Dear Reader ,
Here is your customized Phys.org Newsletter for week 07:
A fascinating 'new' planet
NASA has recently discovered a very strange planet.� Its days are twice�as long as its years.� It has a tail like a comet. It is hot enough to melt lead, yet capped by deposits of ice. And to top it all off ... it appears to be pink.
Meteor strike in Russia hurts almost 1,000 (w/ Video)
A plunging meteor which exploded with a blinding flash above central Russia , set off a shockwave that shattered windows and hurt almost 1,000 people in an event unprecedented in modern times.
We are living in a bacterial world, and it's impacting us more than previously thought
(Phys.org)�Throughout her career, the famous biologist Lynn Margulis (1938-2011) argued that the world of microorganisms has a much larger impact on the entire biosphere�the world of all living things�than scientists typically recognize. Now a team of scientists from universities around the world has collected and compiled the results of hundreds of studies, most from within the past decade, on animal-bacterial interactions, and have shown that Margulis was right. The combined results suggest that the evidence supporting Margulis' view has reached a tipping point, demanding that scientists reexamine some of the fundamental features of life through the lens of the complex, codependent relationships among bacteria and other very different life forms.
German student builds electromagnetic harvester to recharge a battery
Dennis Siegel, a student at the University of the Arts in Bremen, Germany has built what he calls an electromagnetic harvester�it converts electromagnetic fields in the immediate environment into electricity to recharge a common AA battery. He's won a 2nd place award in the HfK Bremen Hochschulpreis 2013 competition for Digitale Medien, for his efforts.
After Higgs Boson, scientists prepare for next quantum leap
Seven months after its scientists made a landmark discovery that may explain the mysteries of mass, Europe's top physics lab will take a break from smashing invisible particles to recharge for the next leap into the unknown.
Want zero carbon emissions? Go nuclear, economics professor says
(Phys.org)�Nuclear power often inspires fear and loathing, no more so than among environmentalists, who have long decried the potential dangers and the still-unsolved problem of what to do with nuclear waste. Consumers have their doubts as well. The memory of major accidents such as those at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and, most recently, Fukushima Daiichi in Japan leaves many regular folks cringing at the prospect of relying on nuclear energy to light and heat their homes.
Sunlight stimulates release of climate-warming gas from melting Arctic permafrost, study says
Ancient carbon trapped in Arctic permafrost is extremely sensitive to sunlight and, if exposed to the surface when long-frozen soils melt and collapse, can release climate-warming carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere much faster than previously thought.
Chemistry trick kills climate controversy
Volcanoes are well known for cooling the climate. But just how much and when has been a bone of contention among historians, glaciologists and archeologists. Now a team of atmosphere chemists, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Copenhagen, has come up with a way to say for sure which historic episodes of global cooling were caused by volcanic eruptions.
Researchers build self-repairing "systemic" computer
(Phys.org)�Computer scientists Christos Sakellariou and Peter Bentley working together at University College in London, have built a new kind of computer that runs instruction segments randomly, rather than sequentially, resulting in a computer than in theory, should never crash.
Wireless power transfer technology for high capacity transit
The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Korea Railroad Research Institute (KRRI) have developed a wireless power transfer technology that can be applied to high capacity transportation systems such as railways, harbor freight, and airport transportation and logistics. The technology supplies 60 kHz and 180 kW of power remotely to transport vehicles at a stable, constant rate.
NASA designs new space telescope optics
Although hundreds of planets orbiting other stars have been discovered in the past 15 years, we cannot yet answer the age-old question of whether any of these planets are capable of sustaining life. However, new NASA technology may change that, by giving us our first look at distant planets that not only are the right size and traveling in the temperate habitable zone of their host star, but also show signs of potential life, such as atmospheric oxygen and liquid water.
Magnetic shielding of ion beam thruster walls
Electric rocket engines known as Hall thrusters, which use a super high-velocity stream of ions to propel a spacecraft in space, have been used successfully onboard many missions for half a century. Erosion of the discharge channels walls, however, has limited their application to the inner solar system. A research team at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif., has found a way to effectively control this erosion by shaping the engine's magnetic field in a way that shields the walls from ion bombardment.
Dropouts weren't prepared in first place, study finds
While some folks may look at university/college dropouts as simply lazy slackers, a Western study boils the bailout down to simple ability.
World solar power capacity exceeds 100 gigawatts
World solar power capacity passed the 100 gigawatt mark for the first time to 101 GW, the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) said on Monday.
How to prevent earthquake damage: make buildings invisible
(Phys.org)�When an earthquake strikes, damage to buildings such as nuclear power stations can worsen the catastrophe. Researchers from France's Institut Fresnel and the French division of Menard, a ground-improvement specialist company, have developed an invisibility cloak that could protect buildings during an earthquake by redirecting seismic waves around them.
Vortex pinning could lead to superconducting breakthroughs
A team of researchers from Russia, Spain, Belgium, the U.K. and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory announced findings last week that may represent a breakthrough in applications of superconductivity.
Invisible tool enables new quantum experiments with atoms, molecules, clusters and other nanoparticles
Experiments on the quantum wave nature of atoms and molecules have enabled researchers to precisely measure tiny forces and displacements as well as to shed light onto the unexplored zone between the microscopic realm of quantum physics and our everyday world. Physicists around Philipp Haslinger and Markus Arndt at the University of Vienna have now succeeded in constructing a novel matter wave interferometer which enables new quantum studies with a broad class of particles, including atoms, molecules and nanoparticles. These lumps of matter are exposed to three pulsed laser light gratings which are invisible to the human eye, exist only for a billionth of a second and never simultaneously.
Quantum cryptography put to work for electric grid security
A Los Alamos National Laboratory quantum cryptography (QC) team has successfully completed the first-ever demonstration of securing control data for electric grids using quantum cryptography.
Computerized 'Rosetta Stone' reconstructs ancient languages
University of British Columbia and Berkeley researchers have used a sophisticated new computer system to quickly reconstruct protolanguages � the rudimentary ancient tongues from which modern languages evolved.
New look at human fossil suggests Eastern Europe was an important pathway in evolution
A fossilized bone fragment found buried deep in the soil of a Serbian cave is causing scientists to reconsider what happened during a critical period in human development, when the strands of modern humanity were still coming together.
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