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SciencePhysics & ChemistryThis Is an Image of Quantum Entanglement… Sort Of
A new quantum mechanics experiment shows the field’s spookiest concept, entanglement, in a whole new way. But, of course, it’s not as simple as that. Lots of other news outlets have covered what they’ve described as the first-ever image, or even a “photo,” of entanglement, sometimes called spooky action at a distance. The picture does … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightNASA and ESA Reach Critical Decision on How the First Lunar Outpost Will Orbit the Moon
Mission planners for the lunar Gateway project have decided how the lunar outpost should orbit the Moon—and it’s actually quite brilliant. They’ve chosen a near-rectilinear halo orbit. This highly elliptical orbit should solve a bunch of problems, making it easy for astronauts to embark on missions to the lunar surface and for the outpost to … Continued
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Tech NewsIs the Butterfly Effect Real?
Is the 2004 Ashton Kutcher vehicle The Butterfly Effect a good movie? Definitely not, no—but try telling that to me at age thirteen. And then wrap your head, once more, around the fact that if you had told me that, you might have set in motion the utter annihilation of the human race—the whole notion … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightJodrell Bank Observatory Declared UNESCO World Heritage Site
The Jodrell Bank Observatory, part of the University of Manchester and home of the massive Lovell Telescope and numerous others, has received UNESCO World Heritage Site status, the BBC reported on Sunday. According to the BBC, the decision was made during a UN World Heritage Committee meeting in Azerbaijan and gives the site protected status … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsMetallic Hydrogen, Toxic Fandom, and the Fifth Dimension: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week
Lying, tech tricks, and snares, oh my: This week at Gizmodo, our team of reporters and editors hit three different ways consumers are being ripped off, manipulated, or tracked in secret in their everyday doings on the web. Those include “surveillance scores” e-commerce companies use to charge different customers different prices for the same products, … Continued
By Tom McKay -
EartherEarth ScienceIncredible Observation Links Two Different Radioactive Phenomena Inside a Thunderstorm
Scientists in Japan reported seeing two radioactive weather phenomena at the same time, for the first time, according to a new paper. The observation establishes a link between the two, adding to our knowledge of the wild physics that takes place inside thunderstorms. The researchers reported the “unequivocal simultaneous detection” of a minute-long “gamma-ray glow” … Continued
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Tech NewsIs There a Fifth Dimension?
Imagine a world where you can only move forwards and backwards along a line. You’d see nothing but single points in front of you, and nothing but single points behind you—a one-dimensional world. Now expand this to a second dimension—you can move forwards and backwards, and also left and right, experiencing the world as flat … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightNASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Takes Stunning Photo of Asteroid Bennu From Just 0.4 Miles Away
NASA’s asteroid-sampling OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which is currently in position around the tiny, near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu, has transmitted its closest shot of the asteroid’s surface yet. NASA has already released photos of OSIRIS-REx taken with the craft’s NavCam 1 navigation camera on January 17, 2019 from a distance of roughly a mile (1.6 kilometers) above … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsBlood Feasts, Cashless Stores, and Quantum Computing: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week
Excellent news here at Gizmodo, where I presume what’s left of our blogger-chewed Forbidden Sandwich is still festering in the back of a fridge. We have discovered yet more ingredients to add to the mix, including head cheese from an ancient species of Pleistocene wolf found preserved in Siberia, cannabis residue scraped from a brazier … Continued
By Tom McKay -
SciencePhysics & ChemistryScientists in Florida Make the World’s Strongest Magnet
Scientists have broken the record for the strongest continuous magnetic field, according to a new research paper. The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, or MagLab, at Florida State University runs the world’s strongest continuous magnet for use by scientists, at 45 tesla—around 10 times stronger than a hospital MRI machine. Now, researchers at the lab … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgetsWhen Will Quantum Computers Outperform Regular Computers?
Any day now, quantum computers will solve a problem too hard for a classical computer to take on. Or at least, that’s what we’ve been hoping. Scientists and companies are racing toward this computing milestone, dubbed quantum supremacy and seemingly just beyond our reach, and if you’ve been following the quantum computing story, you might … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightAstronomers Spot Mysterious, 10-Million-Light-Year-Long Magnetic Field Connecting Two Galaxy Clusters
Scientists have detected radio waves emanating from the space between a pair of galaxy clusters—evidence of intergalactic magnetic fields and fast-moving particles in the space between these giant galactic assemblages. The universe is comprised of a vast network of galaxy clusters sitting at the intersection of filaments. Galactic filaments are massive, threadlike formations of matter … Continued
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Tech NewsScientists Save Schrödinger’s Cat
One of the hallmark predictions of quantum mechanics is that particles behave unpredictably—but a new experiment seems to complicate some of those core ideas. Researchers were able to predict a kind of atomic behavior called a quantum jump and even reverse the jump in a new experiment on an artificial atom. Such research could bring … Continued
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Tech NewsThese Little Silica Hexagons Are Like Super-Advanced Lego Bricks
The problem with atoms is that they’re small. Too small. Don’t you wish they were… bigger? There’s an entire field of research, known as colloidal science, that attempts to study atoms by making larger analogues for them. Scientists create particles suspended in some liquid or gas that are like atoms but larger and more controllable. … Continued
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Tech NewsWhat Does a Particle Collider Sound Like?
Scientists explore the limits of physics by pumping energy into components of atoms, such as electrons and protons, accelerating them to nearly the speed of light, and slamming the beams of particles together in hopes of discovering something new. You can imagine that this process gets quite noisy. But you don’t hear particles colliding. In … Continued
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io9MoviesAvengers: Endgame Has Some Nerve Making Fun of Time Travel Movies
Because real-world time travel back and forth between the past and present is not (yet) possible, and the underlying science behind our working theories as to how it might one day be possible can be difficult to grasp, our ideas about it have largely been shaped by fictional depictions in books, television shows, and movies … Continued
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SciencePhysics & ChemistryScientists Recreate Hallmark Quantum Physics Experiment Using Antimatter
Scientists recreated one of the most important experiments in the history of physics—but this time, they used antimatter instead of regular matter. All matter particles have a corresponding antimatter particle, which shares most of the same properties but is a mirror image of the particle and has the opposite charge. Decades ago, scientists determined that … Continued
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SciencePhysics & ChemistryPowerful Lasers Produce Wild New Kind of Ice Thought to Exist Inside Uranus
Scientists used high-energy lasers to create a new phase of ice unlike any seen on Earth before—but which might exist deep within Neptune and Uranus. Water’s structure allows it to freeze into many different crystalline forms (including ice-IX, which does not share the same properties as the Ice-IX from Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle). Perhaps one … Continued
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SciencePhysics & ChemistryGravitational Wave Detectors May Have Spotted a Neutron Star Colliding With a Black Hole
A pair of objects, each more massive than the Sun but only as wide as a city, have once again produced ripples in spacetime that were picked up by sensitive gravitational wave detectors on Earth. But this time, scientists think they may have measured something even weirder the usual. After booting up a month ago … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightHubble Measurements Confirm There’s Something Weird About How the Universe Is Expanding
New results from the Hubble Space Telescope have deepened one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy. Astronomers know that the Universe is expanding, and the expansion is accelerating. Sometimes you’ll hear news stories claim that the Universe is expanding “faster than we thought.” But that’s not quite what’s going on. The rate of the expansion, … Continued