Group items tagged

Researchers in Japan have developed what may be the first string-theory model with a natural mechanism for explaining why our universe would seem to exist in three spatial dimensions if it actually has six more. According to their model, only three of the nine dimensions started to grow at the beginning of the universe, accounting both for the universe's continuing expansion and for its apparently three-dimensional nature. ... The team has yet to prove that the Standard Model of particle physics will show up in its model,...

...Covering about a third of the sky, the new image contains 10 times as many objects as the Palomar Survey, or about half a billion. The higher resolution scan is a goldmine for astronomers and is expected to lead to discoveries "for decades to come"...

Quite intriguing!

this is fantastic! If built, such systems would behave in strange ways, says Achim Rosch, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cologne in Germany, who proposed the technique used by Schneider and his team3. For instance, Rosch and his colleagues have calculated that whereas clouds of atoms would normally be pulled downwards by gravity, if part of the cloud is at a negative absolute temperature, some atoms will move upwards, apparently defying gravity4. Another peculiarity of the sub-absolute-zero gas is that it mimics 'dark energy', the mysterious force that pushes the Universe to expand at an ever-faster rate against the inward pull of gravity. Schneider notes that the attractive atoms in the gas produced by the team also want to collapse inwards, but do not because the negative absolute temperature stabilises them. "It's interesting that this weird feature pops up in the Universe and also in the lab," he says. "This may be something that cosmologists should look at more closely."

coooool !

I think Lucas didn't know he would have such an impact in science with Star Wars...!

do you think it could be the dark side of The Force?

what else...?

just registered to this webseminar on open innovaiton .... could be fun ...

I'm afraid I take some issue with this rather glorious title. I've only skimmed this paper but looking at the experimental details, their 'imagined universes' comprise of a ball confined in a 2D space as well as a double pendulum. Work along this area is nothing new - it's known in the control community as Inverse Reinforcement Learning - learning dynamics of some system from demonstration trajectories. The paper title ('Toward an AI Physicist for Unsupervised Learning') is more moderate so yet again the issue is how AI is reported in the media...

an experiment at the University of Pennsylvania. It might be a bit far-fetched but I thought it might be useful when exploring new planets. Combined with AI the robot would able to assess the terrain and deploy another robot the shape of which would be chosen to best suit its environment. I was thinking of this in the context of exploring places on other planets which are inaccessible by regular rovers (e.g. caves on Mars).

In case you guys ever wandered how I "waste" my time...

Know his book but did not know his blog .... Tough I am sure Luis does :-)

No, actually I only know him from several documentaries. von Neumann probes, those I know quite well from sci-fi :). Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space is a good example btw. Here's a relevant link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine#NIAC_studies_on_self-replicating_systems

"The forecasts were the product of a series of "summer studies" led by NASA's Ames Research Centre and Stanford University, at which top academics, scientists, and engineers gathered to imagine how future space colonies could look. Artists gave life to the blueprints, producing a stunning series of images that look like a cross between CGI real-estate models (complete with would-be residents smugly sipping wine) and the fantastical worlds of Isaac Asimov."

"scientists at Harvard University say they've modified the CRISPR method so it can be used to effectively reverse mutations involving changes in one letter of the genetic code. That's important because two-thirds of genetic illness in humans involve mutations where there's a change in a single letter."

"Efficient introduction of specific homozygous and heterozygous mutations using CRISPR/Cas9" http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature17664.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20160428&spMailingID=51249830&spUserID=MTEzODM0NjYzMzgS1&spJobID=903461217&spReportId=OTAzNDYxMjE3S0 As posted here previously, the number and importance of CRISPR is growing steadily, but still plenty of work to make it a reliable tool. Maybe, next work for the Molecular Engineering RF?

A North Carolina State University researcher has developed a more efficient, less expensive way of cooling electronic devices - particularly devices that generate a lot of heat, such as lasers and power devices.

"... scientists at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands yesterday published their findings that they have indeed found the Majorana particle. The announcement on the university website provides both a summary of the ..." Also see: http://tudelft.nl/en/current/latest-news/article/detail/nanowetenschappers-vinden-langgezocht-majorana-deeltje/

The scale of Universe Interactive,

MIT researchers create robotic elephant trunk Regular readers might remember the robotic universal gripper that can pick up a wide variety of objects thanks to an elastic membrane filled with coffee grounds.