The Physics arXiv Blog
-
First observation of antibonding in artificial molecules
When electrons are confined in a flat space, they interact in much the same way as electrons in ordinary atoms by forming into pairs of various energy levels. They can even be made to emit light when they jump from one level to the next, just like electrons in the orbitals in real atoms. These…
-
Bluetooth surveillance secretly tested in the city of Bath
“In 2001 Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras was jailed in a Spanish prison for drug related offences. Whilst imprisoned, Trashorras established regular contact with Jamal Ahmidan who was serving time for a petty crime. Both individuals embraced radical Islamic fundamentalist ideas within the prison and were recruited in the Takfir wa al-Hijra group, a Moroccan terrorist…
-
ET more likely to pick up radar bursts than radio transmissions
Radar astronomy is a crucial tool in measuring the trajectories of Earth-crossing asteroids. If we’re going to be hit, radar is how we’ll work out when. The technique has also been used to image various bodies such as the asteroid 216 Kleopatra, to measure distances with extreme accuracy and to test relativity by monitoring the…
-
In case ya missed em…
The cherries from this week’s physics arXiv blog: A Moore-like law for suspension bridges Diamonds in the sky: a miner’s guide Interference between photons that never meet How many politicians spoil the broth? More than 20… Quantum zeno effect explains bird navigation
-
Zeno ‘n’ zero
The best of the rest from the physics arXiv this week: The Void Phenomenon Explained Frequency Spectrum of the Casimir force: Interpretation and a Paradox Three-Dimensional Metamaterials with an Ultra-High Effective Refractive Index over Broad Bandwidth Afterglows of Gamma-Ray Bursts: Short vs. Long GRBs The Secret World of Shrimps: Polarisation Vision at its Best How…
-
Quantum zeno effect explains bird navigation
Just how birds use the earth’s magnetic field to navigate has puzzled researchers for decades. But in recent years, a growing body of evidence points to the possibility that a weak magnetic field can influence the outcome of a certain type of chemical reaction in bird retinas involving radical ion pairs. The idea is that…
-
How many politicians spoil the broth? More than 20…
The Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson once said: “politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.” Given that these people run the world’s biggest (and smallest) economies, how many are needed to do a decent job? It is well known in management circles that decision making becomes difficult in groups…
-
Interference between photons that never meet
The pantheon of impossible photon tricks grows ever larger. Today, a new addition from Andrew Shields and pals at Toshiba Research Europe in Cambridge, UK: “We report an experiment in which two-photon interference occurs between degenerate single photons that never meet. The two photons travel in opposite directions through our fibre-optic interferometer and interference occurs…
-
Diamonds in the sky: a miner’s guide
Astronomers have recently wondered whether carbon might form a supercooled liquid under the huge pressures that exist in side carbon-rich white dwarf stars and even inside medium-sized gaseous planets such as neptune and uranus. If that’s the case, then small disturbances in the liquid could trigger the formation of diamonds the size of automobiles. The…
-
A Moore-like law for suspension bridges
The world’s longest suspension bridge could easily be built if its cables were made from bundles of carbon nanotubes, say Alberto Carpinteri and Nicola Pugno from the Polytechnic University of Turin. The thinking for this rather unsurprising news is that carbon nanotube cables would allow the main span of a suspension bridge to increase in…