Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: physics – Page 161

First predicted in Einstein’s theory of general relativity, gravitational waves are tiny ripples in spacetime generated by titanic and powerful cosmic events. The great physicist believed that no equipment would ever be sensitive to detect these faint cosmic ripples. Fortunately, Einstein was wrong, but that doesn’t mean that the detection of gravitational waves has been easy.

The history of a planned array to be built in Europe during the late 1980s, the reasons this failed, and the parallels with current detectors, are documented in a new paper published in The European Physical Journal H, authored by Adele La Rana, University of Verona, and INFN Section of Sapienza University, Italy.

La Rana explains that following the announcement of the first detections of by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration in 2016 and 2017, questions arose regarding “the missed opportunity” of having an array of two or more long-based GW interferometers in Europe.

Read more | >

Universe has an abundance of gravitational wave sources. Recently, an international team of scientists unveiled a tsunami of gravitational waves. This discovery is the most significant number of gravitational waves ever detected.

Scientists detected 35 new gravitational waves. These waves were formed by merging black holes or neutron stars and black holes smashing together. The observation was made by the LIGO and Virgo observatories between November 2019 and March 2020.

This brings the total number of detections to 90 after three observing runs between 2015 and 2020.

Read more | >

X-ray laser experiments show that intense light distorts the structure of a thermoelectric material in a unique way, opening a new avenue for controlling the properties of materials.

Thermoelectric materials convert heat to electricity and vice versa, and their atomic structures are closely related to how well they perform.

Now researchers have discovered how to change the atomic structure of a highly efficient thermoelectric material, tin selenide, with intense pulses of laser light. This result opens a new way to improve thermoelectrics and a host of other materials by controlling their structure, creating materials with dramatic new properties that may not exist in nature.

Read more | >

Physicists have discovered a new way to coat soft robots in materials that allow them to move and function in a more purposeful way. The research, led by the University of Bath, is described in a paper published on March 11, 2022, in Science Advances.

Authors of the study believe their breakthrough modeling on ‘active matter’ could mark a turning point in the design of robots. With further development of the concept, it may be possible to determine the shape, movement, and behavior of a soft solid not by its natural elasticity but by human-controlled activity on its surface.

Read more | >

The Great Pyramid of Giza might be the most iconic structure humans ever built. Ancient civilizations constructed archaeological icons that are a testament to their greatness and persistence. But in some respects, the Great Pyramid stands alone. Of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only the Great Pyramid stands relatively intact.

A team of scientists will use advances in High Energy Physics (HIP) to scan the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza with cosmic-ray muons. They want to see deeper into the Great Pyramid than ever before and map its internal structure. The effort is called the Explore the Great Pyramid (EGP) mission.

The Great Pyramid of Giza has stood since the 26th century BC. It’s the tomb of the Pharoah Khufu, also known as Cheops. Construction took about 27 years, and it was built with about 2.3 million blocks of stone—a combination of limestone and granite—weighing in at about 6 million tons. For over 3,800 years, it was the tallest human-made structure in the world. We see now only the underlying core structure of the Great Pyramid. The smooth white limestone casing was removed over time.

Read more | >

Check Out Subcultured’s Anime Episode on PBS Voices: https://youtu.be/oSCj8H4TGTo.

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE

If you’ve studied any physics you know that like charges repel and opposite charges attract. But why? It’s as though this thing — electric charge — is as fundamental a property of an object as its mass. It just sort of… is. Well it turns out if you dig deep enough, the fundamental-ness of charge unravels, and in many things, including mass itself, are unraveled with it.

Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord!

Continue reading “What If Charge is NOT Fundamental?” | >

Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity profoundly changed our thinking about fundamental concepts in physics, such as space and time. But it also left us with some deep mysteries. One was black holes, which were only unequivocally detected over the past few years. Another was “wormholes” – bridges connecting different points in spacetime, in theory providing shortcuts for space travellers.

Wormholes are still in the realm of the imagination. But some scientists think we will soon be able to find them, too. Over the past few months, several new studies have suggested intriguing ways forward.

Black holes and wormholes are special types of solutions to Einstein’s equations, arising when the structure of spacetime is strongly bent by gravity. For example, when matter is extremely dense, the fabric of spacetime can become so curved that not even light can escape. This is a black hole.

Read more | >