Month: June 2008
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How to build a quantum internet
You could be forgiven for thinking that a quantum version of the internet is a couple of-afternoons-in-the-lab away from being plumbed into your living room. In reality, there are significant engineering challenges to overcome, says Jeff Kimble from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and one of the leading thinkers on the links between…
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In case ya missed ’em…
The cocktails from the physics arxivblog this week: The latest social network: binge drinking Why black holes could be antimatter factories Surfing solves puzzle of water snail locomotion Solar system filled with dark matter, say astronomers The popcorn experiment and spooky action-at-a-distance
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Pop ‘n’ rock
The best of the rest from the physcis arXiv this week: Predicting Future Duration from resent Age: Revisiting a Critical Assessment of Gott’s Rule Nanonewton Force Generation and Detection Based on a Sensitive Torsion Pendulum Shannon Meets Carnot: Mutual Information Via Thermodynamics Factors Influencing the Earth’s Magnetic Field Evolution Consequences of Increased Longevity for Wealth,…
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The popcorn experiment and spooky action-at-a-distance
In 1964, John Bell became fascinated by the EPR paradox, an idea that Einstein had dreamt up to highlight what he saw as a major flaw in quantum mechanics. The paradox (called EPR after Einstein and his mates Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen) is a thought experiment involving two particles that share the same quantum…
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Solar system filled with dark matter, say astronomers
As the evidence for dark matter builds, astronomers have begun modelling how it ought to be distributed around the cosmos. They’ve shown how it must be distributed on the largest scale to make clusters of galaxies form in the way we see, various other simulations show that it forms a kind of halo around galaxies…
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Surfing solves puzzle of water snail locomotion
Snails move using a mechanism called adhesive locomotion. Through muscular contraction and expansion of their foot, they transmit a force to the ground through a thin layer of mucus which is adhesive at low strains but otherwise flows like a liquid. But what of water snails that move upsidedown along the underside of a liquid…
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Why black holes could be antimatter factories
Here’s an interesting chain of thought… Imagine a black hole sucking in protons and electrons. With their higher mass, protons are likely to be preferentially sucked, giving the black hole a positive charge. (That’s not so unusual in space: a similar mechanism can give planets a charge because electrons escape their gravity more easily.) But…
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The latest social network: binge drinking
Binge drinking is “the rapid consumption of large amounts of alcohol, especially by young people, leading to serious anti-social and criminal behavior in urban centres,” say Paul Ormerod, an economist at Volterra Consulting in London, also linked to the University of Durham. Binge drinking is a growing problem in city centers in the UK, with…
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In case ya missed ’em…
The treasures from this week’s physics arXiv blog: Extraterrestrial nucleobases found in meteorite How to bury an ion (and find it again later) The embarrassing lightness of photons Why gamma ray bursts are not standard candles First X-ray diffraction image of a single virus
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X-rays ‘n’ gamma rays
The best of the rest from the physics arxiv this week: How Do Schrodinger Cats Die? On a possible quantum contribution to the red shift Galactic and Extragalactic Distance Scales: The Variable Star Project Optical Metamagnetism and Negative Index Metamaterials Cluster structure of functional networks estimated from high-resolution EEG data Thermodynamics of natural images Measuring…