Faster than Light

A BBC noticiou hoje que particulas subatómicas podem ter-se deslocado a uma velocidade superior à da velocidade da luz. Bem, para já não deite fora os livros de física. De facto, algo de estranho e sem precedentes está a acontecer no CERN, que poderá desfazer grande parte do Modelo Padrão, e não tem nada a ver com colisões de partículas no LHC ou com a partícula de Higgs. Ao realizar uma experiênica de rotina com neutrinos, entre Genebra (CERN HQ) e o laboratório de Gran Sasso, na Itália, a sensivelmente 732 quilómetros de distância, os cientistas descobriram que seus neutrinos parecem viajar mais rápido que a velocidade da luz.

Ler o resto da notícia em astroPT.

astroPT magazine Junho 2011

Já está disponível a revista astroPT do mês de Junho, para ler no issuu, yudu ou para download.

AstroPT magazine Maio 2011

http://astropt.org/blog/2011/06/01/magazine-maio-2011/ AstroPT Magazine Maio 2011

Mini Black Holes

Simulated view of a black hole in front of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The ratio between the black hole Schwarzschild radius and the observer distance to it is 1:9. Of note is the gravitational lensing effect known as an Einstein ring, which produces a set of two fairly bright and large but highly distorted images of the Cloud as compared to its actual angular size.

Mini black holes that look like atoms could pass through Earth daily
(PhysOrg.com) — In a new study, scientists have proposed that mini black holes may interact with matter very differently than previously thought. If the proposal is correct, it would mean that the time it would take for a mini black hole to swallow the Earth would be many orders of magnitude longer than the age of the Universe.

Full Article: PhysOrg.com
More information: A. P. VanDevender and J. Pace VanDevender. “Structure and Mass Absorption of Hypothetical Terrestrial Black Holes.” arXiv:1105.0265v1 [gr-qc]

Mars once had a ‘Dust Bowl’

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Dry ice lake suggests Mars once had a ‘Dust Bowl’ (Update)

A newly found, buried deposit of frozen carbon dioxide — dry ice — near the south pole of Mars contains about 30 times more carbon dioxide than previously estimated to be frozen near the pole. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Sapienza University of Rome/Southwest Research Institute

(PhysOrg.com) — NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has discovered the total amount of atmosphere on Mars changes dramatically as the tilt of the planet’s axis varies. This process can affect the stability of liquid water, if it exists on the Martian surface, and increase the frequency and severity of Martian dust storms. Read more at www.physorg.com

 

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New record for the Large Hadron Collider

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Large Hadron Collider sets world record beam intensity

A person stands in front of the huge ATLAS detector, one of six detectors that are part of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. (Credit: Maximilien Brice, CERN)

(PhysOrg.com) — Around midnight this night CERN’s Large Hadron Collider set a new world record for beam intensity at a hadron collider when it collided beams with a luminosity of 4.67 x 1032cm-2s-1. This exceeds the previous world record of 4.024 x 1032cm-2s-1, which was set by the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s Tevatron collider in 2010, and marks an important milestone in LHC commissioning. Read more at www.physorg.com

 

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Beryllium in primordial Big Bang

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Primordial beryllium could reveal insights into the Big Bang

(PhysOrg.com) — Some chemical elements appear much more abundantly in nature than others, which is partly due to how the elements originally formed. Scientists know that the light elements (hydrogen, deuterium, helium, and traces of lithium) were produced by fusion in the early Universe. Today, lithium, beryllium, and boron are constantly being produced in cosmic rays, while the heavier elements (up to iron) are formed by fusion in stars. Elements heavier than iron are formed by supernovae. Read more at www.physorg.com

 

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Earth Day 2011

Today we celebrate the Earth.

There’s many ways to care and protect the Earth. You can find it in http://www.earthday.org/

Choose the way you can act, it’s easy actions that we can do everyday. Also, this official webpage has a section for kids and schools.

I found also this cool website http://earthday2011.com/tag/earth-day-2011-date. Here you can find Earth Day trivia, Q&A, merchandising.

So, have a nice Earth Day. Everyday.

Mystery signal at Fermilab hints at ‘technicolour’ force – physics-math – 07 April 2011 – New Scientist

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The physics world is buzzing with news of an unexpected sighting at Fermilab’s Tevatron collider in Illinois – a glimpse of an unidentified particle that, should it prove to be real, will radically alter physicists’ prevailing ideas about how nature works and how particles get their mass.

The candidate particle may not belong to the standard model of particle physics, physicists’ best theory for how particles and forces interact. Instead, some say it might be the first hint of a new force of nature, called technicolour, which would resolve some problems with the standard model but would leave others unanswered.

The observation was made by Fermilab’s CDF experiment, which smashes together protons and antiprotons 2 million times every second. The data, collected over a span of eight years, looks at collisions that produce a W boson, the carrier of the weak nuclear force, and a pair of jets of subatomic particles called quarks.

Physicists predicted that the number of these events – producing a W boson and a pair of jets – would fall off as the mass of the jet pair increased. But the CDF data showed something strange (see graph): a bump in the number of events when the mass of the jet pair was about 145 GeV.

via newscientist.com

O SOL em STeReO

 

A NASA colocou 2 sondas (STeReO – Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) em posições opostas para estudar o Sol, onde serão tiradas fotografias, em tempo real, dos dois hemisférios do Sol.
Assim, saberemos o que se passa em toda a superfície do Sol e em simultâneo.

font NASA

English version