Physics and Numbers
Plasma astrophysicists have found that key information about the Sun’s 'storm season’ is being broadcast across the solar system in a fractal snapshot imprinted in the solar wind.
When Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter proposed a static model of the universe in the early 1900s, he was some 3 trillion years ahead of his time.
Mathematicians and number buffs have their records. And today, an international team has broken a long-standing one in an impressive feat of calculation. On March 6, computer clusters from three institutions – the EPFL, the University of Bonn and NTT in Japan -- reached the end of eleven months of strenuous calculation, churning out the prime factors of a well-known, hard-to-factor number that is a whopping 307 digits long.
Physicists have demonstrated a new form of matter that melds the characteristics of lasers with those of the world’s best electrical conductors. The work introduces a new method of moving energy from one point to another as well as a low-energy means of producing a light beam like that from a laser.
A Purdue University engineer has developed a method that uses an aluminum alloy to extract hydrogen from water for running fuel cells or internal combustion engines, and the technique could be used to replace gasoline. The method makes it unnecessary to store or transport hydrogen - two major challenges in creating a hydrogen economy.
The most common substance in the universe is called dark matter. It doesn’t shine or reflect light. We can’t even see it. It is an invisible substance composed of atoms that are far different from those that make up the universe’s normal matter, such as stars and galaxies.
Researchers from the Universities of Melbourne and Cambridge have unveiled a new theory that shows light can behave like a solid. “Solid light will help us build the technology of this century,” says Dr. Andrew Greentree of the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne.
