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CAL...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 27, 2017 at 9:36am
NASA will use CAL to better try to understand a highly misunderstood type of matter in space. Image Credit: NASA
Topics: Bose-Einstein Condensate, International Space Station, Materials Science, NASA, Thermodynamics

NASA has a goal of creating what they say will be the coldest place in the entire universe, as it will help them to understand a property of matter that isn't well-understood. The project has been in development for a number of years, but soon it will come to fruition.

In the near future, an ice chest-sized box that NASA is calling the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) will be shipped to the International Space Station aboard a supply rocket.

CAL will come equipped with the tools it needs to hyper-chill gas atoms to just a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, which citing NASA, is about 100 million times colder than even the depths of outer space itself. It's worth noting that at absolute zero, atom activity reportedly freezes. The tools that will make this possible include a vacuum chamber, special lasers, and what NASA calls an “electromagnetic knife.” These tools will essentially slow the gas molecules that get trapped inside to a near-motionless state.

Since there is so much misunderstanding about how these kinds of hyper-chilled properties impact physics, this is a huge opportunity to fill a gap in mankind's expanding knowledge. The gasses that get chilled to these kinds of low temperatures really aren’t even gasses anymore – their atoms become arranged into a state of matter dubbed Bose-Einstein Condensate. This is a unique type of matter that we don’t fully understand yet. Scientists describe it as a type of “super fluid” that lacks any friction.

Lab Roots: NASA Aims to Create the Coldest Place in the Universe, Anthony Bouchard
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Guest Authors Welcome at SpecFics.com

Posted by Tonya R. Moore on March 24, 2017 at 9:00am

Dust off those old specfic flashfics and short stories you’ve got lying around.

Spec Fics is now accepting submissions from Guest Authors who would like to showcase their overlooked works on our website. To that end, we are now accepting short works of fiction to be made available for free online reading.

We welcome speculative flash fiction and short stories. All sub-genres that fit under the umbrella of speculative fiction are welcome: scifi, horror, dark fantasy, steampunk—you name it.

For information on how to submit your story, here are the Submission Guidelines:

 

Submission Guidelines

Email your story as an attachment to tonyamoore@outlook.com.

Your story should be in RTF (Rich Text Format) or DOCX (Word) format. Be sure to include your name and email address in the story document.

 

Include the following information in the body of your email: 

Name:

Short Bio:

Picture (Optional):

Website/Blog Url:

 

Previously blogged/published stories are welcome.

We do stipulate that your story must be your original work. Sorry, no Fan Fiction.

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Given The Boot...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 24, 2017 at 8:06am
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows a quasar (bright object at center) and its host galaxy, 3C186 (the diffuse object behind it). Scientists think 3C186’s central black hole was ejected from the galaxy’s core by gravitational waves. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Chiaberge (STScI/ESA)
Topics: Black Holes, Cosmology, General Relativity, Gravitational Waves

A supermassive black hole heftier than 1 billion suns has been ejected from the core of its galaxy by gravitational waves, a new study suggests.

The monster black hole has already zoomed 35,000 light-years away from its galaxy's center, farther than Earth and its sun are from the core of our own Milky Way. And the behemoth is currently traveling outward at 4.7 million mph (7.6 million km/h) — fast enough for the black hole to escape its galaxy completely in 20 million years, researchers said.

“We estimate that it took the equivalent energy of 100 million supernovae exploding simultaneously to jettison the black hole,” study co-author Stefano Bianchi, from Roma Tre University in Italy, said in a statement.

Space.com: Gravitational Waves Boot Gigantic Black Hole from Galaxy's CoreMike Wall
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Transparency...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 23, 2017 at 5:30am
Does the brain behave like a spin glass? (Courtesy: Shutterstock / Phonlamai Photo)

Topics: Biology, Biophysics, Neuroscience, Particle Physics

Spin-glass-like states that occur in models of neural networks can provide important insights into states of low and high brain activity that have been observed in mammals. That is the claim of a team of theoretical biophysicists in Spain who are the first to show that disordered states in neurological networks could have a functional role in living brains.

In familiar magnetic materials such as ferromagnets, the interaction between individual spin magnetic moments causes all of the spins to point in the same direction of magnetization. In spin-glass states, the interaction between spins does not allow individual spins to point in the same direction as their neighbours. This leads to "frustration", whereby no direction of magnetization exists and the spins point in random directions.

Brains are not magnetic systems and their working cells – neurons – do not resemble magnetic moments, but mathematically they behave in a similar manner. This is because neurons also have a binary variable – firing or not firing – which is similar to the up or down quantum states of spin. Neurons are also linked by synapses in a way that is similar to how magnetic spins interact with each other. As a result, a neural network in which all of the neurons are firing (or not firing) is similar to a magnetic material in which all of the spins are all pointing up (or down).

Physics World: Spin glass provides insight into brain activity, Michael Allen
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Mars, Lava and Dinosaurs...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 22, 2017 at 10:26am
This digital-image mosaic of Mars' Tharsis plateau shows the extinct volcano Arsia Mons. It was assembled from images that the Viking 1 Orbiter took during its 1976-1980 working life at Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS
Topics: Mars, NASA, Planetary Science, Space Exploration

New NASA research reveals that the giant Martian shield volcano Arsia Mons produced one new lava flow at its summit every 1 to 3 million years during the final peak of activity. The last volcanic activity there ceased about 50 million years ago—around the time of Earth's Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, when large numbers of our planet's plant and animal species (including dinosaurs) went extinct.

Located just south of Mars' equator, Arsia Mons is the southernmost member of a trio of broad, gently sloping shield volcanoes collectively known as Tharsis Montes. Arsia Mons was built up over billions of years, though the details of its lifecycle are still being worked out. The most recent volcanic activity is thought to have taken place in the caldera—the bowl-shaped depression at the top—where 29 volcanic vents have been identified. Until now, it's been difficult to make a precise estimate of when this volcanic field was active.

"We estimate that the peak activity for the volcanic field at the summit of Arsia Mons probably occurred approximately 150 million years ago—the late Jurassic period on Earth—and then died out around the same time as Earth's dinosaurs," said Jacob Richardson, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "It's possible, though, that the last volcanic vent or two might have been active in the past 50 million years, which is very recent in geological terms."

Richardson is presenting the findings on March 20, 2017, at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. The study also is published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Phys.org: Mars volcano, Earth's dinosaurs went extinct about the same timeElizabeth Zubritsky
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Deciphering Auroras...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 21, 2017 at 7:54am
An aurora viewed from the International Space Station. Credit: NASA
Topics: Electromagnetism, High Energy Physics, Plasma Physics

Auroras have long dazzled sky watchers but befuddled physicists. Via a mechanism that remains unclear, electrons get yanked away from the magnetosphere and slammed into the ionosphere, where their collisions with atoms and molecules engender green, red, and blue light. (See the Quick Study by Bob Strangeway, Physics Today, July 2008, page 68.) The leading culprits for scooping up and accelerating auroral electrons are Alfvén waves, oscillations of the ions in a plasma that propagate along magnetic field lines. The oscillations can be triggered by magnetic storms, which often portend auroral displays. And at least in theory, the waves should be able to propel electrons in their path.

Auroras: The sun sends us more than heat and light; it sends lots of other energy and small particles our way. The protective magnetic field around Earth shields us from most of the energy and particles, and we don’t even notice them.

But the sun doesn’t send the same amount of energy all the time. There is a constant streaming solar wind and there are also solar storms. During one kind of solar storm called a coronal mass ejection, the sun burps out a huge bubble of electrified gas that can travel through space at high speeds. Source: NASA

Alfvén waves: In plasma physics, an Alfvén wave, named after Hannes Alfvén, is a type of magnetohydrodynamic wave in which ions oscillate in response to a restoring force provided by an effective tension on the magnetic field lines. Wikipedia

Physics Today: A step toward deciphering auroras, Andrew Grant
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Poquito...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 20, 2017 at 7:55am
A schematic illustration showing how differences in the distribution of dark matter (red) alter the spin rates of modern-day spiral galaxies (left) and spiral galaxies from the early universe (right). Modern spiral galaxies tend to spin faster than their counterparts in the distant, earlier universe due to greater concentrations of dark matter near their centers. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada
Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Dark Matter

Although the invisible substance known as dark matter dominates galaxies nowadays, it was apparently only a minor ingredient of galaxies in the early universe, a new study finds.

This new finding sheds light on how galaxies and their mysterious "haloes" of dark matter have changed over time, researchers said.

Dark matter is thought to make up about 84 percent of the matter in the universe. Although dark matter is invisible, its presence can be inferred by its gravitational effects on visible matter. For instance, previous work discovered that the outer parts of galactic disks whirl faster than expected around the cores of those galaxies. These findings make sense if one assumes that "haloes" of dark matter envelop those galaxies and gravitationally pull at their outer regions. [The Search for Dark Matter in Pictures]

Now, the researchers unexpectedly find that in the early universe, dark matter played a much smaller role in galaxies than previously thought. The scientists detailed their findings in the March 16 issue of the journal Nature.

Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, the researchers examined six massive, star-forming galaxies from the early universe during the peak of galaxy formation 10 billion years ago. They analyzed the rotation of these galaxies to calculate how much dark matter they possessed.

Scientific American: Dark Matter Did Not Dominate Early Galaxies, Charles Q. Choi
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Inevitability, Sports Metaphors and Republics...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 17, 2017 at 8:43am
Image Source
Topics: Civics, History, Politics, Research, Science
History matters. It is "2 a: a chronological record of significant events (as affecting a nation or institution) often including an explanation of their causes, a history of Japan; 3: a branch of knowledge that records and explains past events, medieval history." Merriam-Webster

The more dependent we are on technology, the more we are flippant on history and expertise. Reading (sadly, on the decline) for example, is an interrogation of history, whether fiction or nonfiction, as some basis of an understanding of past events has to go into the crafting of even fanciful tales. Backgrounds are structured such that the verisimilitude seems plausible; if the author has done their work, the realistic realm pulls you to the last page of the book, whether papyrus, I-Pad, Kindle or Nook. If it's a good read, you feel accomplished, better for the effort and time spent away from passive, frequently banal entertainment media. Above all, one feels a sense of empowerment.

Our knowledge of civics has been reduced educationally to multiple testing choices a, b, c, d and e (the last usually, all of the above) and in practice "us versus them"; we won, you lost. The Common Good is virtually unknown as it has no reality show or equivalent entertainment platform. MSNBC seems recently captivated with sports metaphors: Chuck Todd with basketball and Chris Matthews with boxing.

Over the decades I've been voting since 1980, that attitude has solidified. "We The People" have been grouped by tribal affiliations, we vote for "who we like," the current anointed-by-God politician we tweet, and will likely never meet. Consensus, compromise and reconciliation is to be avoided; conciliation is betrayal. Our self-governance is now so toxic, old and vile prejudices open us up to manipulation; our pride allows us to self-delude and mask from the con that we have been duped by extra-national, nefarious agents and complicit wolves within.

I've mentioned my excellent high school Social Studies/Civics teacher Van Bullock. The other instructors I received civics lessons from were my high school JROTC and college AFROTC instructors. Senior Master Sergeant Wilkins at North Forsyth High School used to emphasize that democratic republics can only exist in educated populations. In insular environments such as these, one can assume your classmates are getting some version of the same teaching. I now have my doubts.

Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny warns that republics are not "automatic" nor are they inevitable. It requires a buy-in from the governed, a fundamental knowledge of the mechanism of republics and the citizen's responsibilities in keeping them going. One simple aspect is voting; the other is holding our elected officials accountable for their actions towards their constituency, not their donors or the donor class. That alludes to other forms of government that have the labels: autocracy, authoritarianism, corporatism, kleptocracy, oligarchy, totalitarianism that are the basis of very haunting dystopian novels of hopeless futures, Orwell's "boot stamping on a human face forever." Our lethargy in this country and overseas is due to the near instantaneous access to information, resulting in a citizenry in western nations that would "rather not think about it," or in the spirit of Sinclair Lewis, "It Can't Happen Here." In his prescient essay in 2004, Chris Hedges begs to differ *:

* The movement seeks the imprint of law and science. It must discredit the rational disciplines that are the pillars of the Enlightenment to abolish the liberal polity of the Enlightenment. This corruption of science and law is vital in promoting the doctrine. Creationism, or “intelligent design,” like Eugenics for the Nazis, must be introduced into the mainstream as a valid scientific discipline to destroy the discipline of science itself. This is why the Christian Right is working to bring test cases to ensure that school textbooks include “intelligent design” and condemn gay marriage.

The drive by the Christian Right to include crackpot theories in scientific or legal debate is part of the campaign to destroy dispassionate and honest intellectual inquiry. Facts become interchangeable with opinions. An understanding of reality is not to be based on the elaborate gathering of facts and evidence. The ideology alone is true. Facts that get in the way of the ideology can be altered. Lies, in this worldview, become true. Hannah Arendt called this effort “nihilistic relativism” although a better phrase might be collective insanity.

Failure to question alternative facts (lies) or stretched truths, or play by any fairness or rules, the lazy put their cares in the hands of one strong man or woman: as long as "their team" wins.

When sports loyalties becomes the foundation for the administration of a republic, it becomes a zero-sum game. Whatever you need to do to WIN is then justifiable, from secret, ultimately disastrous raids decided flippantly over dinner; deflated footballs to collusion with governments that are not looking at one party or another anymore than Al Qaeda or ISIL/ISIS has a preference of one western nation over another, or the particular Melanin hue of their respective babies.

In each case, they call themselves "us" and we, E Pluribus Unum... are  "them."

“To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.” —Timothy Snyder
Image Source

Related Links:

On Tyranny, Timothy SnyderAmazonBarnes and Noble

The Financial TimesThe problem with facts, Tim Hartford

The GuardianOn Tyranny by Timothy Snyder review – how to defend democracy in the age of Trump,Richard J. Evans VOX"Post-truth is pre-fascism": a Holocaust historian on the Trump era, Sean Illing

Los Angeles Times Magazine (September 22, 1991):The Death of Reading, Mitchel Stevens

Washington Post (September 7, 2016):The Long Steady Decline of Literary Reading, Christopher Ingraham
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Matrix /Morpheus Prequel/Reboot with Michael B. Jordan???

Posted by AL Bey on March 16, 2017 at 4:38pm

Even though this speculation sounds exciting, it makes us wonder if/how/when the lawsuit from Sophia Stewart was ever settled in such a way to spearhead this new chapter. Plus, it makes others ponder if this is a redemption publicity stunt to counter-spin the discrimination lawsuit that African-American employees have against Turner Time Warner right now. Feel free to share thoughts!!! AL Bey

https://www.moviefone.com/2017/03/15/the-matrix-may-be-getting-a-reboot-with-michael-b-jordan

Read more…

BEAM...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 16, 2017 at 9:22am
This artist's concept depicts the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), constructed by Bigelow Aerospace, attached to the International Space Station (ISS). The BEAM will be launched to the space station later this year. Credits: Bigelow Aerospace
Topics: Mars, Moon, NASA, Space Exploration, Spaceflight

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is an expandable habitat technology demonstration for the International Space Station. Expandable habitats greatly decrease the amount of transport volume for future space missions. These “expandables” require minimal payload volume on a rocket, but expand after being deployed in space to potentially provide a comfortable area for astronauts to live and work. They also provide a varying degree of protection from solar and cosmic radiation, space debris, atomic oxygen, ultraviolet radiation and other elements of the space environment.

The journey to Mars is complex and filled with challenges that NASA and its partners are continuously working to solve. Before sending the first astronauts to the Red Planet, several rockets filled with cargo and supplies will be deployed to await the crews’ arrival. Expandable modules, which are lower-mass and lower-volume systems than metal habitats, can increase the efficiency of cargo shipments, possibly reducing the number of launches needed and overall mission costs. [1]

* * * * *

Bigelow Aerospace founder Robert Bigelow‘s company makes in-space habitats. One (the BEAM adds 16 cubic meters of living area to the ISS) is now attached to the International Space Station and he and his company are developing permanent, stand-alone habitats to serve as private space stations in orbit around the Earth, ready to house private astronauts.

Bigelow has talked with United Launch Alliance Chief Executive Tory Bruno about using the company's Atlas V 552 rocket, which has an extra-wide payload fairing, to deliver the B330 into orbit.

United Launch Alliance is developing an advanced upper-stage vehicle, ACES, to provide in-space propulsion.

Two ACES in tandem could be used to move the B330 into a low lunar orbit. They orbit within 75 kilometers of the lunar surface.

Bigelow has spoken SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell about using the company's Dragon 2 spacecraft to transport astronauts to the B330 in deep space.

By 2020, NASA and commercial astronauts could be living and working in lunar orbit inside a functional space station. [2]

1. NASA: Advanced Exploration Systems: Bigelow Expandable Activity Module2. Next Big Future: Bigelow Aerospace offers plan for an expandable space station orbiting the moon by 2020
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ProtoDUNE...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 15, 2017 at 6:38am
The outer (warm) vessel for the single-phase protoDUNE at CERN. The red steel frame provides support for the cold-membrane cryostat, the detector, and approximately 800 tonnes of liquid argon. Image credit: M Brice/CERN.
Topics: CERN, Large Hadron Collider, LHC, Neutrinos, Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Theoretical Physics

This 11 m-high structure with thick steel walls will soon contain a prototype detector for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), a major international project based in the US for studying neutrinos and proton decay. It is being assembled in conjunction with CERN’s Neutrino Platform, which was established in 2014 to support neutrino experiments hosted in Japan and the US (CERN Courier July/August 2016 p21), and is pictured here in December as the roof of the structure was lowered into place. Another almost identical structure is under construction nearby and will house a second prototype detector for DUNE. Both are being built at CERN’s new “EHN1” test facility, which was completed last year at the north area of the laboratory’s Prévessin site.

DUNE, which is due to start operations in the next decade, will address key outstanding questions about neutrinos. In addition to determining the ordering of the neutrino masses, it will search for leptonic CP violation by precisely measuring differences between the oscillations of muon-type neutrinos and antineutrinos into electron-type neutrinos and antineutrinos, respectively (CERN Courier December 2015 p19). To do so, DUNE will consist of two advanced detectors placed in an intense neutrino beam produced at Fermilab’s Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF). One will record particle interactions near the source of the beam before the neutrinos have had time to oscillate, while a second, much larger detector will be installed deep underground at the Sanford Underground Research Laboratory in Lead, South Dakota, 1300 km away.

CERN Courier: ProtoDUNE revealed, Matthew Chalmers
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Pi In The Sky Day...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 14, 2017 at 8:00am
The NASA Pi Day Challenge is an illustrated math problem set that gets students solving some of the same problems NASA scientists and engineers must solve to explore space.

Topics: Education, Einstein, Humor, Mathematics, NASA, STEM

Math SymbolPronounce Like
ex, dx, dx
e to the x dee ex, dee ex
ex, dx, dx
e to the x dee ex, dee ex
Cosine
kōˌsīn
Secant
sēˌkant,ˈor sēˌkənt
Tangent
tanjənt
Sine
sīn (long "i" sound)
3.14159...
three point one four one five nine

YAY TEAM!

The engineer's cheer (supposedly from MIT). Lowercase "e" is the natural logarithm (also an irrational number), "dx" in Calculus defines small, infinitesimal change in the variable x; four Trigonometric terms and Pi (symbol: π) you know.

Once you see it, you can't UN-SEE it. I have officially corrupted you.

Also to note: Albert Einstein's birthday happens to be today. In 2015, National Pi Day had some significance as it was his birthday and the year General Relativity was confirmed observing the phenomena we now know as Gravitational Lensing 100 years prior, giving rise to studying a now popular enigma of the universe: Black Holes.

NASA is giving space fans a reason to celebrate Pi Day, the March 14 holiday created in honor of the mathematical constant pi. For the fourth year in a row, the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has created an illustrated Pi Day Challenge featuring four math problems NASA scientists and engineers must solve to explore space. The challenge is designed to get students excited about pi and its applications beyond the classroom. This year’s problem set, designed for students in grade six through high school – but fun for all – features Mars craters, a total solar eclipse, a close encounter with Saturn, and the search for habitable worlds.

Educators, get the standards-aligned Pi Day Challenge lesson and download the free poster and handouts. The answers to all four problems will be released in a companion infographic on March 16.

Why March 14?

Pi is what’s known as an irrational number, meaning its decimal representation never ends and it never repeats. It has been calculated to more than one trillion digits, but NASA scientists and engineers actually use far fewer digits in their calculations (see “How Many Decimals of Pi Do We Really Need?”). The approximation 3.14 is often precise enough, hence the celebration occurring on March 14, or 3/14 (when written in US month/day format). The first known celebration occurred in 1988, and in 2009, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution designating March 14 as Pi Day and encouraging teachers and students to celebrate the day with activities that teach students about pi.

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ET, FRBs and Light Sails...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 13, 2017 at 7:30am
Image Source: Science Alert

Topics: Astrophysics, Photonics, SETI, Solar Sail, Space Exploration

It's not the first time I've discussed Fast Radio Burst (FRBs): I had posts in 2013, 2015 and just last year in 2016. I first read this in Science Alert, then followed the links to arXiv. Although I've posted from physics arXiv before, some things I should give as a caveat emptor:

- The arXiv is a pre-print journal, i.e. it precedes publication in peer-reviewed, scientific journals.
- As such, it's a good way to "get an idea out there." The first stringent peer reviews should be from your own research team. You can also in subsequent submission to scholarly publications correct previous conclusions, especially after peer challenge.
- You can submit your paper here, if you're a registered author.

What took me aback was a Harvard astrophysicist* submitting it, and it's apparently not as the colloquial phrase goes, his first rodeo (see #P4TC related link below). I was a little thrilled and a little worried if the hypothesis falls flat.

However, it does work on physics that we know, or at least think we know: we haven't built a functional solar sail YET, but it's a little more practical on our humble 0.7 Kardashev Scale than warp drive (to the chagrin of my inner Trekkie), but within the realm of reasonable relativistic speeds, a fraction of light speed, but doable.

If we're receiving these fast radio bursts, the question are: is this just stellar phenomena, a lucky observation break, or are we in a flight path? And if the latter, for what purpose?

* Loeb admits that this work is speculative. When asked whether he really believes that any fast radio bursts are due to aliens, he replied, "Science isn't a matter of belief, it's a matter of evidence. Deciding what’s likely ahead of time limits the possibilities. It's worth putting ideas out there and letting the data be the judge.”

Abstract
We examine the possibility that Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) originate from the activity of extragalactic civilizations. Our analysis shows that beams used for powering large light sails could yield parameters that are consistent with FRBs. The characteristic diameter of the beam emitter is estimated through a combination of energetic and engineering constraints, and both approaches intriguingly yield a similar result which is on the scale of a large rocky planet. Moreover, the optimal frequency for powering the light sail is shown to be similar to the detected FRB frequencies. These `coincidences' lend some credence to the possibility that FRBs might be artificial in origin. Other relevant quantities, such as the characteristic mass of the light sail, and the angular velocity of the beam, are also derived. By using the FRB occurrence rate, we infer upper bounds on the rate of FRBs from extragalactic civilizations in a typical galaxy. The possibility of detecting fainter signals is briefly discussed, and the wait time for an exceptionally bright FRB event in the Milky Way is estimated.

Physics arXiv: Fast Radio Bursts from Extragalactic Light Sails
Manasvi Lingam, Abraham Loeb

#P4TC:

Light Sails Leakage, September 9, 2015

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Ions, Lasers and Time Crystals...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 10, 2017 at 9:31am
Researchers have created the world's first time crystal, an exotic state of matter that combines the rigidity of an ordinary crystal with a regular rhythm in time. (Credit: E. Edwards/JQI)
Topics: Applied Physics, Computer Science, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics, Theoretical Physics

Consider, for a moment, the humble puddle of water. If you dive down to nearly the scale of molecules, it will be hard to tell one spot in the puddle from any other. You can shift your gaze to the left or right, or tilt your head, and the microscopic bustle will be identical—a situation that physicists call highly symmetric.

That all changes abruptly when the puddle freezes. In contrast to liquid water, ice is a crystal, and it gains a spontaneous rigid structure as the temperature drops. Freezing fastens neighboring water molecules together in a regular pattern, and a simple tilt of the head now creates a kaleidoscopic change.

In 2012, Nobel-prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed something that sounds pretty strange. It might be possible, Wilczek argued, to create crystals that are arranged in time instead of space. The suggestion prompted years of false starts and negative results that ruled out some of the most obvious places to look for these newly named time crystals.

Now, five years after the first proposal, a team of researchers led by physicists at the Joint Quantum Institute and the University of Maryland have created the world's first time crystal using a chain of atomic ions. The result, which finally brings Wilczek's exotic idea to life, was reported in Nature on March 9.

Much like freezing destroys the symmetry of liquid water, a time crystal disturbs a regularity in time. This is somewhat surprising, says lead author and JQI postdoctoral researcher Jiehang Zhang, since nature usually responds in sync to things that change in time. "The earth rotates around the sun once a year, and the seasons have the same period," Zhang says. "That’s what you would naturally expect."

A time crystal doesn't follow the lead, instead responding with a slower frequency—like a bell struck once a second that rings every other second. The atomic ions in the Maryland experiment, which researchers manipulated using laser pulses, responded exactly half as fast as the sequence of pulses that drove them.

Joint Quantum Institute: Ions sync up into world's first time crystal

#P4TC:

Recipe For Time Crystals, January 24, 2017Time Crystals, October 13, 2016
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Conducting Filaments and RRAM Switching...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 9, 2017 at 7:13am
(a) Measured I-V patterns (sweep rate, 1 V/s) under various Icc. The arrows and the number in the graphs signify the switching direction. Similar responses were recorded by starting the sweeps from 0 V to |Vmax|(not shown here), confirming the completely forming free nature of our devices. (b) Evolution of the rectification ratio (RR) for the LRS and (c) dependence of both resistance states from the device area, under the application of a constant of Icc = 50 mA.
Topics: Electrical Engineering, Semiconductor Technology, Nanotechnology

Two primers: RRAM and Memristor. It'll make the rest of the paper flow better.

ABSTRACT
Although multilevel capability is probably the most important property of resistive random access memory (RRAM) technology, it is vulnerable to reliability issues due to the stochastic nature of conducting filament (CF) creation. As a result, the various resistance states cannot be clearly distinguished, which leads to memory capacity failure. In this work, due to the gradual resistance switching pattern of TiO2−x-based RRAM devices, we demonstrate at least six resistance states with distinct memory margin and promising temporal variability. It is shown that the formation of small CFs with high density of oxygen vacancies enhances the uniformity of the switching characteristics in spite of the random nature of the switching effect. Insight into the origin of the gradual resistance modulation mechanisms is gained by the application of a trap-assisted-tunneling model together with numerical simulations of the filament formation physical processes.

Journal of Applied Physics:Investigating the origins of high multilevel resistive switching in forming free Ti/TiO2−x-based memory devices through experiments and simulationsP. Bousoulas, I. Giannopoulos, P. Asenov, I. Karageorgiou, and D. Tsoukalas
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Introduce A Girl to Engineering...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 8, 2017 at 7:49am
Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day (IGED) is a diversity outreach program designed to provide 8th-grade girls an opportunity to learn about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers. Students are assigned to engineer and scientist mentors at Argonne who accompany the girls throughout the day's scheduled activities. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)
Topics: Diversity, Diversity in Science, STEM, Women in Science

Eighth grade girls learned about the exciting possibilities in science and engineering at the annual Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day Thursday, Feb. 23, 2017, at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory.

“We were very excited to host this event and inspire young girls to become the next generation of scientists and engineers, “ said Lydia Finney, a physicist at Argonne and the Women in Science and Technology program initiator.

The day-long event was an entertaining and interactive way to introduce girls to science and engineering pursuits. Over one hundred young girls from the Chicagoland area heard from leaders at Argonne, met with a mentor, toured the laboratory’s one-of-a-kind research facilities, joined seminars led by female Argonne employees and watched demonstrations of 11 experiments by Argonne scientists and engineers.

“The girls enjoyed our hands-on experiments from different areas across the laboratory – from predicting the weather to demonstrating cryogenics used at the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System, or ATLAS,” said Emily Zvolanek, a GIS analyst in Argonne’s Environmental Science Division and six-time coordinator of the annual event.

Argonne National Laboratory:Argonne hosts 15th annual Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day, Dave Bukey
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Our web Series "Messiah Wars" combines our love for Sci Fi, Fantasy, Afrofuturism and Spirituality!!

Posted by Isabelle Brothers on March 6, 2017 at 11:30am

Check out our new web series MESSIAH WARS. It centers around a group of young individuals with spiritual gifts that have to band together to fight the forces of evil. We merge our love of sci fi, fantasy, afro futurism and spirituality in this show!! Check it out and don't forget to subscribe!! 

www.youtube.com/messiahwars

Episode 3

https://youtu.be/2M5DqgcZskU

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Heresy of Heliocentricity...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 6, 2017 at 8:40am
Image Source: Famous Scientists
Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Copernicus, Heliophysics, History

I've seen this quite often in treatises on science, its general public acceptance and authoritarianism. It's quite typical sadly, of the powerful to "want to control the narrative," thereby remaining in a position of control and influence. Any information counter to their hierarchy is thus heresy, and is usually countered with vigorous dissent and an "alternative" to observation, data, peer review and thus...truth.

On this day (actually, yesterday: 5 March) in 1616 the Vatican's Sacred Congregation of the Index added Nicolaus Copernicus's "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" ("On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres") to its list of banned books. First published in Nuremberg in 1543, the book proposed that Earth, Mars and other planets orbit the Sun. Rejection of Copernicus's heliocentric system was not confined to the Catholic Church. Rumors of his research reached Martin Luther before the book was published. In 1539 the Protestant reformer was quoted as saying: "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the Earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the Sun and the Moon. . . . This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth."
“That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.”

― P.C. Hodgell, Seeker's Mask, Good Reads

Physics Today: Vatican bans Copernicus' bookStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Nicolaus Copernicus
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