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Here is your customized PHYSorg.com Newsletter for week 43:
Holometer experiment to test if the universe is a hologram
(PhysOrg.com) -- Many ideas in theoretical physics involve extra dimensions, but the possibility that the universe has only two dimensions could also have surprising implications. The idea is that space on the ultra-small Planck scale is two-dimensional, and the third dimension is inextricably linked with time. If this is the case, then our three-dimensional universe is nothing more than a hologram of a two-dimensional universe.
Advance could change modern electronics: High-performance 'metal-insulator-metal' diode created
Researchers at Oregon State University have solved a quest in fundamental material science that has eluded scientists since the 1960s, and could form the basis of a new approach to electronics.
Researchers find a stable way to store the sun's heat (w/ Video)
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at MIT have revealed exactly how a molecule called fulvalene diruthenium, which was discovered in 1996, works to store and release heat on demand. This understanding, reported in a paper published on Oct. 20 in the journal Angewandte Chemie, should make it possible to find similar chemicals based on more abundant, less expensive materials than ruthenium, and this could form the basis of a rechargeable battery to store heat rather than electricity.
Complex mathematical problem solved by bees
(PhysOrg.com) -- Bumblebees can find the solution to a complex mathematical problem which keeps computers busy for days.
Modern humans emerged far earlier than previously thought
(PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of researchers based at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, including a physical anthropology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, has discovered well-dated human fossils in southern China that markedly change anthropologists perceptions of the emergence of modern humans in the eastern Old World.
Huge amber deposit discovered in India
Bees, termites, spiders, and flies entombed in a newly-excavated amber deposit are challenging the assumption that India was an isolated island-continent in the Early Eocene, or 52-50 million years ago. Arthropods found in the Cambay deposit from western India are not unique -- as would be expected on an island -- but rather have close evolutionary relationships with fossils from other continents. The amber is also the oldest evidence of a tropical broadleaf rainforest in Asia. The discovery is published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
US approves world's biggest solar energy project (Update)
The Obama administration has approved a thousand-megawatt solar project on federal land in southern California, the largest solar project ever planned on U.S. public lands.
Astronomers discover most massive neutron star yet known (w/ Video)
(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope (GBT) have discovered the most massive neutron star yet found, a discovery with strong and wide-ranging impacts across several fields of physics and astrophysics.
Six new isotopes of the superheavy elements discovered
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has detected six isotopes, never seen before, of the superheavy elements 104 through 114. Starting with the creation of a new isotope of the yet-to-be-named element 114, the researchers observed successive emissions of alpha particles that yielded new isotopes of copernicium (element 112), darmstadtium (element 110), hassium (element 108), seaborgium (element 106), and rutherfordium (element 104). Rutherfordium ended the chain when it decayed by spontaneous fission.
Balloon filled with ground coffee makes ideal robotic gripper (w/ Video)
(PhysOrg.com) -- The human hand is an amazing machine that can pick up, move and place objects easily, but for a robot, this "gripping" mechanism is a vexing challenge. Opting for simple elegance, researchers from Cornell University, University of Chicago and iRobot have bypassed traditional designs based around the human hand and fingers, and created a versatile gripper using everyday ground coffee and a latex party balloon.
German electric car sets new distance record
An electric car drove from Munich in southern Germany to Berlin without recharging its battery on Tuesday, setting what organisers hailed as a new world distance record for an everyday vehicle.
Physicists show that superfluid light is possible
(PhysOrg.com) -- Superfluidity – the phase of matter that enables a fluid to move up the sides of its container – has been known about since the 1930s. Since then, superfluidity has become a prime example of how quantum effects can become visible on the macroscopic scale under certain conditions. Although physicists have previously considered the possibility of superfluid light, their results have been inconclusive until now. In a new study, physicists from France have theoretically shown that superfluid motion of light is indeed possible, and have proposed an experiment to observe the phenomena.
NVIDIA GPUs power world's fastest supercomputer
(PhysOrg.com) -- NVIDIA has built the worldэs fastest supercomputer using 7,000 of its graphics processor chips. With a horsepower equivalent to 175,000 laptop computers, its sustained performance is equivalent to 2.5 Petaflops.
NASA trapped Mars Rover finds evidence of subsurface water
(PhysOrg.com) -- The ground where NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit became stuck last year holds evidence that water, perhaps as snow melt, trickled into the subsurface fairly recently and on a continuing basis.
Study says solar systems like ours may be common
(PhysOrg.com) -- Nearly one in four stars like the sun could have Earth-size planets, according to a University of California, Berkeley, study of nearby solar-mass stars.
Computer scientists make progress on math puzzle
(PhysOrg.com) -- Two UT Dallas computer scientists have made progress on a nearly 4-decade-old mathematical puzzle, producing a proof that renowned Stanford computer scientist Don Knuth called "amazing" in his communication back to them.
Researchers find a 'liberal gene'
Liberals may owe their political outlook partly to their genetic make-up, according to new research from the University of California, San Diego, and Harvard University. Ideology is affected not just by social factors, but also by a dopamine receptor gene called DRD4. The study's authors say this is the first research to identify a specific gene that predisposes people to certain political views.
Hubble data used to look 10,000 years into the future (w/ Video)
(PhysOrg.com) -- The globular star cluster Omega Centauri has caught the attention of sky watchers ever since the ancient astronomer Ptolemy first catalogued it 2,000 years ago. Ptolemy, however, thought Omega Centauri was a single star. He didn't know that the "star" was actually a beehive swarm of nearly 10 million stars, all orbiting a common center of gravity.
New evidence supports 'Snowball Earth' as trigger for early animal evolution
A team of scientists, led by biogeochemists at the University of California, Riverside, has found new evidence linking "Snowball Earth" glacial events to the rise of early animals.
Researchers engineer miniature human livers in the lab
Researchers at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have reached an early, but important, milestone in the quest to grow replacement livers in the lab. They are the first to use human liver cells to successfully engineer miniature livers that function – at least in a laboratory setting – like human livers. The next step is to see if the livers will continue to function after transplantation in an animal model.
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