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Submission + - SPAM: NASA spacecraft crash into the moon 3

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: NASA' Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellites (LCROSS) took dead aim and crashed into the moon at about 5,600mph at around 7:31 am ESD. Watching the results on NASA TV, scientists were pleased with the impact of the two satellites.

The impact of the $80 million LCROSS satellites into the moon was to create what the space agency hopes is an ice-filled a debris plume that can be analyzed for water content.
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Science

Submission + - Yale Physicists Measure 'Persistent Current' (yale.edu)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Current processors rely on wires mere nanometers wide and Yale physicists have successfully measured a theoretical 'persistent current' that flows through them when they are formed into rings. They also predict that this will help us understand how electrons behave in metals — more specifically the quantum mechanical effect that influences how these electrons move through metals. Hopefully this work will shed new light on what dangers (or uses) quantum effects could have on classical processors as the inner workings shrink in size. The breakthrough was rethinking how to measure this theoretical effect as they previously relied on superconducting quantum interference devices to measure the magnetic field such a current would create — complicated devices that gave incorrect and inconsistent measurements. Instead, they turned to nothing but mechanical devices known as cantilevers ('little floppy diving boards with the nanometer rings sitting on top') that yielded them a shocking full magnitude of precision in their measurements."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Design starting for Matter-Antimatter Collider

Submitted by couch_warrior
couch_warrior writes: The Register is carrying a story on the early design efforts for the next generation of high energy particle accelerators. They will be linear, and will collide matter and antimatter in the form of electrons and positrons. The obvious question for /. enthusiasts will be: Once we have a matter-antimatter reactor, how long till we have warp drive, and will the Vulcans show up for a sneak-peak? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/06/antimatter_atomsmashers_will_blow_up/
Space

Submission + - Universe Has An Order of Magnitude More Entropy (sciencenews.org)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Previous estimates are now thought to skimp on the entropy of the observable universe. Modeling supermassive black holes, researchers claim that they are the largest contributor of entropy. Since they contribute at least an order of magnitude more than previously thought, the total of all the observable universe is correspondingly higher. The paper (in gruesome detail) highlights new issues that arise with these new calculations — like estimating us a little bit closer to heat death (moving entropy totals from 10^102 to 10^104 out of a maximum of 10^122)."
Science

Submission + - New Graphical Representation of the Periodic Table (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: The great power of Mendeleev's periodic table was that it allowed him to predict the properties of undiscovered elements. But can this arrangement be improved? Two new representations of the periodic table attempt to do just that. The first uses a new graphical representation that shows the relative sizes of atoms as well as their groups and periods. The other uses the same kind of group theoretical approach that particle physicists developed to classify particles by their symmetries (abstract). That helped particle physicists predict the existence of new particles but may have limited utility for chemists who seem to have discovered (or predicted) all the elements they need already.

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