New observations of black hole reveal surprises Astronomers have recalculated the mass of the Cygnus X-1 black hole, the first black hole ever found, and they say it’s about one-and-a-half times more massive than once thought, detailing their findings in Science. Using observations by the Very Long Baseline Array, researchers say the Cygnus X-1 system […]
Back in 1929, theoretical physicist Hermann Weyl predicted the existence of a new elementary particle with intriguing properties. Specifically, it would be massless (like a photon), have half-integer spin (like an electron) and exist in two mirror-image versions (like left- and right-handed gloves)—a property known as chirality. Imagine there exist a material in which an […]
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose History of the Kings of Britain was written in 1136, the mysterious monoliths at Stonehenge were first spirited there by the wizard Merlin, whose army stole them from a mythical Irish stone circle called the Giants’ Dance. Centuries before the development of rudimentary geology, Geoffrey’s exotic theory – that […]
You are surely familiar with the concept that light behaves like electromagnetic radiation, and that it responds to the equation In this way, the higher the wavelength of the light, the lower its frequency , and vice versa. This means that if we compare red and blue light, for example, we will see that red […]
Nearby system may host habitable exoplanet Another potentially habitable planet has been detected in the nearby Alpha Centauri system, orbiting the sunlike Alpha Centauri A. The data suggesting the exoplanet’s habitability was collected using the European Space Agency’s Very Large Telescope via the Near Earths in the Alpha Cen Region project. Space.com Brain EEG may […]
Charge density wave (CDW) is a many-body state of matter in which both lattice and electron density are modulated by a new periodicity. CDW features discrete translational symmetry-breaking, and mostly occurs in low-dimensional materials. Although CDW behaviours have been found in many materials, the underlying mechanism and the driving forces of CDW transition are still […]
Around 5,000 years ago (c. 3100 BC), what we know today as Ancient Egypt came into existence. A thousand years either side, and other such “primary states” had also arisen across the world, in Mesopotamia, North China, the Indus Valley and other locations. But why did human social dynamics change so dramatically in such a […]
Besides being one of the main pioneers of scientific thought, Aristotle is the author of the work that can unquestionably be considered the first book explicitly and exclusively devoted to what we can call ‘philosophy of science’ . This small book is known by the rather insipid name of Posterior Analytics ( Ἀναλυτικὰ ὑστέρων ) […]
What we can learn about black holes from water in a tank Researchers can observe many properties of black holes through water simulations, since gravitational interactions behave like fluid. University of Nottingham scientists describe in Physical Review Letters how they witnessed backreaction for the first time by creating a vortex of water and propelling waves […]
During the last decades, the electronics industry has been very successful in pushing forward the advancement of electronic building blocks, but the limit of silicon-based electronic devices especially in terms of miniaturization are almost reached. There are many ideas how to overcome this problem, for example, by adding functionality based on approaches originating from molecular […]