreading through random inhomogeneous environment. You can observe this effect during heavy rain as a dark Alexander’s band between primary and secondary rainbows. The dense rain droplets are playing the role of CMB noise here….

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Model Describes Universe with No Big Bang, No Beginning

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Vietnam Restricts Online Games After Murder Cases

Jul 30th

Posted by jos in News

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Vietnam has banned the advertisement of online games and restricted access after several cases in which young people committed murder or robbery to get money to pay to play, an official said Thursday.

…The Ministry of Information and Communications’ decision to crack down on online games follows a public outcry about their negative influence on youngsters, said ministry official Luu Vu Hai.
The ministry has temporarily stopped licensing online games pending the government’s implementation of new regulations, banned their advertisement, and ordered Internet service providers to cut off Web access after 11 p.m to shops that offer games, he said.
Over the past year, Vietnam’s press has reported several murders and robbery cases committed by young people to get money to pay for online games. In one particularly shocking crime, a 15-year-old girl was sentenced to 10 years in prison for strangling a 4-year-old girl from her neighborhood to rob her of earrings worth $10 to pay for online games, state media reported.
Teenagers forming lines in online game shops is a common sight in the capital Hanoi - a city of 7 million people - where more than 3,000 such shops operate.
The government has licensed 22 gaming…

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Vietnam Restricts Online Games After Murder Cases

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Extreme Close-Up of the Face on Mars

Jul 29th

Posted by scott fagan in News

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Here’s a picture you probably won’t see in the tabloid racks while waiting in line at the grocery store. This is the famous “Face on Mars,” and is the closest image ever of the this landform, taken by the best Mars camera ever.

…Jul28thExtreme Close-Up of the Face on Mars Posted in: Mars by
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We are Attracted to People Who Look Like our Parents…Gross

Jul 29th

Posted by xtropha78 in News

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Researchers reporting in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin last week say people are drawn to others who resemble their parents or themselves. This may explain why incest taboos are found in many cultures - to counter a natural tendency.

…University of Illinois psychologist, Chris Fraley, said there had been a century-long debate on whether incest taboos are psychological or cultural adaptations designed to suppress a biological urge. In the early 20th century Sigmund Freud, a psychoanalyst, proposed it was psychological, while Edward Westermarck, a sociologist, proposed it was cultural. Westermarck thought there was a critical time in childhood during which people would not find attractive people who were raising them or raised with them.
Most modern researchers think Westermarck was correct, but a new study led by Fraley suggests there may also be a psychological component in which we align ourselves with our kin, who are genetically close to us.
The research involved three experiments. In the first, volunteers were shown pictures of…

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We are Attracted to People Who Look Like our Parents…Gross

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New gov’t rules allow unapproved iPhone apps & Jailbreaking.

Jul 26th

Posted by Jane in News

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Owners of the iPhone will be able to break electronic locks on their devices in order to download applications that have not been approved by Apple. The government is making that legal under new rules announced Monday.

…So the government is telling me I can do something I’m already doing. Just wish they would get around to marijuana. Just move to beautiful Colorado, like I did. :)Here are some other things they will allow (lol finally getting around to DVDs):…

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New gov’t rules allow unapproved iPhone apps & Jailbreaking.

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Anti-AIDS gel helps prevent infection, study Finds!

Jul 19th

Posted by jos in News

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Researchers are reporting a breakthrough against AIDS. A vaginal gel containing an AIDS drug cut in half a woman’s chances of getting HIV from an infected partner.

…it was made for this and another ongoing study from a drug donated by California-based Gilead Sciences Inc., which sells tenofovir in pill form as Viread.
The study tested it in 889 heterosexual women in and near Durban, South Africa. Half were given the microbicide and the others, a dummy gel. Women were told to use it 12 hours before sex and as soon as possible within 12 hours afterward.
At the study’s end, there were 38 HIV infections among the microbicide group versus 60 in the others.
The gel seemed safe - only mild diarrhea was slightly more common among those using it. Surveys showed that the vast majority of women found it easy to use and said their partners didn’t mind it. And 99 percent of the women said they would use the gel if they knew for sure that it prevented HIV….

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Anti-AIDS gel helps prevent infection, study Finds!

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The Great Higgs Boson Rumormill

Jul 17th

Posted by xtropha78 in News

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Physics enthusiasts may have felt a rush of anticipation over the last week, as the rumormill and blogosphere got all a-twitter (if you’ll pardon the expression) over the idea that Fermilab had discovered the Higgs boson. Well, it turns out that these rumors were just that.

…Still, some good science discussion has come out of this, and in fact the man who started the rumor (who has, apparently, been known to jump the gun in the past) talks in the originating post about part of his motivation for discussing these rumors being an active attempt to generate buzz about particle physics … even if that buzz is later shown to be false. In that sense, I suppose, he’s proven quite successful….

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The Great Higgs Boson Rumormill

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Dark Energy Sheds New Light on Universe’s Expansion

Jul 16th

Posted by WakRekBeext in News

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Through observations of massive galaxy clusters, scientists have made the most precise measurements to date of the effects of dark energy and gravity on cosmological scales. This work is an important step toward understanding why the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

…The analysis, contained in four papers published this month in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, was led by a team based at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, located at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University.
Clusters of galaxies, the largest gravitationally bound objects in the universe, began forming about 10 billion years ago. Because it takes a long time for light from the farthest reaches of the universe to arrive at Earth, the most distant clusters appear as they did when they were much younger, while the closest ones look more their actual ages. By looking at clusters both near and far, researchers were able to study the evolution of clusters and deduce how changes in the universe over billions of years helped shape their growth. The results offer insights into the forces that made the universe we see today.
“As space expands faster and faster, it becomes more difficult for gravity to pull matter…

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Dark Energy Sheds New Light on Universe’s Expansion

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