Physics
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Physics
How to mix oil and water
Bouncing an oil-coated water droplet creates a tiny emulsion and reveals physics of mixing.
- Computing
First programmable quantum computer created
System uses ultracold beryllium ions to tackle 160 randomly chosen programs.
- Physics
New device can use noise to store one bit
Data storage system employs a resonance effect to do work.
- Physics
Invisibility Uncloaked
In the race to make things disappear, scientists gain ground on science fiction.
- Tech
Large Hadron Collider suffers carb attack
Efforts to get the Large Hadron Collider up and running just encountered a temporary snag, according to yesterday's online edition of The Times of London. A crusty chunk of bread “paralysed a high voltage installation that should have been powering the cooling unit.”
- Climate
Winter forecast: Sustained blizzard of climate news
At least in our area of the country, consumers are already being assaulted — well before Halloween — with Christmas music, decorations and holiday-themed goods. Reporters are smack in the throes of their own early seasonal blitz: News items carrying a climate or global-warming theme. And I don’t expect the crush of climate news and seminars to diminish until around Christmas. That’s when the next United Nations COP — or Conference of the Parties — will end this year’s pivotal round of negotiations in Copenhagen aimed at producing a new climate treaty.
- Particle Physics
Discovery of Higgs at Large Hadron Collider might not make all physicists happy
Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg suggests many would be horrified if all the LHC discovers is its prime target, the Higgs boson. Tom Siegfried and others blog from the 47th annual New Horizons in Science meeting sponsored by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing in Austin, Texas.
- Computing
Quantum computers could tackle enormous linear equations
New work suggests that the envisioned systems would be powerful enough to quickly process even trillions of variables.
- Climate
Carbon emissions: Trend improves, but …
Sometimes what’s bad for the economy can be good for the planet. Or so argued Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute, yesterday. This environmental trend spotter pointed to several developments that may have escaped our attention as the global economy alternately sputtered and entered periods of freefall throughout the past 18 months. Trend one: U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, have taken a tumble.
- Physics
Entangled photons make better messengers
Quantum effect allows light to carry information farther for computing and encryption
- Tech
Nobel Prize in physics awarded for work with light
Charles K. Kao wins for discoveries enabling fiber-optic communication, and Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith win for inventing the charge-coupled device
- Chemistry
The element tin does what carbon will not
New bonding suggests scientists may need to rethink heavy metal chemistry.
