« November 2007 | News Picks home | January 2008 »
December 31, 2007Is there an opposite to absolute zero?
Nova: In preparation for the launch of NPR's new series, absolute zero, Peter Tyson asks a number of physicists if you can't get colder than 0 on the Kelvin scale, is there a corresponding maximum possible temperature?
When the Germans, and Rockets, Came to TownNew York Times: In 1950 Alabama, a small cotton producing town called Huntsville lost a bid for a military aviation project that would have revived its fortune. The consolation prize was dubious: 118 German rocket scientists who had surrendered to the Americans during World War II, led by a man — a crackpot, evidently — who claimed humans could visit the moon. Ultimately those German immigrants made history, launching the first American satellite, Explorer I, into orbit in January 1958 and putting astronauts on the moon in 1969. Far less attention, though, has been given to the space program’s permanent transformation of Huntsville, now a city of 170,000 with one of the country’s highest concentrations of scientists and engineers. N Korea misses nuclear deadline
BBC: North Korea has failed to meet a deadline to disclose details of its nuclear programme by the end of 2007.
South Pole Telescope Scans the Skies
NPR: Physicists are using the largest telescope in Antarctica to probe the farthest edges of the universe. South Pole Telescope scientists discuss their 280-ton scope, what they hope it will show them — and what it's like to live and work on the southernmost continent.
December 28, 2007Budget blow to US scienceNature: Physics takes a hit despite earlier promises. Related news picks Hawking joins attack on UK science cutsTelegrapah.co.uk: The world's best known scientist, Prof Stephen Hawking, has added his name to a petition signed by thousands of physicists who are outraged by Government cuts. New efficient bulb sees the lightBBC: A new type of super-efficient household light bulb is being developed which could spell the end of regular bulbs. Misadventures at the Energy DepartmentBulletin of Atomic Scientists: I had intended to write this month's column about a talk given by Tom D'Agostino, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), on his plans to reorganize the nuclear weapons complex for the twenty-first century. Instead, I'm writing about why I wasn't allowed to hear D'Agostino's talk. December 27, 2007Hospitals Look to Nuclear Tool to Fight CancerThe New York Times: Medical centers are rushing to turn nuclear particle accelerators, formerly used only for exotic physics research, into the latest weapons against cancer. McCall melt links the Arctic erasBBC: Science can be a lonely business. Delay on North Korean Nuclear PlanThe New York Times: North Korea is likely to miss a year-end deadline to declare all of its nuclear activities and disable its main nuclear site, the South Korean foreign minister said on Thursday. The Year in EnergyTechnology Review: Advanced biofuels, more-efficient vehicles, and solar power top the most notable energy stories of 2007. December 26, 2007Astronomers covet unusual giftSan Jose Mercury News: If many scientists get their Christmas wish, an asteroid the size of a Boeing 737 jet will slam into Mars late next month, potentially leaving a crater more than half a mile wide. 'Test tube universe' hints at unifying theoryTelegraph.co.uk: A "universe in a test tube" that could be used to assess theories of everything has been created by physicists. Two constants to rule us allNature: Physicists whittle down the number of truly fundamental constants. December 21, 2007Fermilab to cut 200 jobs, staff forced to take unpaid days offPhysics Today: Fermilab Director Pier Oddone informed the laboratory's staff Thursday the implications of the proposed FY08 federal budget on the facility. Congress changed Fermilab's proposed budget from $372 million to $320 million--a cut of $52 million. The budget cuts are because of $22 billion in savings Congress had to make in order for the President not to veto the budget. All construction funding for two projects closely associated with Fermilab, the NOVA neutrino experiment and the fusion project ITER were removed from the federal budget. Funding for the International Linear Collider was reduced from $60 million to $15 million, most of which Fermilab had already spent as the US fiscal year began October 2007. In response Oddone told staff to expect 200 job cuts, 10 percent of the workforce, and from February, staff will have to take two unpaid days off per month. In a video released on the laboratory's web site Oddone said "I have not had to deal with a problem of this magnitude in my career," he said, "and Fermilab has not had to face a problem like this in its history." Related links Nuclear innovations - will they lure cleantech capital?Venture Beat: Nuclear power is a bit of a land mine in the field of clean technology. Mention it in any given room of environmentalists, and opinions will explode. Some say nuclear’s terminally unsafe. Others say it’s the only true cleantech solution. IBM Virtual World Defies Laws of PhysicsPC World: IBM's uptight, starched-shirt image has survived for many decades, but the stereotype may finally meet its demise at the hands of a giant boulder and a meeting room up in the sky. Greenhouse clue to water on MarsBBC: A new idea could explain how the climate of early Mars became warm enough to support oceans. New Power Plant Aims to Help Coal Clean UpScientific American: A "clean coal" power plant is set to be built in Illinois in 2009; if it works, it could help avoid catastrophic global warming December 20, 2007UK physics funding under review, but outcome looks unhopefulThe Economist: In Britain, fundamental physics is in a pickle Physics: A quantum less quirkyNature: What physicists want for Christmas is a solution to the philosophical conundrums of quantum mechanics. They will be disappointed, but work that dissolves one aspect of quantum weirdness is some consolation. PG & E to get watts from wavesLos Angeles Times: Pacific Gas & Electric Co. went surfing Tuesday, becoming the first U.S. utility to commit to buying electricity generated by the tumult of the sea. Earth-Asteroid Collision Formed Moon Later Than ThoughtNational Geographic News: The moon was formed from fragments of Earth after a collision with a giant asteroid relatively late in our planet's formation, new tests of moon rocks show. December 19, 20072008 US science budget a big disappointmentScienceNow: The White House and Congress delivered a heavy blow to the hopes of the U.S. science community yesterday as part of a long-delayed final agreement on the 2008 federal budget. As a result, what began as a year of soaring rhetoric in support of science seems likely to end with agency officials and research advocates shaking their heads and wondering what went wrong. At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web StarThe New York Times: Walter H. G. Lewin, 71, a physics professor, has long had a cult following at M.I.T. And he has now emerged as an international Internet guru, thanks to the global classroom the institute created to spread knowledge through cyberspace. Mars Closest to Earth This Week; Best View Until 2016National Geographic: The bright yellowish-orange "star" poised above the constellation Gemini is actually the planet Mars, and this week the icy world is making its closest approach to Earth until 2016. Nuke labs face major cutbacksInsideBayArea.com: The Department of Energy revealed draft plans Tuesday to consolidate nuclear weapons work at eight sites, including Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national laboratories, a move that could result in a 20 to 30 percent reduction in work force and the closing of 600 buildings. December 18, 2007Largest Scientific Machine Ever Made by Man to be Inaugurated ShortlyAzom.com: At the high energy physics department of the “Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas” (CIEMAT) the fundamental objective is the study of the elementary constituents of matter, radiation, and the forces that are responsible for their interactions using energetic collisions at particle accelerators and detectors in underground labs. Catastrophic impacts made life flourishMSNBC: Meteorites linked to an explosion in biodiversity millions of years ago Israeli Nanotech Knowledge Center Maps Booming Nanotechnology Industry in IsraelAZoNano.com: For the first time ever, an exclusive, comprehensive platform of the entire Israeli Nanotech eco-system has been launched. It is an all inclusive portal, mapping the entire Nanotech ecosystem, including over 300 researchers, 80 companies and 40 governmental and nonprofit organizations. A 40-Hour Laptop Battery?ScienceNow: Although improvements in laptop computers and other electronics continue at a torrid pace, the batteries that power them have made only modest strides in recent years. A new advance in nanotechnology could change all that. Lithium ion batteries made with tiny whiskers of silicon can store as much as 10 times the charge of conventional rechargeables, researchers report. In principle, the new technology could result in laptop batteries that run for days and electric cars that cruise for hundreds of kilometers on a single charge--but it must still clear some key hurdles to make it to market. December 17, 2007Resolving an Atmospheric EnigmaScience: In 1971, meteorologists Roland Madden and Paul Julian studied weather data from near-equatorial Pacific islands. To their surprise, tropospheric winds, pressure, and rainfall oscillated with a period of about 40 to 50 days. The oscillation in clouds and precipitation tends to be confined to the tropical Indian and Pacific oceans, but the oscillation in winds and pressure is felt throughout the tropics. The search for a single robust theory for this Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) continues today. The MJO is not a true oscillation, in the sense that its period varies and its appearance is episodic, but it is the largest source of tropical weather variability on subseasonal time scales, especially in the Indian and Pacific oceans. In last week's Science Matthews et al. use observations from the new Argos system of profiling floats to reveal the deep-ocean response to the MJO. Also in the same issue, Miura et al. report an advance in modeling the MJO. CERN council approves next years budgetHuliq.com: CERN Director General Robert Aymar today delivered an end of year status report at the 145th meeting of Council, the Organization’s governing body. Dr Aymar reported a year of excellent progress towards the goal of starting physics research at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in summer 2008. Council also approved a budget for CERN in 2008 that will allow consolidation of CERN’s aging infrastructure to begin, along with preparations for an intensity upgrade for the LHC, by 2016. Science Cafés Tap Nation's Fascination With Research and DiscoveriesWired: On a recent Wednesday night the crowd spilled out the door at San Francisco’s Axis Café, where the draw wasn't a hot band or a talented bartender, but a lecture. On physics. Toby Garfield, an oceanographer at San Francisco State University, was explaining the science of big ocean waves, like the giant Mavericks surf break about 25 miles away. As he showed slides of the ocean floor and explained that the coast is a system of energy dissipation, the crowd peppered him with questions. Why do waves come in sets? What are rogue waves? How is the United States harnessing the power of waves to make renewable energy? Scenes like this are being repeated across the country at science cafes, where contemporary science -- a topic that Americans supposedly find dull -- is drawing substantial crowds month after month, even on topics as nerdy as gene sequencing and dark matter. Dealing with the end of industrial labsNew York Times: In the past large corporations — like RCA, Xerox and the old AT&T — maintained internal laboratories like Bell Labs. These corporate labs were essentially research universities embedded in private companies, and their employees published academic papers, spoke at conferences and even gave away valuable breakthroughs. Almost no corporate labs based on the Bell or Xerox model remain, victims of cost-cutting and a new appreciation by corporate leaders that commercial innovations may flow best when scientists and engineers stick to business problems. Instead, corporations are paying universities to get greater access to academic laboratories. Stanford has paired with Exxon Mobil in a deal worth $100 million over 10 years. The University of California, Davis, is getting $25 million from Chevron. And Intel has opened collaborative laboratories with Berkeley, the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon. December 16, 2007Scientists Seek Cause of Mysterious 'Rogue' Waves
NPR: "Rogue waves" are monsters of the open ocean — the powerful "walls of water" can destroy even large ships. Satellite measurements have found them to be up to 100 feet tall. So far, scientists have disagreed about what causes the waves, but researchers at UCLA think that they may have found a clue.
December 14, 2007Storing light with soundNature: Turning optical-fibre messages into sound could help store the information. EU-U.S. Climate Impasse EasingEnvironmental News Network: Europe toned down a clash with the United States over 2020 climate goals on the final day of U.N. talks in Bali on Friday, raising hopes of a deal to start negotiations on a new global warming treaty. Lodestones, not lifeThe Economist: The building blocks for life emerged on Mars—but not life itself Carbon cuts a must to halt warming-US scientistsReuters: There is already enough carbon in Earth's atmosphere to ensure that sea levels will rise several feet (meters) in coming decades and summertime ice will vanish from the North Pole, scientists warned on Thursday. Rolf- Dieter Heuer is CERN's next Director GeneralPhysics Today: The CERN Council has appointed Rolf- Dieter Heuer to succeed Robert Aymar as CERN's Director General. Since 2004 Heuer has been the research director for particle and astroparticle physics at Germany's DESY laboratory in Hamburg. "Heuer has worked tirelessly for DESY as Germany's main particle physics laboratory, while at the same time strengthening links between DESY, the German University system and CERN," said President of the CERN council Torsten Åkesson. "This spirit of collaboration will be a valuable asset to CERN as we move into LHC operation, develop strategic options for the long- term scientific program, and develop collaboration with the European national laboratories and institutes."
"This is a very exciting time for particle physics," says Heuer. "To become CERN's Director General for the early years of LHC operation is a great honour, a great challenge, and probably the best job in physics research today. I'm looking forward to working with CERN's community of personnel and researchers from around the world as we embark on this great adventure." Heuer will start a five- year term from 1 January 2009. see also December 13, 2007Scientists plea to politicians to do something on global warmingSalon.com: Fed up with politicians and the media, scientists are pleading to the world to wake up to the imminent threats of global warming. Physicists put a new TWIST on ultra-cold molecular researchTG Daily: Rochester (NY) - Physicsts at the University of Rochester have created an extremely simple, elegant device which can capture generated ultra-cold polar molecules by the truckload. The new device greatly simplifies an existing complex process that, according to the report, only four labs in the world were capable of performing. This new process is not only faster and less costly, but it also results in a continuous, near perfect yield of their desired molecules. Scientists believe this ability will help them develop exotic crystals and eventually stable quantum computers. Study finds White House manipulation on climate scienceThe Christian Science Monitor: The White House has misled the public on climate science, a congressional report says. December 12, 2007Mars Rover Finding Suggests Once Habitable EnvironmentThe New York Times: The lame wheel on the NASA Mars rover Spirit has proved an invaluable science tool, turning up evidence of a once habitable environment, scientists said Monday. Nuclear Power Is Headed for a FightThe Wall Street Journal: Even as interest grows in a potential new generation of U.S. nuclear-power plants, scrutiny of existing ones is intensifying. Scientists tackle midrange weather forecastsCNET: Scientists are trying to peer a bit further into the future than the typical five-day weather forecasts available today. New Document Reveals Military Mystery's PowersWired: For years, no military program has sparked more fevered speculation from conspiracy theorists than the mysterious High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP. And for years, the Pentagon has been pooh-poohing speculation that the enormous collection of transmitters, radars, and magnetometers in Alaska was some sort of superweapon. December 11, 2007UK reviews physics funding in light of proposed job cuts
BBC: The UK government is to review its funding for physics after scientists warned of an £80m research shortfall that could lead to 750 physicists losing their jobs. Science Minister Ian Pearson said funding arrangements would be reviewed, but did not promise extra money.
"Scientific research is not a luxury, it is a necessity," Dr Brian Cox, of Manchester University's School of Physics and Astronomy, said of the shortfall.
Homebuilt atomic clocks
Wired: About 400 technical hobbyists are taking advantage of a glut of surplus precision timekeeping gear to pursue a serious interest in very precise timekeeping. They call themselves Time Nuts, and they spend their spare cycles collecting, repairing, tweaking -- and occasionally using -- super-precise atomic clocks. Wired magazines has the details on how to build your own atomic clock.
Desktop synchrotron source takes a closer step towards reality
New Scientist: A paper in Nature Physics suggests that a desktop synchrotron particle accelerator could soon be able to freeze-frame the frenetic motion of atoms and molecules. An international team of physicists led by Dino Jaroszynski of Strathclyde University in Scotland have built a prototype light source, which they claim can be upgraded to produce intense, ultra-short pulses of X-rays. Synchrotrons are in great demand because their intense X-ray beams have so many uses, from analysing biological molecules to etching electronic components and seeing inside microscopic fossils.
Voyager data suggests solar system is squashedLos Angeles Times: The shell of solar gases that encircles our star system has been dinged up by passing through the rubble of stars that exploded millions of years ago say researchers at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The data is from the 30-year-old Voyager 2 spacecraft that just passed through what's known as the termination shock, the boundary of the bubble of energy carried by the solar wind to the far edge of the solar system. Voyager 2 reached the barrier a billion miles closer to the sun than Voyager 1, its companion spacecraft that is taking a more southern path to interstellar space. 450 LANL employees apply to voluntarily leaveABC7: Los Alamos National Laboratory reports about 450 people have applied to voluntarily leave their jobs at the lab. Lab employees who decide to voluntarily leave had until yesterday to submit their applications. The move is in light of a $170 million shortfall in LANL's budget, brought about by budget cuts and the transfer to a new for-profit management company to run the lab. Both LANL and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are expected to between 450-750 job cuts each over the coming year. December 10, 2007Gore Gets Nobel, Warns of Ominous ThreatSan Francisco Chronicle: Al Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize on Monday and urged the United States and China to make the boldest moves on climate change or "stand accountable before history for their failure to act." U.S. ‘Not Ready’ to Commit at BaliThe New York Times: The world's top two polluters, the U.S. and China, say they are not ready to commit to mandatory caps on greenhouse gases. Muons Meet the MayaScience Online: Physicists explore subatomic particle strategy for revealing archaeological secrets Wind turbine expansion outlined |