Collider gearing up for bizarre test Oct 19, 2009
The collider was built by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to accelerate protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts around an 18-mile underground racetrack and then crash them together into primordial fireballs. For the record, as of the middle of September, CERN engineers hope to begin to collide protons at the so-called injection energy of 450 billion electron volts in December and then ramp up the energy until the protons have 3 ... 5 trillion electron volts of... (San Francisco Chronicle -- Science)
Bloggers' challenge: Will you make any effort to limit your contribution to air pollution this winter? Oct 18, 2009
Wa$atch wrote on Oct 16, 2009 1:27 PM:" caballo,you are completely correct. the climate has always been in constant flux. the difference this time is that it is attributable to our actions. question: if there weren't any people in the valley would we have inversions? no. wouldn't you agree that on an extremely local scale humans change our climate in logan during the winter?clem,how am i not objective? ideas and theories get debated and scrutinized carefully before they are discredited. (world... (Logan Herald Journal, UT)
Satellite reveals surprising cosmic 'weather' at edge of solar system Oct 17, 2009
"The sky maps are dominated by a giant ribbon of energetic neutral atoms extending throughout the sky in an arc that is 300 degrees long." Energetic neutral atoms form when hot solar wind ions (charged particles) steal electrons from cool interstellar neutral atoms ... Animation shows how energetic neutral atoms are made in the heliosheath when hot solar wind protons grab an electron from a cold interstellar gas atom. (EurekAlert!)
Tiniest Test Tube Experiment Shows Reaction Of Melting Materials At Nano Scale Oct 16, 2009
The nano-scale test tube is so small that a high-power electron microscope was required to see the experiment. Made from a thin shell of carbon, the test tube was stuffed with a thread-like crystal (a nanowire) of germanium with a tiny particle of gold at its tip. (Science Daily)
Silence Of The Genes: Researchers Get First Look At Gene-Silencing Human RISC-Loading Complex Oct 15, 2009
Says Nogales, an expert on electron microscopy and image analysis, Because of the relatively small size of RISC and the added complications of its not being very stable and having highly mobile parts, imaging this complex was a challenge. We used negative-stain electron microscopy and sophisticated single particle analysis ... Electron microscopy structure of the human RISC-loading complex, with the L-shaped Dicer enzyme shown as a wire map and the Argonaute2 protein, shown in purple. (Science Daily)
Growing geodesic carbon nanodomes Oct 12, 2009
In combination with methods for adjusting the conductivity of graphene and related materials, physicists hope to replace electronics made of silicon and metal with tiny, efficient carbon-based chips ... Also in Physics: Clearing Up Electron Microscopy Aberrations, and Yoctosecond Flashes from Quark Gluon Plasmas ... A Viewpoint by Robert Klie (University of Illinois at Chicago) describes an approach for reducing aberrations in electron microscopy, setting a new standard for low-energy imaging. (EurekAlert!)
UA scientists discover quantum fingerprints of chaos Oct 8, 2009
The total spin of a cesium atom is the sum of the spin of its valence electron and the spin of its nucleus, and those spins can become quantum correlated exactly as the photon polarizations in Einstein's example. In Jessen's experiment, the electron and nuclear spins remained unentangled as a result of stable quantum dynamics, but rapidly became entangled if the dynamics were chaotic. (EurekAlert!)
Silver Nanoparticles Give Polymer Solar Cells A Boost Oct 7, 2009
This extra light energy excites electrons in the metal particles, creating electron waves called plasmons -- a cross between plasma and photons ... 22, 2008) The electrons in nanoparticles of noble metal oscillate together apace with the frequency of the light. (Science Daily)
Just A Yoctosecond: Shortest Flashes From Ultra-hot Matter Oct 7, 2009
e. atoms of heavy elements from which all electrons have been removed) at relativistic velocities, such a quark-gluon plasma is created for a few yoctoseconds at the size of a nucleus. Among many other particles, it also creates photons of a few GeV (billion electron volts) energy, so-called gamma radiation. (Science Daily)
Potential Leap Forward In Electron Microscopy Oct 7, 2009
To Peer Inside A Living Cell: Quantum Mechanics Could Help Build Ultra-high-resolution Electron Microscopes ... To Peer Inside A Living Cell: Quantum Mechanics Could Help Build Ultra-high-resolution Electron Microscopes ... 7, 2009) Electron microscopes are the most powerful type of microscope, capable of distinguishing even individual atoms. (Science Daily)
Recent winners of the Nobel Prize in physics Oct 6, 2009
1990: Jerome I. Friedman and Henry W. Kendall, United States, and Richard E. Taylor, Canada, for investigating the scattering of electrons and refining models of quarks ... 1986: Ernst Ruska and Gerd Binnig, West Germany, and Heinrich Rohrer, Switzerland, for designing the electron and scanning tunneling microscopes ... 1981: Nicolaas Bloembergen and Arthur L. Schawlow, United States, and Kai M. Siegbahn, Sweden, for contributing to the development of laser and electron spectroscopy. (San Francisco Chronicle -- Science)
Superheavy Element 114 Confirmed Sep 25, 2009
The 88-Inch Cyclotron s versatile Advanced Electron Cyclotron Resonance ion source readily created a beam of highly charged calcium ions, atoms lacking 11 electrons, which the 88-Inch Cyclotron then accelerated to the desired energy. Four plutonium oxide target segments were mounted on a wheel 9. (Science Daily)
Smaller isn't always better: Catalyst simulations could lower fuel cell cost Sep 18, 2009
In the type of fuel cells Morgan is researching, called proton exchange membrane fuel cells, or PEMFCs, hydrogen is split into a proton and electron at one side of the fuel cell (the anode). The proton moves through the device while the electron is forced to travel in an external circuit, where it can perform useful work ... At the other side of the fuel cell (the cathode), the protons, electrons and oxygen combine to form water, which is the only waste product. (EurekAlert!)
Astrophysics: High Energy Galactic Particle Accelerator Located Sep 15, 2009
This is done as follows: A high-energy gamma particle penetrating into the upper layers of the atmosphere interacts with the atoms of the atmosphere and is thereby converted into an electron and its antiparticle, a positron. The charged electrons and positrons again produce further gammas by means of 'Bremsstrahlung', which for their part again disintegrate into electron-positron pairs ... In the focal plane of the telescope, the collected photons are focussed onto an electronic camera, with an... (Science Daily)
Atoms Don't Dance The 'Bose Nova': Realization Of An Excited, Strongly Correlated Many-body Phase Sep 6, 2009
8, 2009) Researchers have learned how to "dress up" neutral atoms with laser light to make them act in ways similar to a charged particle like an electron. The costume scheme could be a way for physicists to. (Science Daily)
To understand the universe, science calls on the ultrasmall Aug 17, 2009
Most neutrinos traveling through Earth come from the Sun, and trillions of solar electron neutrinos pass through every person each second. Although those properties make neutrinos difficult to detect, detecting and understanding them are key scientific pursuits, partly because of the implications for cosmology. (EurekAlert!)
Jet-propelled Imaging For An Ultrafast Light Source Aug 14, 2009
The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) will soon begin operation at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Palo Alto, California, using energetic electrons from a linear accelerator to produce coherent x-rays with an instrument called a free electron laser (FEL) ... As the crystal rotates in the x-ray beam, x-rays scatter off the atoms and reveal once these complex diffraction patterns have been converted into a 3-D image by computers how the electrons, and thus the atoms, are arranged. (Science Daily)
Multi-laboratory study sizes up nanoparticle sizing Aug 12, 2009
The labs used not only PCS, but also electron and atomic force microscopy. The results were factored into precision and bias tables that are now a part of the ASTM standard. (EurekAlert!)
Particle Collider Sparks New 'Black Hole' Fears Aug 9, 2009
But spokesman James Gillies told The Associated Press they would have to shut down yet again next year to finish repairs so that the Large Hadron Collider can operate at full energy of 7 trillion electron volts seven times higher than any other machine in the world ... 5 trillion electron volts, or TeV. That's only half the level the machine was designed for, but it's still 3 1/2 times higher than the second most powerful accelerator, the Tevatron at Fermilab outside Chicago. (Fox News)
Particle collider: World's largest machine Aug 8, 2009
But spokesman James Gillies said they would have to shut down yet again next year to finish repairs so that the Large Hadron Collider can operate at full energy of 7 trillion electron volts, seven times higher than any other machine in the world. CERN has been working since late last year to repair the damage caused by a faulty electrical joint. (India Times)
Giant particle collider fizzles, adding to mysteries of life Aug 5, 2009
The collider was built to accelerate protons to energies of 7 trillion electron volts and smash them together in search of particles and forces that reigned earlier than the first trillionth of a second of time, but the machine could run as low as 4 trillion electron volts for its first year ... Colliders get their oomph from Einstein's equivalence of mass and energy, both expressed in the currency of electron volts ... It got the nod in 1994 after the Superconducting SuperCollider, which would... (Honolulu Star-Bulletin)
Discovery about behavior of building block of nature could lead to computer revolution Jul 31, 2009
A team of physicists from the Universities of Cambridge and Birmingham have shown that electrons in narrow wires can divide into two new particles called spinons and a holons. The electron is a fundamental building block of nature and is indivisible in isolation, yet a new experiment has shown that electrons, if crowded into narrow wires, are seen to split apart ... The electron is responsible for carrying electricity in wires and for making magnets. (EurekAlert!)
NRL's Large Area Telescope explores high-energy particles Jul 29, 2009
Cosmic rays are electrons, positrons, and atomic nuclei that move at nearly the speed of light ... LAT was developed for detecting gamma rays; however, it is also proving to be a great tool for studying the high-energy electrons in cosmic rays ... NRL's highly sensitive LAT measured the energies of more than four million high-energy electrons between August 2008 and January 2009, far more high-energy electrons than have ever been studied before. (EurekAlert!)
New Electron Microscopy Images Reveal The Assembly Of HIV Jul 12, 2009
Using a method called cryoelectron tomography researchers in the groups of John Briggs at EMBL and Hans-Georg Kr ... Cryoelectron tomography is a technique with which a sample is instantly frozen in its natural state and then examined with an electron microscope. (Science Daily)
New Way To Make Sensors That Detect Toxic Chemicals Jul 11, 2009
Collaborators on the project include Steve Semancik and Kurt Benkstein at NIST. Study coauthors include: Krenar Shqau, an Ohio State postdoctoral researcher; Samantha Brown, then an undergraduate student visitor from Northwestern University who will return to Ohio State this fall to pursue her doctorate in Chemistry; and Steven Rozeveld at Dow Chemical Co., who helped Beach produce electron microscope images of the nanoparticles ... 13, 2006) A team of researchers from Arizona State University... (Science Daily)
How Strain At Grain Boundaries Suppresses High-temperature Superconductivity Jul 9, 2009
Electron microscope image of two superconducting thin films that meet at a six degree tilt boundary (the dark line running through the image). The numerous smaller lines that intersect the grain boundary at 90 degrees are the individual crystalline layers. (Science Daily)
Shape Matters In The Case Of Cobalt Nanoparticles Jul 5, 2009
After a few minutes exposure to the illuminating beam of a transmission electron microscope, the nanocubes melt together, forming nanowires that are no longer separable as individual nanoparticles ... Unlike smaller spherical cobalt nanoparticles, nanocubes melt and fuse (right/bottom) when illuminated by a transmission electron microscope and possess different magnetic characteristics than the nanospheres as well. (Science Daily)
New Images May Improve Vaccine Design For Deadly Rotavirus Jun 27, 2009
In a recent article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Grigorieff and Harrison have applied cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and single particle reconstruction techniques to visualize key structures that rotavirus uses to infect cells ... Using an electron microscope with a highly collimated beam (whose rays are nearly parallel) to avoid damaging the molecules, the scientists obtained images of thousands of captive particles. (Science Daily)
3-D, Real-time X-ray Images May Be Closer To Reality Jun 18, 2009
Starace's work focuses on a process called high-harmonic generation, or HHG. X-ray radiation can be created by focusing an optical laser into atoms of gaseous elements usually low-electron types such as hydrogen, helium, or neon. HHG is the process that creates the energetic X-rays when the laser light interacts with those atoms' electrons, causing the electrons to vibrate rapidly and emit X-rays ... In an effort to make the X-rays more powerful, scientists have attempted using higher-powered... (Science Daily)
Cool Science Images Jun 16, 2009
This CSI is a scanning electron micrograph of the snout of a butterfly ... This pretty picture was obtained with the aid of a scanning electron microscope, a microscope that scans a. (Why Files)
Theorists Reveal Path To True Muonium -- Never-seen Atom Jun 5, 2009
True muonium is made of a muon and an anti-muon, and is distinguished from what's also been called "muonium" an atom made of an electron and an anti-muon ... In a paper published this week in Physical Review Letters, Brodsky and Lebed describe two methods by which electron positron accelerators could detect the signature of true muonium's formation and decay ... In the first method, an accelerator's electron and positron beams are arranged to merge, crossing at a glancing angle. (Science Daily)
What are Electron Volts May 28, 2009
High energy particle physicists who study elementary subatomic particles measure the energy of fundamental particles in units of electron volts, eVs ... Hence elementary particle physicists measure subatomic particle energies in electron volts (eVs) ... Definition of Electron Volt. (Suite101.com)
Fast Laser Research And Theory Building On Einsten's Work By Timing Electrons Emissions May 23, 2009
ScienceDaily (May 22, 2009) Ultrafast laser research at Kansas State University has allowed physicists to build on Nobel Prize-winning work in photo-electronics by none other than Albert Einstein ... Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his theoretical explanation in 1905 of the so-called photo-effect -- that is, the emission of electrons from a metal surface by incident light ... Back then, experiments could measure the energy -- or speed -- of light-emitted electrons but could not... (Science Daily)
K-State's fast laser research and theory building on Einsten's work by timing electrons emissions May 22, 2009
Ultrafast laser research at Kansas State University has allowed physicists to build on Nobel Prize-winning work in photo-electronics by none other than Albert Einstein. Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his theoretical explanation in 1905 of the so-called photo-effect -- that is, the emission of electrons from a metal surface by incident light ... Back then, experiments could measure the energy -- or speed -- of light-emitted electrons but could not resolve their motion in time. (EurekAlert!)
Single Electron Captured In Tunable Carbon Nanotube Quantum Dot May 16, 2009
ScienceDaily (May 15, 2009) Researchers from the Kavli Institute of NanoScience in Delft are the first to have successfully captured a single electron in a highly tunable carbon nanotube double quantum dot ... Moreover, the team of researchers, under the leadership of Spinoza winner Leo Kouwenhoven, discovered a new sort of tunnelling as a result of which electrons can fly straight through obstacles ... A quantum dot can be viewed as a small 'box' which traps a controllable number of electrons. (Science Daily)
Molecular Structure Could Help Explain Albinism, Melanoma May 14, 2009
Just getting this far required using single particle electron cryomicroscopy (cryo-EM) to produce three dimensional density maps of the molecule at sub-nanometer resolution. "Cryo-EM is becoming a structural tool that can be used for understanding structural mechanism of large protein, which has translational and biotechnological application as demonstrated in this study," said Chiu, a senior author. (Science Daily)
Mapping the Universe with Helium May 13, 2009
They scattered off protons and electrons in a game of cosmological pachinko until everything cooled enough for protons to latch onto electrons and form hydrogen atoms a process known as recombination ... First, it took a while for protons to get a firm hold on electrons ... Further complicating matters, a photon from one atom tended to knock the electron off another. (Scientific American)
Waiting to fly Apr 30, 2009
So, at the beginning, if you had an electron, you must also have had a positron (the antimatter counterpart of an electron). If you had a proton, you must have had an anti-proton. (BBC News -- Science)
Antimatter scout to hitch last shuttle ride Apr 28, 2009
"At the beginning, if you have an electron, you must have a positron. If [you] have a proton, you must have an anti-proton. In other words, there must be equal amounts of matter and anti-matter," Ting said. "It always troubled me; where's the universe made out of antimatter? That was basically one of the reasons we proposed this experiment," he added. (MSNBC -- Technology)
At The Limits Of The Photoelectric Effect Apr 28, 2009
Scientists of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) have found this out with colleagues at FLASH in Hamburg, the first free-electron laser (FEL) for soft X-rays worldwide. The current models based on Einstein's idea are simply described in such a way: A photon knocks an external electron out of an atom, provided that the photon energy is high enough ... However, with wavelengths of only 13 nanometers and high radiation intensities of several petawatt per square centimeter something... (Science Daily)
Genetic switch potential key to new class of antibiotics Apr 18, 2009
Synchrotrons are particle accelerator facilities that direct high energy X-rays at crystals to produce detailed electron density maps from which extremely accurate 3-D pictures can be constructed. The new snapshots revealed fascinating insights about the riboswitch structure and preQ0 interactions, the researchers said. (EurekAlert!)
What happens at absolute zero? Apr 14, 2009
When something is cooled to absolute zero (Kelvin), do the electrons and other sub-atomic particles stop moving ... But what happens to electrons, do they also stop ... When we try to probe the atom or electron to localize it, then we give it some velocity, and thus a non-zero temperature. (Globe and Mail)
WRS buys Isonics' semi wafer unit Apr 9, 2009
More calls for a change in engineering education surfaced at the recent International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) ... Hot technologies to watch for in 2009: Every technologist, marketer, industry analyst and reporter on a hunt for the next big thing is bracing for the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show scheduled less than a month away. (EETimes)
Hollow Gold Nanospheres Show Promise For Biomedical And Other Applications Mar 29, 2009
Partial view of a gold nanosphere (shown), magnified by a factor of one billion, as seen through an electron microscope. The darker ring shows the "wall" of the nanosphere, while the lighter area to the right of the ring shows the interior region of the shell. (Science Daily)
New Experiments Constrain Higgs Mass Mar 23, 2009
22, 2009) The territory where the Higgs boson may be found continues to shrink. The latest analysis of data from the CDF and DZero collider experiments at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab now excludes a significant fraction of the allowed Higgs mass range established by earlier measurements. (Science Daily)
Precision Measurement Of W Boson Mass Portends Stricter Limits For Higgs Particle Mar 18, 2009
The DZero team determined the W mass by measuring the decay of W bosons to electrons and electron neutrinos. Performing the measurement required calibrating the DZero particle detector with an accuracy around three hundredths of one percent, an arduous task that required several years of effort from a team of scientists including students. (Science Daily)
One Virus Particle Is Enough To Cause Infectious Disease Mar 15, 2009
This colorized scanning electron micrograph (SEM) reveals the "rosettelike" appearance of the matured SARS-CoV (coronavirus) particles (arrows). New research shows that one virus particle is theoretically enough to cause infection and subsequent disease. (Science Daily)
Cross-dressing Rubidium May Reveal Clues For Exotic Computing Mar 9, 2009
They force neutral atoms to act like pointlike charged particles that can undergo merry-go-round-like cyclotron motions just as electrons do when subjected to a suitable magnetic field ... In the latter effect, low-temperature electrons, confined to a plane and placed in high magnetic fields, can act as if they form quasiparticles carrying a fraction of an electric charge as well as several bundles of magnetism known as magnetic flux quanta ... They couldn t simply add electric charges to the... (Science Daily)
Potential On-off Switch For Nanoelectronics Mar 6, 2009
5, 2009) As electronic circuits shrink from finely etched lines in silicon wafers to nearly elusive proportions, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Columbia University are studying how electrons flow through a molecular junction-a nanometer scale circuit element that contacts gold atoms with a single molecule ... Their findings reveal the electrical resistance through this junction can be turned on and off simply by pushing and... (Science Daily)
Gold-palladium Nanoparticles Achieve Greener, Smarter Production Of Hydrogen Peroxide Mar 3, 2009
D. from Lehigh in 2006, operates the aberration-corrected electron microscopy facilities in the Surface and Microanalysis Science Division of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) ... The group owes its current success to Hutchings' expertise in catalysis and to his longstanding collaboration with Kiely, who has the ability to obtain data using electron microscopes with unmatched imaging and chemical analysis capabilities ... Their research has benefited from the... (Science Daily)
IN SEARCH OF THE 'GOD PARTICLE' Mar 1, 2009
By 1932, it was known that all atoms are made up of three particles, the electron, proton and neutron. The material world was reduced from the 94 differences of the elements to just the three differences of these subatomic particles. (New York Post -- Opinions)
Flu Virus Foiled? Molecule Attacks Many Viruses Feb 27, 2009
This negatively-stained transmission electron micrograph (TEM) revealed the presence of a number of Hong Kong flu virus virions, the H3N2 subtype of the influenza A virus. This virus is a Orthomyxoviridae virus family member, and was responsible for the flu pandemic of 1968-1969, which infected an estimated 50,000,000 people in the United States, killing 33,000. (Science Daily)
First Crystal Structure Of An Intermediate Particle In Virus Assembly Created Feb 21, 2009
They had produced images using electron microscopy, but they weren't detailed enough to understand the molecular processes involved ... Using electron microscopy and. (Science Daily)
Was Einstein Wrong?: A Quantum Threat to Special Relativity Feb 19, 2009
Entanglement may connect particles irrespective of where they are, what they are and what forces they may exert on one another in principle, they could perfectly well be an electron and a neutron on opposite sides of the galaxy. Thus, entanglement makes for a kind of intimacy amid matter previously undreamt of. (Scientific American)
Officials set timetable for getting particle collider back on track Feb 17, 2009
The collider, the world's largest, is designed to accelerate the subatomic particles known as protons around a 17-mile underground racetrack to energies of 7 trillion electron volts and then crash them together in search of new forms of matter and new laws of nature ... For its first year, the collider will operate at 5 trillion electron volts, rather than the design standard of 7 trillion, because that is the highest level for which the magnets have yet been tested ... But with more energetic... (International Herald Tribune -- Health)
Big particle collider to restart in September Feb 12, 2009
Laboratory Providing Particle Sizing and Characterization utilizing Transmission Electron Microscopes and Scanning Electron Microscopes. Rapid Turnaround Available. (Yahoo News)
Q&A: The LHC experiment Feb 10, 2009
The quest to understand the smallest building blocks of nature and the forces that hold them together arguably began with the ancient Greeks, but it was only when we began to conduct experiments that we discovered the electron (1897), quantum mechanics (triggered by precision observations of the light emitted by elements when heated), X-rays, the atomic nucleus, radioactive decay ... Without these experimental discoveries, and the subsequent deepening of our understanding of the Universe, there... (BBC News -- Science)
Scripps scientists create first crystal structure of an intermediate particle in virus assembly Feb 8, 2009
They had produced images using electron microscopy, but they weren't detailed enough to understand the molecular processes involved. The scientists built the viral shells in a test tube. (EurekAlert!)
Phantom Filter Feb 7, 2009
The splash results in the release of a charged particle, either an electron or muon. Those particles shoot out from the neutrinos rare belly flops faster than the speed of light, in water, in which light travels more slowly than it does through the emptiness of space. (Why Files)
