Quantum Mechanics Will Be Used to Determine Weight and Measurement Standards
What makes a kilogram a kilogram? Since the late 19th century the standard, which a kilogram has been measured, has been based on a chunk of platinum-alloy, called Le Grand K, that’s held at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures laboratory in Sèvres, France. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a kilogram was originally intended […]
Breakthrough Listen’s Search For ETI Gets Boost
The Breakthrough Listen initiative’s search for extra-terrestrial intelligent life just got a big boost thanks to hardware upgrades at Australia’s Parkes Radio Telescope. The upgraded equipment will help scientists conduct faster surveys of the sky and will provide an ability to scan the Milky Way’s disk and bulge in unparalleled detail. The Australian radio telescope […]
Scientists Observe Rare Black Hole Event
For many here in the United States, today, Friday 11/27/15 is something called Black Friday. It’s unofficially considered to be the first shopping day of the Christmas season and many Americans mark it by heading out to shopping centers and stores in droves in hopes of finding bargains. NASA is marking the day too; only […]
Data Shows Universe Could Collapse Any Minute
Our universe is at even greater risk of collapse than has been previously thought, according physicists in Denmark. Not only are the scientists predicting the end of the world… but the end of the universe! The prediction that the universe will collapse and compress into a small hard ball isn’t something new. Physicists have been […]
Scientists Learn More about Mysterious 3rd Van Allen Belt
New research provides insight into the mysterious Van Allen radiation belts. There are normally two of these giant bands of high-energy radiation encircling the Earth. However, researchers discovered a third and previously unknown radiation ring that only lasted for about a month back in September 2012. Writing in a recent edition of Nature Physics, scientists from UCLA […]
Speed of Light May Not be Constant
The speed of light has long been calculated to be 299,792.458 km per second, but now new research from France and Germany indicates that light may not travel at a fixed rate after all, but instead can fluctuate. A key component of Einstein’s famous E=MC2, the speed of light has been thought to be finite […]
Does ‘God Particle’ Spell End of the Universe?
Last summer, when scientists finally cornered the elusive building block of the universe known as the Higgs boson, they apparently also discovered something else: that the universe’s days might be numbered. “It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable,” said Joseph Lykken, a theoretical physicist from the U.S. Department of Energy’s […]