Month: February 2008
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Saving Earth from the Sun’s expansion
About 7 billion years from now the Sun will have swelled into a red giant with a radius larger than Earth’s orbit. We’re doomed. Or so we thought. A ray of hope has been thrown our way by astronomers who say that as the Sun expands it will lose a significant portion of its mass…
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In case ya missed ’em…
This week’s gems from the physics arXiv blog: Quantum computers and the death of chemistry Inflatable mountains The world’s first quantum ratchet Who’s that on the runway?
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Grids ‘n’ graphs
The best of the rest from the arXiv this week: Stopping Supersonic Beams with an Atomic Coilgun Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) – A New Paradigm for Heuristic Decision Making Geometrically controllable electric fields Extinction of an Infectious Disease: a Large Fluctuation in a Non-equilibrium System Efficiency of Molecular Motors at Maximum Power
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Who’s that on the runway?
As an air traffic controller, the last thing you want is the catastrophic failure of your technology infrastructure. And thankfully it doesn’t usually happen like that. More often, there is a gradual degradation as one part of the system or another collapses. Perhaps the communications die, the radar falls over or the computers crash, or…
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The world’s first quantum ratchet
A quantum ratchet sounds like a handy device. The idea is to push a quantum particle in a specific direction by periodically kicking it with an unbiased force. But why would an unbiased force push it in a specific direction? It sounds as if you’re more likely to end up with a random walk/brownian-type motion.…
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Inflatable mountains
It’s best to ignore the crazier ideas on the physics arXiv. But every now and again something comes out of left field that is just too extraordinary to pass on. Today, it’s a cheap way of changing the entire climate over relatively small regions of the Earth. Alexander Bolonkin (unaffiliated) suggests that inflatable mountains could…
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Quantum computers and the death of chemistry
When it comes to chemistry, computer simulations suck. The best they can do is simulate the electron dynamics of a helium atom, which is almost as simple as it gets. Never mind the rest of the periodic table and how the elements interact with each other. But that’s gonna change when we get quantum computers,…
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In case ya missed ’em…
This week’s gems from the physics arXiv blog: How cricketers get their eye in First light from Keck’s null mode Danger Theory and artificial immune systems Model successfully predicts brain structure
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Bats ‘n’ balls
The best of the rest from the arXiv this week: Global Disease Spread: Statistics and Estimation of Arrival Times Predictability and Epidemic Pathways in Global Outbreaks of Infectious Diseases: the SARS Case Study A Comparison of Natural (English) and Artificial (Esperanto) Languages. A Multifractal Method based Analysis Determination of the Newtonian Gravitational Constant Using Atom…
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Model successfully predicts brain structure
The neuronal circuits in the part of your brain called the cerebral cortex are amongst the most complex structures in nature. Nobody knows how they form but it seems likely that self organisation plays a critical role. Researchers have studied various models of self organisation that might explain how these circuits form but have come…