Weblog & Reports: News From the Web
Repulsive gravity as an alternative to dark energy (Part 2: In the quantum vacuum)
(PhysOrg.com) -- During the past few years, CERN physicist Dragan Hajdukovic has been investigating what he thinks may be a widely overlooked part of the cosmos: the quantum vacuum. He suggests that the quantum vacuum has ...
Repulsive gravity as an alternative to dark energy (Part 1: In voids)
(PhysOrg.com) -- When scientists discovered in 1998 that the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, the possibility that dark energy could explain the observation was intriguing. But because there ...
Scientists rediscover self-healing silicone mechanism from the 1950s
(PhysOrg.com) -- Research in self-healing organic polymers has grown recently, but one simple self-healing mechanism from more than 60 years ago has been nearly forgotten until now. Using this mechanism, which ...
Google might launch Drive for cloud storage soon
(PhysOrg.com) -- Google's next big move, according to the Wall Street Journal, is a cloud storage service called Drive. Hardly first to the plate, Google is simply catching up to introducing its cloud reposi ...
Walney offshore wind farm is world's biggest (for now)
(PhysOrg.com) -- The Walney wind farm on the Irish Sea--characterized by high tides, waves and windy weather--officially opened this week. The farm is treated in the press as a very big deal as the Walney ...
Humans may have helped the decline of African rainforests 3000 years ago
(PhysOrg.com) -- Large areas of rainforests in Central Africa mysteriously disappeared over three thousand years ago, to be replaced by savannas. The prevailing theory has been that the cause was a change ...
Borexino Collaboration succeeds in spotting pep neutrinos emitted from the sun
(PhysOrg.com) -- To learn more about how the sun works, scientists study particles that are emitted from it into space due to thermonuclear reactions that occur inside; by applying known physics principles, ...
Soraa LED light may dim 50-watt halogen rivals
(PhysOrg.com) -- Soraa, a Fremont, California company founded in 2008, this week launched its first product, a light that uses LEDS (light emitting diodes). The "Soraa LED MR16 lamp" is the "perfect" replacement ...
Quantum physicist explains $100K offer for proof scaled-up quantum computing is impossible
(PhysOrg.com) -- MIT researcher Scott Aaronson has certainly riled the physics community with his offer this past Friday, of $100,000 to anyone who can prove that scaled-up quantum computing is impossible. ...
Solar start-ups set new efficiency records
(PhysOrg.com) -- Although Alta Devices and Semprius make different types of solar panels, both start-ups have been breaking records in the past few days. Santa Clara, Calif.-based Alta Devices announced that ...
Haptic cube lets you feel tomorrow's temps
(PhysOrg.com) -- Will it be an invention joining a storage room of other inventions? Or kicked further up to gadget boutiques for the very rich? Or a popular gadget for many worldwide? Whatever its destiny, ...
Nicira promises virtual networks will transform networking
(PhysOrg.com) -- For the past four years, founders of the start-up company Nicira have been developing cutting-edge software that they predict will transform the networking technology underlying the Internet. ...
Fold-it computer action set for Canada conference (w/ video)
(PhysOrg.com) -- What nonsense, sitting in front of one, single display screen and struggling with a split-screen view of multiple-sites plus data entry or word processing. Is this the way it has to be for ...
Amazon fungi found that eat polyurethane, even without oxygen
(PhysOrg.com) -- Until now polyurethane has been considered non-biodegradable, but a group of students from Yale University in the US has found fungi that will not only eat and digest it, they will do so even in the absence ...
Airborne robot swarms are making complex moves (w/ video)
(PhysOrg.com) -- The GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania this week released a video that shows their new look in GRASP Lab robotic flying devices. They are now showing flying devices with more complex ...