Month: December 2008
-
The strange right hand of the universe
Is the Universe right handed? If Michael Longo at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor is to be believed, the answer is yes; and the evidence comes from the right or left-handed shape of spiral galaxies. Astronomers have images of many thousands of spiral galaxies. But classifying them as left or right handed is…
-
Hot ‘n’ quick
The best of the rest from the physics arXiv this week: Probing the Membrane Potential of Living Cells by Dielectric Spectroscopy Selective Optical Charge Generation, Storage and Readout in a Single Self Assembled Quantum Dot Quantum Vacuum Experiments Using High Intensity Lasers The Hydrodynamics of Swimming Microorganisms Similar is Better: Speed Variability Reduces Traffic Flow
-
Astronomers find hottest and fastest exoplanet
As astronomers discover greater numbers of planets orbiting other stars, they are able to revise their theorie sof planet formation accordingly. Exotic planets are particularly prized because they push the boundaries of theoretical understanding to its limits. Today, Leslie Hebb at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and colleagues announce the discovery of one…
-
Why astronomical units need to be redefined
In 1983, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures defined the metre as the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in 1⁄299,792,458 of a second. That makes a metre a fixed unit of length. For astronomers, however, distance is rather more malleable. In astronomy, distance is measured in astronomical units. Astronomers think of an…
-
2D image created from a single pixel sensor
Ghost imaging is a curious phenomenon that has had numerous physicists scratching their heads in recent years. It works like this: take two beams of entangled photons and aim the first at an object. The transmitted photons from the object are then collected by a single pixel detector. The second beam is aimed at a…
-
How bacterial colonies could drive rotors
E coli bacteria use motors called flagella to generate a force that pushes them along at a rate of up to 10 body lengths per second. That’s a fair rate of knots and in recent years several groups have used this force to turn microrotors. Their approach is to bond the bacteria to a rotor…
-
Solving stiction in MEMs devices
Microelectromechanical devices were supposed to change the world, so where are they? A few designs have leaked out, such as the accelerometers in air bags. But most have remained stubbornly, and literally, stuck in the lab. One of the troubling secrets about MEMs is that many designs simply don’t work because their moving parts become…
-
Hertz ‘n’ pain
The best of the rest from the physics arXiv this week: Molecular Signatures in the Near Infrared Dayside Spectrum of HD 189733b A New Metric for Robustness with Respect to Virus Spread Combining Chromosomal Arm Status and Significantly Aberrant Genomic Locations Reveals New Cancer Subtypes Ultracold Molecules: Vehicles to Scalable Quantum Information Processing Ten New…
-
Graphene transistors clocked at 26GHz
IBM has seen the future of computing and it may not involve silicon. Instead the company has been looking at graphene, the single atom-thick sheets of carbon that has materials scientists entranced by its dazzling array of amazing properties. If graphene ever becomes the material of choice for a new generation of superfast chips, then…
-
How to decelerate a molecule
When it comes to shuttling individual atoms about, physicists have made giant strides in cooling, trapping and even collimating them into matter wave beams. These kinds of tricks are already being used for matter-wave interferometry on chips. But if you want to do the same kinds of things with molecules, you’re out of luck. There…