oblivioncontinuum:

Superconductors.

The basic concept of a superconductor is that it is capable of sustaining an electrical current without resistance. Resistance in a circuit is what causes a loss of energy, so superconductors are the closest thing we have to perpetual motion. However, they only work at near absolute zero, or more specifically, anything colder than 91 Kelvin.

When a superconductor is cooled to these temperatures, any interaction with a magnet causes a repulsion, this effect is called the Meissner Effect. The induced field in the superconductor opposes the applied field of the magnet, therefore repelling each other. So if the two repel, how is it possible to achieve any levitation? When the magnet is moved closer the flux trapping effect is engaged and the superconductor not only repels the magnet, but attracts it as well. The magnetic flux lines from the magnet are trapped inside the superconductor causing the magnet to be held at a fixed position. This is only possible if there are imperfections in the crystalline structure of the superconductor.

Of course, the opposite effect of levitation also occurs. When the magnet is picked up, the superconductor remains in magnetic suspension, and hovers below the magnet. Another phenomena is that the levitated magnet will freely move at a fixed distance over the superconductor without friction, so the applications would benefit transport, which means we can all have hover cars now.

(via 14-billion-years-later)

unknownskywalker:

Light coaxed from nothingness

One of the weirdest predictions of quantum mechanics is that the vacuum of space isn’t really empty. Because of the uncertainty principle, quantum theory predicts that a constant foam of “virtual particles” is flitting in and out of existence inside the void. Even weirder, these virtual particles can have real effects.

A new study demonstrates just such an effect: if you jiggle a mirror very close to the speed of light, you can turn pairs of virtual light particles into real ones. Rather than trying to vibrate a real mirror at near light speed, the team tweaked a superconducting circuit to create a wiggling, mirror-like electrical surface.

cwnl:

Hubble Spots Disk Around Distant Black Hole

Using the Hubble space telescope, astronomers have captured a direct image of the disk surrounding a black hole.

The disk is made of gas and dust, slowly being consumed as it spirals down into the black hole’s center. As it falls in, the material spews out a tremendous amount of energy, forming what is known as a quasi-stellar radio source, or quasar.

Among the brightest objects in the sky, quasars are short-lived phenomena that only existed during the earliest eras of the universe. They are known to be huge — most are around 60 billion miles across — yet they lie billions of light years from Earth, making them nothing but insignificant pinpricks in even the most powerful telescopes.

Hubble was able to image the distant disk, which is approximately 18.5 billion light-years away, because a huge galaxy happens to sit between Earth and the quasar. The mass of the enormous galaxy bent light from the quasar and directed it toward our telescopes, acting like a gigantic gravitational lens.

The technique allowed the Hubble telescope to see with unprecedented detail. Because of this, researchers were able to measure the disk’s size — between 60 and 180 billion miles across — and determine the temperature of different parts of the disk. They found that gas and dust from the imaged quasar became bluer and therefore hotter as it fell toward the central black hole.

Image: NASA, ESA, J.A. Muñoz (University of Valencia)

See Also:

Supermassive Black Hole Sucks In Hot Gas

Black Hole Holds Universe’s Biggest Water Supply

Astronomers Weigh Heaviest Black Hole Yet

Galactic Supervolcano Erupts From Black Hole

Scientists Make Desktop Black Hole

(via ikenbot)

cwnl:

Life May Exist Within A Super Massive Black Hole

Despite being considered the most destructive force in space and absolutely uninhabitable, the conditions for life exist inside supermassive black holes, a Russian cosmologist has theorised.

Going out on a scientific limb somewhat, Vyacheslav Dokuchaev has even suggested that if life did exist inside the SBH, it would have evolved to become the most advanced civilisation in the galaxy. Supermassive black holes are such powerful gravitational forces that they suck in everything around them, including light, and nothing that crosses the black hole’s ‘event horizon’ is ever seen again.

But now Dokuchaev, of Moscow’s Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, says existing evidence combined with new research throws up intriguing possibilities for certain types of black holes. Inside a charged, rotating black hole there are regions where photons can survive in stable periodic orbits. Dokuchaev specialises in studying those orbits and their dynamics.

He speculates, in a paper published in Cornell University’s online journal arXiv, that if there are stable orbits for photons, there is no reason why there could not be stable orbits for larger objects, such as planets. The problem is that these stable orbits would only exist once you have crossed the threshold of the event horizon, where time and space flow into one another. The event horizon, at the lip of the black hole, is known as the point of no return. However, beyond the event horizon is another domain, known as the Cauchy horizon, where time and space return to stable states.

It is inside the Cauchy horizon that life could exist, Dokuchaev argues in a paper published in Cornell University’s online journal arXiv, However, the type of life that could exist in those conditions - where they would be subject to massive fluctuating tidal forces - would have evolved beyond ours. The life that could exist there would likely be a civilisation ranked as Type III on the Kardashev Scale. There are three levels to the scale with one being the lowest and three the highest. Humanity is still looking to attain Level 1 status; mastery of its own planet.

‘Interiors of the supermassive black holes may be inhabited by advanced civilisations… invisible from the outside,’ he says. Though that is a spine-tingling thought, Dokuchaev’s proposition can only ever remain theoretical. Because nothing can ever escape from a black hole due to its enormous gravitational pull, we will never know if it is true.

(via ikenbot)

cwnl:

Scientists Plan $1.5bn Laser Strong Enough ‘To Tear The Fabric of Space’

No, this isn’t the headline to the next Scifi hit movie

A laser powerful enough to tear apart the fabric of space could be built in Britain. The major scientific project will follow in the footsteps of the Large Hadron Collider and will answer questions about the universe.

The laser will be capable of producing a beam of light so intense that it will be similar to the light the earth receives from the sun but focused on a speck smaller than a pin prick.

Scientists say it will be so powerful they will be able to boil the very fabric of space and create a vacuum. A vacuum fizzles with mysterious particles that come in and out of existence but the phenomenon happens so fast that no-one has ever actually been able to prove it.

It is hoped the Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility would allow scientists to prove the particles are real by pulling the vacuum fabric apart. Scientists even believe it might help them to prove whether other dimensions actually exist.

How Will It Work

The ultra-high field laswer will be made up of 10 beams - each more powerful than the prototype lasers. It will produce 200 petawatts of power - more than 100,000 times the power of the world’s combined electricity production but in less than a trillionth a second.

The energy needed to power the laser will be stored up beforehand and then used to produce a beams several feet wide which will then be combined and eventually focused down onto a tiny spot. The intensity of the beam is so powerful and will produce such extreme conditions, that do not even exist in the centre of the sun.

Can someone verify or debunk this? Sounds quite unreasonable or my mind is really not that open.

(via ikenbot)

sciencecenter:

Satellite Finds Evidence of Antimatter Belt Around Earth

Data from the cosmic ray satellite PAMELA has added substantial weight to the theory that the Earth is encircled by a thin band of antimatter.

The satellite, named Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, was launched in 2006 to study the nature of cosmic rays — high-energy particles from the Sun and beyond the solar system which barrel into Earth.

When those cosmic rays smash into molecules in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, a shower of smaller particles is created. Physicists have assumed that a small number of those resulting particles will be anti-protons.

Most of those will be instantly annihilated when they collide with particles of ordinary matter. But those which don’t collide should get trapped in the Earth’s torus-shaped Van Allen radiation belt, and form a layer of antimatter in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Amazing.

(via itsfullofstars)

titusandtheraindrops:

spacetimecontinumm:

Seriously jaw-dropping picture of the Sun

Amazing. I can’t believe this was taken from Earth.

A few questions for the physicists in the tumblr community. I actually spend time pondering these things…

1. Is it possible that the dark matter and dark energy are actually right in front of our noses but are obscured from detection by some sort of exotic black hole? They would have to be quite common to account for the missing matter/energy. Perhaps this is what interstellar space consists of rather than “nothing”? Where we see nothingness might actually be stuff obscured from view? They should be detectable by their gravitational influence, like lensing, but those effects might be quite subtle if the objects themselves are relatively small. Has anyone ever looked? 

2. Does anyone know the variability of the sun? Can it be demonstrated from the geological record on Earth or the other planets or from the observations of other sun-class stars? Can we tell whether a farily substantial variability in solar radiation causes the earth to periodically freeze?

3. Is it possible that there are massive objects in the path of the solar system through the galaxy, and/or perhaps the galaxy through the cosmos, that impacts the solar system? Is it possible that massive objects periodically change the position of the planets or bring new material into the solar system and/or eject objects out of it? Or that they perhaps influence the orbits of the planets, cause changes in rotational axes, etc.? How do we know, for example, that Mercury has always had its current orbital position? How do we know that the other planets have always had the same orbits? What caused Uranus to spin the way it does, with it’s poles in the positions of the other planet’s equators?

You never experience the world as it is. You only experience it in the way light brings it to you.

And light can be taught to lie.

Last week researchers at Cornell University announced they had created a time cloaking device. Using their machine they could hide an event from detection, even if it occurred in plain view of very capable detectors.

This “time cloaking” experiment comes on the heels of a series of results over the last few years of “space cloaking” technologies in which a stationary object could be made invisible to detectors.

Both experiments rely on the complex realization of a simple truth about our experience of the world. We have no “direct” knowledge of the world-in-of-itself but, instead, are forced to rely on signals carried to us from external objects. If the properties of the signals are somehow changed while they are traveling to us then our experience of the world is changed as well.

Read More