Unexplained Phenomena Keep Suggesting the Universe Isn’t What We Thought. Long-theorized new form of matter, excitonium, finally discovered. Physicists from the University of Illinois have discovered a new form of matter called excitonium.
This condensate, made up of excitons, was first theorized almost 50 years ago, and although evidence of this form of matter has been observed in that time it was difficult to be sure of what was happening. Now, the Illinois researchers have found a "smoking gun" that they claim is the first definitive proof that excitonium exists. The laws of physics at the quantum level are very different than at the macro scale, but a form of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate somewhat bridges the gap. This state is formed when particles or quasiparticles clump together and begin to behave as one entity, known as a boson. Excitons are a type of boson formed in a semiconductor. Like other bosons, excitons have long been believed to have a "ground state," which was named excitonium and, until now, was largely theoretical.
L. An Epic Story of Cosmic, Earth and Human Transformation. The tag line for this story is a simple one… “One day on a Greek Island, and your view of the universe will change forever.”
I have often thought this to be true. It might just be… Every so often a filmed series is created that brings an incredible amount of knowledge and insight; enough, some might say, to change the world… or at least your perspective on it. When the series JOURNEY OF THE UNIVERSE was being conceived, the creators sought just that… to develop an audio/video and written body of work that would change perspective and possibly change our collective thinking about the universe and the role we now play, as humans, in its destiny. Their efforts resulted in three major works: a book, an award-winning film and an expansive series of filmed interviews, conversations per se, with great minds.
No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning. (Phys.org) —The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity.
The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once. The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a "Big Bang" did the universe officially begin. Although the Big Bang singularity arises directly and unavoidably from the mathematics of general relativity, some scientists see it as problematic because the math can explain only what happened immediately after—not at or before—the singularity. Old ideas revisited.
Shh! DEAP is hunting dark matter. Two kilometers below ground in Canada, scientists deployed a specially designed sanding robot into the DEAP-3600 dark matter detector.
After entering through a long, airtight neck into the interior cavity, which is about 2 meters wide, the robot extended two arms and shaved half of a millimeter off the entire interior surface. The robot’s purpose was to remove any radon the sphere might have absorbed during 18 months of underground assembly at SNOLAB near Sudbury, Ontario. Radon, an element that comes from the radioactive decay of uranium in soil, rock and water, would contribute to background noise—particle interactions that can obscure the phenomenon researchers are hunting for. The resurfacer was just one piece of DEAP experimenters’ aggressive agenda to eliminate interference in what will be the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector for high-mass, weakly interacting dark matter particles when it begins taking data in March 2015.
Discriminating pulses Reducing radiation. New simulation creates a universe with galaxies just like the real deal. Astronomers have created a simulation of the universe that includes more realistic galaxies similar in mass, size and age to real observed galaxies, enabling better research into how the cosmos evolved into its current state over the past 14 billion years.
The international team of astronomers led by professor Joop Schaye of Leiden University used supercomputers at Durham University (UK) and in Paris (the GENCI "Curie" system) to form the simulation known as EAGLE (Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments). The Stories That Galaxies Tell - Issue 10: Mergers & Acquisitions. The biggest merger to ever hit these parts is coming—a union that promises to be more tumultuous than that of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, offer more star power than Brangelina, and deliver more jet propulsion than the new American Airlines–US Airways conglomerate.
We’re talking about the coming together of the Milky Way galaxy and its nearest large neighbor, Andromeda, in a collision that scientists now deem inevitable. This celestial amalgamation will begin in about 4 billion years and finish within another 2 billion, producing a new, larger elliptical galaxy in place of the two spirals that originally conjoined. Mergers are routine rites of passage for galaxies.
“All of the biggest and best studied galaxies around us today are either currently interacting galaxies or collisions waiting to happen,” says Roeland van der Marel of the Space Telescope Science Institute. “And this is happening all over the place.” Bye-Bye Darwin: The Hidden Rhythm Of Evolution. [disinfo ed.'s note: The original essay was written in Spanish.
God May Not Be the Theoretical Higgs Boson: SHE May Be the Already-Discovered Weak Force. Dickey Eason We all have our ideas about how the world and universe work.
Some of us see the hand of “God” in everything. Others are atheists or agnostics—still others are guided by spirituality. But no matter where we are on the “believe” spectrum, most of us see a rather benign universe. By that I mean that we do not see specific forces struggling with one another in the cosmos once we get away from earth, which is interesting to me. We view it much as we do a documentary—no plots, no dynamics—just an intriguing show.