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Category: physics – Page 111

Previously, astronomers had only detected three short-period ultracool dwarf binary systems. They were relatively young-up to 40 million years old. In a recent study, astrophysicists at Northwestern University and the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) have discovered an extreme system: the tightest ultracool dwarf binary system ever observed.

This newly discovered system is known as LP 413-53AB. It consists of a pair of ultracool dwarfs. The system is estimated to be billions of years old. Surprisingly, its orbital period is at least three times shorter than all ultracool dwarf binaries discovered so far.

The proximity between the two stars is like this: they take less than one Earth day to revolve around each other. Each star’s “year” lasts just 17 hours.

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In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast we meet three scientists who are trying to answer a question that humanity has long pondered: does intelligent life exist elsewhere in the universe?

Peter Ma and Leandro Rizk of the University of Toronto and Cherry Ng of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Orleans are part of a team that has used machine learning to identify eight potential “technosignatures” in data from the Robert C Byrd Green Bank Telescope. The trio explain how they look for signs of intelligent life in radio-telescope data and how machine learning gives a helping hand.

Ng also talks about her research on how signals from pulsars could be used to detect gravitational waves.

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The renowned physicist and science communicator, Brian Cox delves into the topic of alien life and in particular, the question about intelligent alien civilization.
With his trademark enthusiasm and engaging style, Brian Cox explores the possibility of extraterrestrial life and why we haven’t found any.

The video starts with a brief overview of what Brian Cox & astronomers call: “The Great Silence”. Cox then goes on to explain the Fermi Paradox and the Dark Forest Hypothesis, which suggest that intelligent life may be intentionally avoiding contact with other civilizations to avoid being destroyed.

Cox uses his expertise in physics and astronomy to explain how alien life may be closer than we think. Like on the surface of the red planet, Mars. He discusses the potential for life to exist in other planets because there are at least 20 billion other earth like planets in our galaxy alone.

Throughout the video, Cox provides easy-to-understand explanations, making complex scientific concepts accessible to a broad audience.

Continue reading “Brian Cox — Alien Life & The Dark Forest Hypothesis” | >

In the first episode of the new season of “Star Trek: Picard,” Raffi (Michelle Hurd), while working for a mysterious, faceless contact within Starfleet, is attempting to locate dangerous stolen technology that can be used as a massively destructive weapon. Raffi catches wind of where the weapon will be used but arrives moments too late to stop it. She watches in horror as the Starfleet recruitment building — the entire massive structure — is sucked into a mysterious portal that is instantaneously formed below it. An exit portal then appears about a mile up and a few miles over, and the building crashes to the ground, crushing its own next-door neighbors.

The practical implications for portal technology will, of course, be immediately evident to anyone who has ever played the 2007 video game “Portal.” That game was predicated on making magical doorways through which the player would pass in order to surmount increasingly complex physics and maze puzzles. If one could form an entrance portal in front of them, and then an exit portal on a platform above, one could easily traverse the world.

Generally speaking, the relationship “Star Trek” has with technology is very positive. Starships allow people to travel the cosmos, replicators have essentially ended hunger, and transporters allow people to visit alien worlds. But often, when new technologies are introduced into “Star Trek,” ethical concerns are immediately raised. What, for instance, is a building-size portal-maker really for besides transporting entire buildings a mile into the air and then dropping them? Characters speak often about how certain machines could handily be weaponized.

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In work that could lead to important new physics with potentially heady applications in computer science and more, MIT scientists have shown that two previously separate fields in condensed matter physics can be combined to yield new, exotic phenomena.

The work is theoretical, but the researchers are excited about collaborating with experimentalists to realize the predicted phenomena. The team includes the conditions necessary to achieve that ultimate goal in a paper published in the February 24 issue of Science Advances.

“This work started out as a theoretical speculation, and ended better than we could have hoped,” says Liang Fu, a professor in MIT’s Department of Physics and leader of the work. Fu is also affiliated with the Materials Research Laboratory. His colleagues are Nisarga Paul, a physics graduate student, and Yang Zhang, a postdoctoral associate who is now a professor at the University of Tennessee.

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Physicist Ronald Mallett believes that a spinning laser loop can bend time, leading to time travel. He even has a prototype to test the idea.

Ronald Mallett is on a mission to develop a real-life working time machine.

But it will be hard because, according to what we know about physics now, time travel is impossible, even though it is often shown in science fiction.

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Inspired by the Renaissance vision of Leonardo da Vinci, NASA

Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. Its vision is “To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity.” Its core values are “safety, integrity, teamwork, excellence, and inclusion.” NASA conducts research, develops technology and launches missions to explore and study Earth, the solar system, and the universe beyond. It also works to advance the state of knowledge in a wide range of scientific fields, including Earth and space science, planetary science, astrophysics, and heliophysics, and it collaborates with private companies and international partners to achieve its goals.

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An innovative nuclear fusion technology that uses no radioactive materials and is calculated capable of “powering the planet for more than 100,000 years”, has been successfully piloted by a US-Japanese team of researchers.

California-based TAE Technologies, working with Japan’s National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS), have completed first tests of a hydrogen-boron fuel cycle in magnetically-confined plasma, which could generate cleaner, lower cost energy that that produced by the more common deuterium-tritium (D-T) fusion process.

“This experiment offers us a wealth of data to work with and shows that hydrogen-boron has a place in utility-scale fusion power. We know we can solve the physics challenge at hand and deliver a transformational new form of carbon-free energy to the world that relies on this non-radioactive, abundant fuel,” said Michl Binderbauer, CEO of TAE Technologies.

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Tiny insects known as sharpshooters excrete by catapulting urine drops at incredible accelerations. Their excretion is the first example of superpropulsion discovered in a biological system.

Saad Bhamla was in his backyard when he noticed something he had never seen before: an insect urinating. Although nearly impossible to see, the insect formed an almost perfectly round droplet on its tail and then launched it away so quickly that it seemed to disappear. The tiny insect relieved itself repeatedly for hours.

It’s generally taken for granted that what goes in must come out, so when it comes to fluid dynamics in animals, the research is largely focused on feeding rather than excretion. But Bhamla, an assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), had a hunch that what he saw wasn’t trivial.

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The two stars take about 20.5 hours to revolve around each other.

Astrophysicists of the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) and Northwestern University have discovered the most compact ultracool dwarf binary system known to date using W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii Island.

Named LP 413-53AB, this newly discovered system comprises two ultracool dwarfs, the category of stars which are extremely low in mass and emit light mainly in the infrared because of their low temperature.

NASA/JPL Caltech image.

Continue reading “Astrophysicists discover the most unusual ultracool dwarf binary system” | >