The Physics arXiv Blog
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New fractal pattern found in milk and coffee
Next time you stare into your 9am double tall latte, look with new respect. Japanese scientists have discovered a new type of fractal in the patterns coffee makes as mixes with milk. Placing a heavier fluid onto a lighter fluid always results in an disturbance at their boundary known as a Rayleigh–Taylor instability. Michiko Shimokawa…
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Why spontaneous traffic jams are like detonation waves
We’re all familiar with phantom jams, traffic blockages that arise with no apparent cause and that melt away for no discernible reason. Today Ruben Rosales and pals at MIT and the University of Alberta in Canada coin a new term for the waves that cause these hold ups: they call them jamitons. And jamitons turn…
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Loophole found in quantum cryptography photon detectors
If you’re hoping to secure your data using quantum cryptography, you might want to find a shoulder to cry on. Quantum cryptography ought to be 100 percent secure. In theory , it provides perfect security against eavesdroppers. But in practice, a number of loopholes have emerged (see here and here). And today, Vadim Makarov and…
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The fine line between the visible and invisible
The man who built the world’s first invisibility cloak is back and this time he’s got an even better idea. His first design was a triumph for headline writers and Harry Potter fans alike, although most glossed over the fact that this first cloak worked only for microwave-sensitive eyes and even then only at a…
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Rubies ‘n’ diamonds
The best of the rest from the physics arXiv: Derivation of Evolutionary Payoffs from Observable Behavior Space-Time Sensors Using Multiple-Wave Atom Interferometry Dark Matter from a Gas of Wormholes Observable Topological Effects of Mobius Molecular Devices How Long Should an Astronomical Paper be to Increase its Impact?
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Nanodiamonds lead to sharper images
Zap a diamond nanoparticle with laser light and it will fluoresce, emitting single photons if it is small enough. That makes nanodiamonds extremely useful, say Aurélien Cuche at the Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble and pals. For a start, nanodiamonds are easily absorbed by cells, which allows them and the processes inside them to be…
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Flyby anomalies explained by special relativity
On 23 January 1998, when NASA’s Near spacecraft swung past Earth on a routine flyby towards more interesting lands, a curious thing happened to its speed. It jumped by 13 mm/s. This wasn’t the first time such an effect had been seen. Engineers saw similar jumps in speed during the Earth flybys of Galileo (in…
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The incredible climbing droplets
Here’s a curious finding from the University of Bristol in the UK. Place a droplet onto an inclined plexiglass sheet and shake it up and down. I know what you’re thinking: even without the shaking the drop should dribble down the plate due to gravity unless it is pinned in place by surface tension. Vertical…
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Nanotube springboard is world’s most sensitive weighing scales
Vibrating springboards have long been the darlings of nanomechanics wanting to measure the mass of small things. Their thinking goes like this: a springboard vibrates at a specific resonant frequency that depends on its stiffness and mass. So you can work out the mass of anything that becomes stuck to the springboard by measuring any…
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First printed graphene circuits
The world of solid state electronics is in awe of graphene. This single layer of carbon chickenwire has the potential to revolutionise electronics (and much else) because it has enviable electronic, mechanical and thermal properties that no other material can match. The news today is that Ellen Williams and buddies at the University of Maryland…