Quantum Levitation
Tel-Aviv University demos quantum superconductors locked in a magnetic field.
Speedy neutrino mystery likely solved, relativity safe after all
Those weird faster-than-light neutrinos that CERN thought they saw last month may have just gotten slowed down to a speed that’ll keep them from completely destroying physics as we know it. In an ironic twist, the very theory that these neutrinos would have disproved may explain exactly what happened. Back in September, physicists ran an [...]
CERN Lectures on Cosmology and Particle Physics
Full playlist: http://www.youtube.com/user/iasedu#grid/user/3AE3501C40563650 Lecture One: Introduction to Cosmology Lecture Two: Dark Matter Lecture Three: Dark Energy Lecture Four: Thermodynamics and the Early Universe Lecture Five: Inflation and Beyond
Faster than light story highlights the difference between science and religion
Most physicists believe, as Einstein proposed, that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. You might say that some, like Jim Al-Khalili who promised to eat his shorts if this was proved untrue, hold this belief religiously. But the recent fuss over the possible existence of faster-than-light neutrinos illustrates precisely [...]
Rest Easy, Einstein—Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos Would Not Violate Relativity
By now you’ve probably heard the widely reported news about the possible discovery of neutrinos that allegedly travel faster than light. The OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion tRacking Apparatus) collaboration of almost 200 scientists working at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory in central Italy has discovered a phenomenon the physicists could simply not explain. For [...]
CERN finds neutrinos can travel faster than light, seeks confirmation
The OPERA1 experiment, which observes a neutrino beam from CERN2 730 km away at Italy’s INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory, will present new results in a seminar at CERN this afternoon at 16:00 CEST. The seminar will be webcast at http://webcast.cern.ch. Journalists wishing to ask questions may do so via twitter using the hash tag #nuquestions, or via the [...]
Lucretius, Man Of Modern Mystery : Krulwich Wonders… : NPR
Before he became a Professor of literature at Harvard, and way before he wrote his classic Shakespeare biography, Will in The World, Stephen Greenblatt was an I’ll-read-anything kind of kid. One day, he was standing in the campus book store, and there, in a bin, selling for ten cents (good price, even in 1961) he [...]
Physicists use moving mirrors to make light from nothing
A team of physicists is claiming to have coaxed sparks from the vacuum of empty space1. If verified, the finding would be one of the most unusual experimental proofs of quantum mechanics in recent years and “a significant milestone”, says John Pendry, a theoretical physicist at Imperial College London who was not involved in the [...]
