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Science

Submission + - Has the mythical unicorn of materials science finally been found? (nature.com)

Submitted by
gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: "For years, physicists have been on the hunt for a material so weird, it might as well be what unicorn horns are made of. Topological insulators are special types of material that conduct electricity, but only on their outermost surface. If they exist, and that's a real IF, then they would play host to all sorts of bizarre phenomenon: virtual particles that are their own anti-particles, strange quantum effects, dogs and cats living together, that sort of thing. Now three independent teams think they've finally found the stuff that the dreams of theoretical physicists are made of: samarium hexaboride."
Science

Submission + - Laser fusion put on a slow burn by US government (nature.com)

Submitted by
gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: "Those hoping to laser their way out of the energy crisis will have to wait a little longer. The US government has unveiled its new plan for laser fusion, and it's not going to happen anytime soon. It all comes down to problems at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world's most powerful laser at Lawrence Livermore Lab in California. For the past six years researchers at NIF have been trying to use the laser to spark a fusion reaction in a tiny pellet of hydrogen fuel. Like all fusion, it's tougher than it looks, and their campaign came up short. That left congress a little bit miffed, so they asked for a new plan. The new plan calls for a more methodical study of fusion, along with a broader approach to achieving it with the NIF. In three years or so, they should know whether the NIF will ever work."
Science

Submission + - James Cameron spills the details from his deep dive (nature.com)

Submitted by
gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: "James Cameron has released the first batch of scientific results from his historic dive in March to bottom of the Mariana trench and an earlier series of test dives in the New Britain Trench. The Mariana Trench dive was the deepest by a human since 1960. Some of the most interesting results came from trips to the seafloor made by robotic vehicles built by Cameron’s team. At the bottom of the trench, one of those robots found bizarre carpets of microbes coating rocks, that scientists say may have implications for the origins of life on Earth and other planets."
Science

Submission + - Graphite soaked in water may be a room-temperature superconductor (nature.com)

Submitted by
ananyo
ananyo writes: "Researchers in Germany have claimed a breakthrough: a material that can act as a superconductor — transmit electricity with zero resistance — at room temperature and above. Superconductors offer huge potential energy savings, but until now have worked only at temperatures of lower than about -110 degrees centigrade.
Now, Pablo Esquinazi and his colleagues at the University of Leipzig report that flakes of humble graphite soaked in water seem to continue superconducting at temperatures of greater than 100 degrees centigrade. Even Esquinazi admits that the claim “sounds like science fiction”, but the work has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Materials (abstract) and physicists say that the results, although tentative, merit further scrutiny."
News

Submission + - Slashdot Gets Acquired as Part of $20 Million Deal (geek.net) 1

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Dice Holdings (Owner of Job sites including Dice.com) reported this morning that it has acquired Geeknet's online media business, including Slashdot and SourceForge.

"We are very pleased to find a new home for our media business, providing a platform for the sites and our media teams to thrive," said Ken Langone, Chairman of Geeknet. "With this transaction completed, we will now focus our full attention on growing ThinkGeek."

Dice Holdings acquired the business for $20 million in cash. In 2011, the online media properties generated $20 million in Revenues.
Science

Submission + - Farmers worldwide felled by kidney disease (theworld.org) 1

Submitted by
gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: "Poor farmers from Nicaragua to Sri Lanka are being struck by a mysterious kidney disease. An investigation by PRI's the World and the Center for Public Integrity shows that thousands of farmers and farm workers are falling ill each month with the mysterious illness, known as Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown aetiology (CKDu). In Nicaragua and El Salvador, deaths from CKDu now surpass deaths from diabetes, HIV/AIDs, and leukemia combined. The cause may be pesticides, fertilizers, or both, but nobody is sure. Governments are staying quiet on the possible cause and the agricultural industry denies any responsibility."
NASA

Submission + - First word on results from GRAIL, NASA's Moon gravity mission (nature.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Nature has advance word on the first science results from GRAIL, NASA's twin probes launched a year ago which are mapping the gravity of the Moon from lunar orbit. This is coming out in advance of any official publication or NASA release, so the data isn't available, but the story trails what the PI Maria Zuber told a Harvard CFA colloquium (http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/events/colloquia/fall12/zuber.html ) last week are some of the team's key scientific findings: including that the Moon's crust is substantially thinner than once thought; and some of the more speculative impact basins haven't been confirmed.
Science

Submission + - Astronomers fix the Astronomical Unit (nature.com) 1

Submitted by
gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: "The Astronomical Unit (AU) is known to most as the distance between the Earth and the Sun. In fact, the official definition was a much more complex mathematical calculation involving angular measurements, hypothetical bodies, and the Sun's mass. That old definition created problems: due to general relativity, the length of the AU changed depending on an observer's position in the solar system. And the mass of the Sun changes over time, so the AU was changing as well. At the International Astronomical Union's latest meeting, astronomers unanimously voted on a new simplified definition: exactly 149,597,870,700 metres. Nobody need panic, the earth's distance from the sun remains just as it was, regardless of whether it's in AUs, meters, or smoots."
Mars

Submission + - Rover fuel came from Russian nuke factory (slate.com)

Submitted by gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: The Curiosity rover will soon start rolling, and when it does, it will be running on gas from a Russian weapon's plant. Slate has the story of how the plutonium-238 that powers the rover came from Mayak, a Sovit-era bomb factory. Mayak made the fuel through reprocessing, a chemical process used to make nuclear warheads that also polluted the surrounding environment. After the cold war ended, the Russians sold the spare pu-238 to NASA, which put some of it into Curiosity. Now, the Russian supply is running low and Nasa hopes to restart pu-238 production on US soil (They're planning on making less of a mess this time).
Science

Submission + - After 60 years, a room-temperature maser (nature.com)

Submitted by
gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: "Before there were lasers, there were masers: systems that amplified microwaves instead of light. Solid state masers are used in a variety of applications, including deep space communication, but they've never been as popular as lasers, in part because they have to be cooled to near absolute zero in order to work. Now a team of British physicists have built a room-temperature maser using some spare chemicals and a laser they bought off of E-Bay. The new device is 100 million times as powerful as existing masers and might revolutionize telecommunications."
Businesses

Submission + - Internet billionaire creates HUGE physics prize (nature.com)

Submitted by gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: Billionaire Internet entrepreneur Yuri Milner has spontaneously awarded $3 million prizes to nine prominent theoretical physicists. The new, Fundamental Physics Prize dwarfs awards like the Nobel, which this year is estimated to be worth some $1.2 million (and that's before it's split by up to three winners). It's so much money that some theorists fear it could distort the field. Milner says that his only purpose of the new prize was to promote the field, which he studied in the 1980s: "The intention was to say that science is as important as a shares rating on Wall Street," he told Nature .
Science

Submission + - The LHC has discovered a new particle. (nature.com)

Submitted by
gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: "Amid rumours of a discovery, Nature has what it claims is the inside track to this Wednesday's announcement of a Higgs discovery at CERN, home to the world's most powerful particle collider. Sources at both of CERN's main experiments say that physicists seen a new particle with the mass expected of a Higgs boson. The signals are between 4.5 and 5 sigma for each experiment (5 sigma gives them a 0.00006% chance of being wrong). But physicists are unlikely to declare the Higgs discovered just yet. First, they will likely want to get more data on the way that the new particle appears and decays inside the LHC."
Japan

Submission + - Little health risk seen from Fukushima's radioactivity (nature.com) 2

Submitted by
gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: "Two independent reports show that the public and most workers received only low doses of radiation following last year's meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Nature reports that the risks presented by the doses are small, even though some are above guidelines and limits set by the Japanese government. Few people will develop cancer as a result of the accident, and those that do may never be able to conclusively link their illness to the meltdowns. The greatest risk lies with the workers who struggled in the early days to bring the reactors under control. So far no ill-effects have been detected. At Chernobyl, by contrast, the highest exposed workers died quickly from radiation sickness."
Space

Submission + - Europe goes to Jupiter's moons (including Europa) (nature.com)

Submitted by
gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: "The European Space Agency has announced its intent to send a new probe to explore the moons of Jupiter. The Jupiter Icy moons Explorer (unfortunately acronymized to 'JUICE') is set to launch in 2022 and will study the subsurface oceans of Ganymede and Europa. Both moons might harbour conditions that could support life, though that remains to be seen. NASA was originally supposed to fly its own probe to Europe, but that project has been sidelined by budget cuts. NASA scientists may spring for an instrument on JUICE just to get a piece of the action."

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