Physics

"In June 1948, the Physical Review published a description of a novel electronic device that "may be employed as an amplifier, oscillator, and for other purposes for which vacuum tubes are ordinarily used." That statement hardly begins to capture the importance of the transistor, which made possible technology unimaginable at the time. But the first transistor design never saw commercial success." - Imabug via Bookmarklet

"How else could a future quantum engineer build a quantum computer if they can't tell which circuits they have?" - Benjamin Tseng via Bookmarklet

"The device created by University of Miami Physicist Stewart E. Barnes, of the College of Arts and Sciences and his collaborators can store energy in magnets rather than through chemical reactions. Like a winding up toy car, the spin battery is "wound up" by applying a large magnetic field --no chemistry involved. The device is potentially better than anything found so far, said Barnes." - Imabug via Bookmarklet

"Bad news I'm afraid -- it looks as if faster-than-light travel isn't possible after all. That's the conclusion of a new study into how warp drives would behave when quantum mechanics is taken into account. "Warp drives would become rapidly unstable once superluminal speeds are reached," say Stefano Finazzi at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, and a couple of friends." - Imabug via Bookmarklet

"Scientists knew from previous measurements that the Higgs boson must weigh between 114 and 185 GeV/c2–the units that scientists use to measure the mass of particles. The new Fermilab result carves out a section in the middle of this range: the Higgs boson cannot have a mass in between 160 and 170 GeV/c2–if it exists at all." - Imabug via Bookmarklet

"The glass is neither half full nor half empty, it is a superposition of a states that is half full and half empty. If you randomly measured the liquid in the glass, half the time you will find that the glass is half full and other half of the time you will find that the glass is half empty" - Imabug via Bookmarklet

Not sure how many optics experimentalists in this room, but you may find this resource from a student in our lab very useful - Steve Koch

"The researchers encoded the letters "S" and "U" (as in Stanford University) within the interference patterns formed by quantum electron waves on the surface of a sliver of copper. The wave patterns even project a tiny hologram of the data, which can be viewed with a powerful microscope" - Imabug via Bookmarklet

Most importantly: this riddle can be solved without any equations. - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie) via Bookmarklet

"Plutonium-239 found inside a broken, rusty safe has been shown to be of historic significance: dating from December 1944 it is the very first weapons-grade plutonium refined at the site, or anywhere in the world. The find was made at the Hanford Site, Washington State, which supplied the US nuclear weapon program from its beginnings until the 1980s." - Imabug via Bookmarklet

"Using a combination of theory, simulation, and experiment, they studied the collapse of the air cavity trailing the submerged object, concluding that it ejects water like toothpaste squeezed rapidly from its tube." - Imabug via Bookmarklet

Steven Chu's inspirational vision for the DOE's mission - Joerg Heber

"A coral reef looks a bit blurry to a scuba diver, in part because of light bouncing off of the water's continual density fluctuations, which come from random motions of the warm water molecules. But some of the blurring comes from a constant quantum jiggling of molecules that occurs even close to absolute zero temperature. This so-called zero point motion--which is connected with the uncertainty principle--was thought to be too small to be noticed. But a new calculation, described in the 23 January Physical Review Letters, shows that it could account for several percent of the light scattering in cold liquids, making it detectable with current technology." - Imabug via Bookmarklet

seriously? wow! That's it, I'm going back to physics! - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

the only abstract you'll ever really need for the rest of your career - Imabug via Bookmarklet

"Using liquid hydrogen and oxygen in rockets will provide major advantages for landing astronauts on the moon. Hydrogen is very light but enables about 40 percent greater performance (force on the rocket per pound of propellant) than other rocket fuels. Therefore, NASA can use this weight savings to bring a bigger spacecraft with a greater payload to the moon than with the same amount of conventional propellants. CECE is a step forward in NASA's efforts to develop reliable, robust technologies to return to the moon – and a winter wonder." - Imabug via Bookmarklet

Do I have any idea what Hawking just said? Not really (does anyone ever?) But it's a very interesting read, and a very interesting idea: "in the first instants of the Big Bang, there existed a superposition of ever more different versions of the Universe, instead of a unique history. And most crucially, Hertog says that "our current Universe has features frozen in from this early quantum mixture"." - Benjamin Tseng via Bookmarklet

"Two new videos reveal the dynamic nature of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A — the remains of a star believed to have exploded 330 years ago." - Imabug via Bookmarklet

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo... - Imabug

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo... - Imabug

Opera singer with a physics degree - Imabug via Bookmarklet

"Reid and his collaborators determined that the Milky Way spins at about 254 kilometers/second, about 15 percent faster than previously calculated. Applying Newton’s law of gravity to the faster spin speed, the team finds that the Milky Way is about 50 percent heavier than calculated, bringing it up to par with Andromeda." - Imabug via Bookmarklet

An essay published in PRL. - Joerg Heber

"TOP TEN PHYSICS STORIES OF THE YEAR Former presidential science advisor Vannevar Bush referred to science as an endless frontier of new discoveries. So what were the big physics findings for 2008? The following list was chosen by editors and science writers at the American Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society. It winnows a wealth of discoveries into the following ten topic areas, which are listed in no particular order." - Imabug via Bookmarklet

30F is a ginormous amount of capacitance - Imabug via Bookmarklet

each capacitor in the alleged unit has a capacitance of just under 1 mF, which is still pretty large for a single capacitor - Imabug

"Carroll, along with Caltech professor Marc Kamionkowski and graduate student Adrienne Erickcek have created a mathematical model to explain an anomaly in the early universe, and it also may shed light on what existed before the Big Bang." - Imabug via Bookmarklet

"The new model predicts more cold than hot spots in the CMB, Kamionkowski says. Erickcek adds that this prediction will be tested by the Planck satellite, an international mission led by the European Space Agency with significant contributions from NASA, scheduled to launch in April 2009." - Imabug

"Today, they say they’ve built the high quality graphene transistors and clocked them running at 26 GHz." - Imabug via Bookmarklet

"To get ready for space, the 18 mirror segments that will ultimately form the Webb telescope’s huge primary mirror are trucked from pit stop to pit stop in tandem cross-country for careful processing and polishing. They visit seven different states, some several times." - Imabug via Bookmarklet