Is quantum mechanics spooky for you?

I think the authors have a point here: are we doing a disservice to quantum mechanics (and the understanding of q.m. by the general public) by emphasizing the "spooky" behavior? Is any news good news? Or are we essentially calling quantum mechanics some kind of pseudo science when we do this?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2014/09/whos-afraid-of-quantum-mechanics/

Who runs CERN?

Inside the control room(s) at CERN.

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/march-2015/inside-the-cern-control-centre

What exactly is an asteroid anyway?

An asteroid-comet hybrid??

http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/asteroid-comet-hybrid-found-with-surprise-ring-system-15031.htm?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Mythbusters&hootPostID=1b49302613d566cf70599e493e7b3d67

I also want to recognize my hard-working astronomy club students, who are hard at work at building an electromagnet.

Yes or no?

I can't decide if I like this idea for quantum computing or not. Hmmm....

In a slightly related way, graphene has been a material of intense interest in the past few years for its incredible collection of properties (incredibly thin - one atomic layer, incredibly strong - graphene sheets are one of the strongest material known, and they are nearly transparent in the single sheet form.

This video link does a good job describing those properties and the hopes for what graphene could be used. Graphene has been called the "wonder material" for these properties. Who knows what it will be used for in 10 or 20 years?

Spring equinox

My students and I have a lot planned for Friday, March 20th this year. Of course, it is all dependent on the weather. Right now they are predicting snow and/or rain, and that is troublesome. But what can you do?

A couple of my friends from CERN have agreed to measure the length of a shadow on the spring equinox. This should enable us to determine not only our own latitude, but the latitude of the other participating schools (two in Poland and one in Nepal).  Of course, you need to be able to SEE the shadow to do this.  If we can't measure it on Friday, we will pick another day in the immediate future.

I got this idea from reading about the Eratosthenes project (from Greece, of course) and their global effort to connect schools and measure the globe. I have signed us up for that as well.

Finally, the astronomy club is not only going to take measure the globe, but we are planning to use the telescopes that night, up in Frederick County, Maryland, where the skies are a bit darker.

Check out these sky maps to see what is visible this time of year.

Look up now

At the present time, the ability for automated telescopes to view the heavens is vastly greater than our ability to sort through those images. 

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/march-2015/a-telescope-that-tells-you-when-to-look-up

Spotlight on Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking seems to be everywhere these days.  Some recent videos have popped up, all worth your time,

"Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking". It focuses on the Big Bang and the formation of stars and galaxies.

"Hawking 2013" - more of a biography with a close look at Stephen and his life today.

And finally, from the way back machine, Hawking, Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke (!) all together in a talk show-type format from 1988, just after the release of "A Brief History of Time". It's incredible to see all of them together, and as a bonus, you get to see how Stephen operated his voice-generating computer, albeit one he no longer uses.

Exciting times

It has occurred to me what exciting times we are living in, regarding news of scientific discoveries. Over the past two weeks I have heard about breakthroughs in nanotechnology, gravity, astronomy, astrophysics and quantum physics. And those are just the topics to which I am paying attention.

Some more news...

Light observed to show both wave and particle properties at the same time (wow).

Chandra finds a mid-size black hole.

New ideas about how the sun might be trapping dark matter. Prepare to see many articles about attempts to observe dark matter in the coming months.

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is preparing for its 2015 restart. They will be spending a lot of time and energy in Switzerland trying to observe dark matter and perhaps verifying supersymmetry.

Physics news

I am using this space to share some links for my students so they can find articles and references all in once place.
Today I shared some of these in class.




From Smithsonian, a scientist accidentally discovered a type of materials for sunglasses that could help people with a certain type of color blindness. Imagine seeing black and white your entire life, and then looking through these glasses!



Next up, researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope have imaged a supernova by means of a gravitational lens.



Last one for today - a link to the physics behind the movie Interstellar (from Wired).