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Spooky Alignment of Quasars Across Billions of Light-years
New observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile have revealed alignments over the largest structures ever discovered in the Universe. A European research team has found that the rotation axes of the central supermassive black holes in a sample of quasars are parallel to each other over distances of…
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The Largest Black Hole in the Known Universe
It’s a huge surprise, and shows up in the most unlikely of places!
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The Fermi Paradox
The Fermi Paradox: There should be 100,000 intelligent alien civilizations in our galaxy — so why haven't we found any of them?
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NFL players: height and weight over time
An animated look at just how much bigger NFL players have gotten over time.
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Turing Test Success
Our previous content management system has been retired, and the news and article content it held has been archived. You can now browse the archived content by year, month, or topic using the links below.
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Quantum mechanics as a generalization of probability (2007)
There are two ways to teach quantum mechanics. The first way -- which for most physicists today is still the only way -- follows the historical order in which the ideas were discovered. So, you start with classical mechanics and electrodynamics, solving lots of grueling differential equations at every step. Then you…
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American Chemical Society bans university after "spider-trap" is clicked
The society (closed access) journal ‘Copeia’ also has these spider trap links in it’s HTML, e.g. on this contents page: http://www.asihcopeiaonline.org/toc/cope/2013/4
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Rethinking the origins of the universe
Laura Mersini-Houghton has mathematically proven that quantum effects are strong enough to stop the formation of black holes, work that opens up a new round of discussions and debates about the origins of the universe.
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A scientist stole my root beer
I’m not ashamed to say that I like root beer. There’s something about the herbal and woodsy flavors that I enjoy. It’s refreshing, but also a time machine. A sip of root beer brin…
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Hyperloop: Not so fast
This week Matt Brauer is back to describe work he did to analyze the trajectory of the Hyperloop proposal. This is a key input to the Hyperloop Simulink models we are building. Matt's conclusion is surprising: From the perspective of geographic constraints and rider comfort, the 760 mph peak speed is not an issue…
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Why are roller coaster loops not circular?
Why are the loops on roller coasters never circular?
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Superconductivity without cooling?
Infrared laser pulses modify the structure of the high-temperature superconductor YBCO and make superconductivity possible at room temperature.
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Why cans of soup are shaped the way they are
What is special about cylinders, and why do they have specific aspect ratios?
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Designing Stereographic Lampshades
I saw an article on the Guardian website here on the 3D-printing of shapes which project interesting patterns of light. Ignoring the strangely forced Halloween reference, I thought this would be an interesting project to attempt for an arbitrary pattern, perhaps as a personalised lampshade. Buoyed by the continuing…
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Calories in, calories out
This article was discussed on Hacker News. Introduction How do we lose (or gain) weight? Is it really as simple as “calories in, calories out” (i.e., eat less than you burn), or i…
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Analysis of suspected MH370 pings recorded by Ocean Shield
So this is a bit of a deviation from my normal MATLAB oriented posts. In-fact MATLAB was not used once in this analysis! I've been followi...
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