Month: November 2007
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Quantum dreamin and optical illusions
Quantum consciousness, a phrase that sends most eggheads running for the hills, is currently on a roll. A coupla months back, Efstratios “Moussaka” Manousakis of Florida State University in Tallahassee published a paper suggesting that a certain kinda optical illusion could be explained in quantum terms. The optical illusion in question is the double image…
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The first brain image taken with an ultra low field MRI
Ya’ll know that MRI machines are great hulking lumps o’ metal filled with pulsing tubes of liquid helium and evil superconducting magnets that’ll rip yer fillings out if ya as much as smile at ’em. All that bulk is necessary to create the fantastic magnetic fields of several Tesla needed make the protons in yer…
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Future computers to run on quantum monoxide
Them quantum eggheads have long been a-huntin and a-scramblin to find the perfect building blocks for their quantum computers. They looked at photons, electrons, ions, neutral atoms and quantum dots. In fact there ain’t much they haven’t looked at. Now Elena “Coolhand” Kuznetsova and chums at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge says the…
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Studying the tunnel of death
The Lefortovo Tunnel runs underground for 3 kilometres on the outskirts of Moscow. The deep tunnel has three lanes which are equipped with traffic sensors every 60 metres. These have provided a rich vein of traffic data for Boris Livshits and pals at Moscow Technical University who have been a-mining and a-crunchin it. B Livshits…
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A load of Pollocks
In 1999, Richard “Drippy” Taylor at the Univesity of New South Wales in Australia announced that he was able to tell a painting by the American abstract expresisonist Jackson Pollock by analysing the fractal patterns made by the paint on the canvas. He claimed that the fractal signature Pollock made as he dripped paint onto…
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A wishlist of experiments to do in space
What should we do in space? NASA has bet the farm on the International Space Station, a giant orbiting Lego set where astronauts can play Mommies and Daddies, practice sharing and become zero-g toilet trained. Almost everyone else wants to do something useful. So a bunch of chief eggheads from the world of physics have…
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Cakes ‘n’ cream
The tastiest leftovers from the physics arXiv this week: A New Source of Random Numbers for Cryptographers Q: Can One Detect Passage of a Small Black Hole through the Earth? A: Yep Detecting Communities in Social Networks Entanglement on Demand through Time Re-ordering
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Crime ‘n’ punishment
Social physics is a cool new science in which the eggheads use mathematical models to simulate the behaviour of large numbers of people. What these guys are finding is that very simple assumptions can reproduce hugely complex behaviours and they is using it to study everything from trading on the money markets to the spread…
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Triggering a molecular supernova
Place a fluorescing molecule next to a gold nanosphere and it lights up like a supernova. That’s what Vahid “Thou” Sandoghdar and his cronies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich are telling ya’ll today. This simple trick turns a molecular matchflame into a full blown roman candle. Here’s what’s goin on. The…
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How cleanliness can kill
The hygiene hypothesis is that our immune system requires the presence of pathogens to grow and function properly. The thinkin is that dirt ‘n’ muck provides a kinda training ground on which the immune system “learns” it’s trade when we’re all youngsters. So mothers who keep a-scrubbin and a-cleanin them germs away are actually doin’…