Month: June 2008
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Oil prices: a classic bubble economy?
The price of oil has quadrupled since 2003. If this dramatic rise were the result of speculation in a bubble economy and not the normal forces of supply and demand, how would you go about proving it? Try using some well known concepts from statistical physics and complexity theory, says our old friend Didier Sornette…
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Testing “spooky action-at-a-distance” on the International Space Station
Entanglement is the strange and beautiful property of certain quantum particles to become so deeply linked that they share the same existence. According to quantum theory, that link should be maintained whatever the distance between the particles, whether the width of an atom or the diameter of the universe. This led Einstein to claim that…
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In case ya missed em…
The pearls from the physics arxiv blog this week Supernova echoes give first glimpse of ancient explosions Which way does antimatter fall? The science of scriptwriting Why do online opinions evolve differently to offline ones? Western Europe warming much faster than expected
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Hot ‘n’ cold
The best of the rest from the physcis arXiv this week: Eternal Inflation: Prohibited by Quantum Gravity? New Mechanics of Traumatic Brain Injury From Dark Energy and Dark Matter to Dark Metric BEC dark matter can explain collisions of galaxy clusters Superantenna Made of Transformation Media Common Features in Electronic Structure of the Fe-Based Layered…
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Western Europe warming much faster than expected
There’s little doubt these days over whether the planet is heating up. Temperature measurements clearly show the trend and in recent years, computer models of the Earth’s climate have been able to reproduce these increases pretty accurately when carbon dioxide is injected into their virtual atmospheres. Where climate models fall down, however, is in predicting…
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Why do online opinions evolve differently to offline ones?
The way in which opinions form, spread through societies and evolve over time is a hot topic among researchers because of their increasing ability to measure and simulate what’s going on. The field offers some juicy puzzles that look ripe for picking by somebody with the right kind of insight. For example, why do…
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The science of scriptwriting
You don’t have to delve far into the realms of scriptwriting before you’ll be pointed towards a book called Story by Robert McKee, which explains why scriptwriting is more akin to engineering than art. McKee examines story-telling like a biologist dissecting a rat. But after taking it apart, he explains how to build a story…
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Which way does antimatter fall?
The force of gravity on antimatter has never been directly measured but a growing number of physicists believe that such an experiment is within their grasp. Today, a group attempting to design an experiment called AEGIS (Antimatter Experiment: Gravity, Interferometry, Spectroscopy) outline their plans to measure this force. In some ways it’s an ambitious plan.…
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Supernova echoes give first glimpse of ancient explosions
Back in 2005, Armin Rest from Harvard and a few mates, spotted the echo of a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The explosion had kicked off some 900 years ago but what Rest and co were seeing was its reflection from cold dark dust in the cloud. Since then, the team has even measured…
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In case ya missed ’em…
The pearls from this week’s arXivblog: VoIP threatened by steganographic attack The surprisingly rich physics of peeling paper Friction-free sliding observed in nanoparticles How to turn a narrow slit into a large window The mystery of the Plutonic color scheme