Higgs Boson: ‘The God Particle’ Nearly, But Not Quite!?

Scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research - CERN -  say they have found signs of – although not yet conclusively discovered – the Higgs boson, an elementary particle which is the missing link in the Standard Model of physics.

The famed particle is the missing link in current theories of physics, used to explain how everything gains its mass. Rumors have been crashing about the scientific community for weeks on these findings.

Fabiola Gianotti, the scientist in charge of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, said the signal was centred at around 126 – GeV – Giga Electron Volts.

“I think it would be extremely kind of the Higgs boson to be here,” Gianotti told a seminar to discuss the findings :: Read the full article »»»»

OPERA :: Faster Than The Speed of Light

Scientists from the European Organization for Nuclear Research and the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics, under the experiment banner of OPERA  are reporting that sub-atomic particles known as neutrinos have the ability to travel faster than the speed of light, a discovery that if verified, would completely disassemble Einstein’s theory of special as well as general relativity. Or, at the outside these findings – if correct – may force science to re-calculate the speed of light :: Read the full article »»»»

Defrosting the Secrets of Superconductivity

In 1911, Kamerlingh Onnes conducted electrical analysis of pure metals - mercury, tin and lead - at very low temperatures. Onnes found that at 4.2 kelvin the resistance in a solid mercury wire immersed in liquid helium suddenly vanished. Some, such as William Thomson - Lord Kelvin – believed that electrons flowing through a conductor would come to a complete halt or, in other words, metal resistivity would become infinitely large at absolute zero. Onnes however felt that a conductor’s electrical resistance would steadily decrease and drop to nil.  On April 8, 1911, Kamerlingh Onnes found that at 4.2 kelvin/-270 degrees celsius, the resistance in a solid mercury wire immersed in liquid helium Suddenly Vanished. Onnes wrote in his note-pad that “Mercury has passed into a new state, which on account of its extraordinary electrical properties may be called the superconductive state“. He published more articles about the phenomenon, initially referring to it as “supraconductivity” and, only later adopting the term “superconductivity”

Fast Forward toSeptember 2011: A study undertaken by researchers at Laboratoire National des Champs Magnetique Intenses – Grenoble and published in Nature on September 7, reveals that superconductivity – the phenomenon where a normally conductive materials lose their electrical resistance when cooled – may be linked to the charge-order within the material, in this case copper dioxide. Researchers reported nuclear magnetic resonance measurements showing that high magnetic fields actually induce charge-order, without spin order. The observed static, unidirectional, modulation of the charge density breaks translational symmetry. These findings suggest that charge-order, although visibly pinned by CuO chains in YBa₂Cu₃O_y, is an intrinsic propensity of the superconducting planes of high-T_c copper oxides :: Read the full article »»»»

Light Disorder: Laws of Reflection, Refraction and the Surface Pattern Loophole

Scientists at Harvard have discovered new ways of making light dance, along the way changing the laws of reflection and refraction of light. The wonderful world of Nano particles, along with their effects on light’s behaviour were explored in order to make these discoveries. Under normal circumstances light is nice and predictable, Mr Consistent, the team from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences  – SEAS – found a loop-hole though, precise patterns of metallic nanostructures. Just as in a Carnivals Magic Mirror amusement the nanostructures were able to warp and bend light, unlike the carnival though they did not require bendy mirrors or clever lighting. Instead  using Nano structures embedded in precise patterns on the surface of silicon they were able to alter lights behaviour. Their findings were published in the scientific journal Science, September 2 and have since led to the reformation of the mathematical laws of reflection and refraction, the predicted path of a ray of light bouncing of a surface or passing from medium to medium, bouncing or bending:: Read the full article »»»»

Zero Point Energy and The Vacuum

In the depths of Deep Space, the vast emptiness may be more alive than we ever thought possible. The vacuum of space isn’t as void as previously advertised. Zero-Point Energy – ZPE - pervades every corner of the universe, populating space with it’s minimalism. This week a new experiment was conducted that went a long way to confirming the existence of Zero Point Energy. Scientists at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden constructed an electronic magnetic mirror and wiggled it 6 billion times a second. At this speed the mirror was able to produce a shower of photons from nothing, reflect light that wasn’t even there. In a completely dark and void vacuum, zero-point energy it seems exists :: Read the full article »»»»

Chameleon Magnets aka Electrically Induced Ferromagnetism at Room Temperature in Cobalt-Doped Titanium Dioxide

Magnetism is more than just a fun property to experiment with in Science 101, not just a scientific curiosity. Scientists have discovered the Chameleon Magnet, a perminant magnet that can be switched on and off at will. Magnetism is the glue that holds every atom and molecule together.

The very small world of nano magnetism – magnatism of atom’s nd molecules -  is very a different beast, not high school magnetism. In this world free electrons can be used to pass spin information on to other electrons, large groups of electrons spinning in sync can set up a magnetic field. All of these bizarre effects are being studied and applied to Chameleon Magnets and Spintronics, the science of using the spin of electrons to do work in electronics gadgets :: Read the full article »»»»

Spintronics :: The Secret of the Spin

Spintronics, sounds like a new dance move for the doof doof crowd but no, Spintronics is a new field of Quantum Physics that is working towards making the inner workings of computer chips smaller and faster.

Spintronics refers to the science of using the direction of electrons spinning around an atom to store information. If you could zoom into an atom you would see  electrons spinning around a central core – nucleus -, between the circling electrons and the core is a whole lot of space, even atoms aren’t solid. The direction the electrons circle the nucleus – left or right- is its spin. This spin is the main characteristic that scientists are trying to work with in order to make a whole new kind of gadget. By being able to alter the direction of the spin and then read it back at any time scientists will be able store information by using lots of atoms :: Read the full article »»»»