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Thread: PHYSICS in the News

  1. #1
    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    PHYSICS in the News

    A thread for advances in the world of Physics.
    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
    progress. -- Joseph Joubert
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    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    Moscovium?!? Think I might petition for a name change to Serpovium or Lazarovium
    Looks like Bob's element 115 has finally been added to the Table of Elements.


    Hello, Nihonium. Scientists Name 4 New Elements On The Periodic Table
    By Richard Gonzales

    It's time to update your copy of the periodic table. Four new elements discovered in recent years have now been named, pending final approval by the international group of scientists in charge of the table.

    The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has announced these proposed names:

    Nihonium and symbol Nh, for the element 113
    Moscovium and symbol Mc, for the element 115
    Tennessine and symbol Ts, for the element 117
    Oganesson and symbol Og, for the element 118

    The new superheavy, radioactive elements were actually added to the periodic table late last year and given these temporary and unremarkable names: ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium and ununoctoium. Story Continues
    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
    progress. -- Joseph Joubert
    Attachment 1008

  3. #3
    Good tread calli!

    My eye is turned toward Cern these days. LOL, hard to imagine what a new fundamental force would do to physics. Pretty much turn on it's ear me thinks.

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    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    LIGO, for a second time, detects Gravity waves. Been a lot of years since I took Physics 101 back at university. I recall the theory of the Graviton (theoretical particle that Gravity waves are made of) presented in a thought experiment that went something like: "If the sun were to instantly disappear from the solar system, would the earth immediately fly away out of orbit? Or would it continue in orbit for the additional 8+ minutes (assuming the waves travel at or near the speed of light) it would take for gravitational wave 'ripples' to cease holding earth in place?".


    For second time, LIGO detects gravitational waves
    by Jennifer Chu

    For the second time, scientists have directly detected gravitational waves — ripples through the fabric of space-time, created by extreme, cataclysmic events in the distant universe. The team has determined that the incredibly faint ripple that eventually reached Earth was produced by two black holes colliding at half the speed of light, 1.4 billion light years away.

    The scientists detected the gravitational waves using the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) interferometers, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington. On Dec. 26, 2015, at 3:38 UTC, both detectors, situated more than 3,000 kilometers apart, picked up a very faint signal amid the surrounding noise.
    While LIGO’s first detection, reported on Feb. 11, produced a clear peak, or “chirp,” in the data, this second signal was far subtler, generating a shallower waveform — essentially a faint squeak — that was almost buried in the data. Using advanced data analysis techniques, the team determined that indeed, the waveform signaled a gravitational wave.

    The researchers calculated that the gravitational wave arose from the collision of two black holes...
    Story continues
    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
    progress. -- Joseph Joubert
    Attachment 1008

  5. #5
    the last few years in physics have been amazing amazing!

    Hope you don't mind me throwing this in. I really like Brian Greene. Nova did a pretty good job of visualizing his book "The Elegant Universe."


  6. #6
    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by whoknows View Post
    the last few years in physics have been amazing amazing!

    Hope you don't mind me throwing this in. I really like Brian Greene. Nova did a pretty good job of visualizing his book "The Elegant Universe."

    Greene is a good man. Did a lot to raise public awareness of physics for the common man.

    Back in the day, I had to complete Calculus before tackling college level physics courses, or risk getting lost.
    Greene raised concepts above mathematical proofs to involve those who otherwise might have been ill prepared to explore modern theories.
    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
    progress. -- Joseph Joubert
    Attachment 1008

  7. #7
    The universe just keeps yielding up its secrets.

    By machine, by calculation, through "revelation"... the Gordion Knot is slowly being untangled.

    http://www.sciencealert.com/physicis...les-in-the-lhc

    Physicists working with the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment (LHCb) have discovered what appears to be an entire family of new particles that our current physics models can’t explain.

    The existence of these new forms of matter, known as tetraquarks, challenges our current understanding of the role they play inside the protons and neutrons that make up atoms - the fundamental building blocks of everything we know and love in the Universe.

  8. #8
    http://www.rdmag.com/news/2016/07/ph...ollider-excess



    In December of last year, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe announced startling results hinting at the existence of an undiscovered subatomic particle—one with a mass six times heavier than the Higgs boson, the particle that made headlines in 2012.

    The evidence is still thin, but if more data confirm the finding, it could sharpen humankind's understanding of the building blocks of the universe.

    "This was a very surprising announcement and a puzzle at the same time, because the lifetime and mass of the particle could reveal something else beyond simply one extra particle, if it turns out to be a real signal," said Kyoungchul "K.C." Kong, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas. "Yet we do not claim this as a discovery, and we need more data."

    Based on the LHC findings, theoretical physicists around the world rushed to offer ideas that could explain the mystery signal and guide further experimentation. Physical Review Letters, the leading peer-reviewed journal in the field, received hundreds of papers purporting to illuminate the LHC results.

    "We explore ideas," Kong said of theoretical particle physicists. "Probably most of ideas are wrong—but we learn from them, and we propose better ideas."

    Of the mountain of papers tendered to Physical Review Letters about the LHC findings, the journal chose to publish only four—including one co-authored by Kong, who had the original idea behind the submission.

    The KU physicist said the enigmatic signal, detected at 750 giga-electron volts, or GeV, suggests "the first hint for new particles beyond the Standard Model." (The Standard Model of particle physics is a longstanding theory used to explain the forces and subatomic particles working in atoms that constitute all known matter in the universe.)

    He said, "Every explanation of the 750 GeV excess needs a new particle. Most models assume one around 750 GeV."

    But Kong's idea is different than most. Rather than basing his theory on the existence of a "resonance" particle with a straightforwardly corresponding mass to trigger the 750 GeV signal, Kong's paper proposes a sequence of particles at different masses, without one at 750 GeV.

    "I was participating in a workshop in Korea, back in December 2015, when there was an announcement on this excess," Kong said. "Everyone was considering a resonance particle, which would have been my first choice. I wanted to interpret this differently and talked to some friends in the workshop, and proposed non-resonance interpretation."

    The KU physicist said his concept depends upon a "sequential cascade decay" of a heavier particle into photons that can "fake the resonance signal" at 750 GeV.

    Whether he is proven correct remains to be seen, but the promotion of his bold idea in the respected journal is extraordinary to colleagues at KU.

    "Fundamental physics discoveries often take years, decades (see under Higgs) or even centuries (see under gravitational waves) to be confirmed," said Hume Feldman, professor and chair of the KU Department of Physics and Astronomy. "However, it is certainly a great honor for KU to have our research published in such a high-impact venue and chosen out of literally hundreds of entries from all over the world and from the most prestigious institutes in the world."

    Another paper that proposes a different mechanism to explain the observation was written by KU Foundation Professor Christophe Royon and subsequently accepted by PRL. Assistant Professor Ian Lewis also has written a paper on the subject.

    "The fact that independent KU papers were accepted by PRL out of the hundreds submitted is another testament to the high-quality research done at the Department of Physics and Astronomy," Feldman said.

    Kong's co-authors were Won Sang Cho, Myeonghun Park and Sung Hak Lim of the Institute for Basic Science in Korea; Doojin Kim and Konstantin T. Matchev of the University of Florida; and Jong-Chul Park of Korea's Chungnam National University.

    Currently, Kong is attending a workshop at CERN, the European nuclear agency that operates the LHC. There, his work on the puzzling results will continue.

    "Theorists propose ideas, and experimentalists perform experiments to test the ideas, then publish their results—and we try to understand," he said.

    Other KU faculty working at the LHC include KU's Distinguished Professor Alice Bean and professors Graham Wilson and Philip Baringer, as well as students and postdoctoral researchers.

    An update on the 750 GeV excess will be presented at a conference in Chicago next week, Aug. 3-10.

  9. #9
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    Looking like that "new family of particles" was just a statistical anomaly. ~

    Particle no-show at LHC prompts anxiety
    By Adrian Cho

    When physicists working with the world's largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), announced last week that much ballyhooed hints of an exotic new particle turned out to be mere statistical fluctuations in the data, many shrugged off the disappointment. Spurious spikes in the data inevitably show up, physicists say, and it's too soon to give up hope for something new and exciting from the LHC, the 27-kilometer-long collider at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. Yet beneath that equanimity runs a deeper current of anxiety. The LHC, which started taking data in 2010 but reached high energies only last year, is generating data at an accelerating pace. But since revealing the previously predicted Higgs boson in 2012, the LHC has failed to unearth a single new particle, and a lack of surprises in the first big batch of high energy data has some physicists concerned. Story Continues
    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
    progress. -- Joseph Joubert
    Attachment 1008

  10. #10
    smashing atoms and particles is an intuitive act of human being

    an outgrowth of the toddler tendency to break things

    if you really want your scientist to do creative things give him or her a piece of paper

    and crayons

    to draw the planet of their dreams

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