Gabriel Popkin, Sci Mag
You can't weigh the universe's smallest particles on a bathroom scale. But in a clever new experiment, physicists have found that one such particlethe protonis lighter than previously thought.It's a significant improvement on the mass of the proton, says Edmund Myers, a physicist at Florida State University in Tallahassee who wasn't involved with the work. I can't see any holes in what they've done. They've done a good job.
David Kaiser, Aeon Magazine
Every fraction of a second, invisible particles called neutrinos whiz past the vans and Winnebagos on Highway 169 headed toward McKinley Park in northeastern Minnesota, just shy of the Canadian border. Having begun their journey at Fermilab, an imposing physics laboratory outside Chicago, some of those speeding neutrinos smack into 5-ton slabs of steel within an underground mine in the town of Soudan, Minnesota (population: 446), sending sparks of charged particles arcing toward sensitive detectors. Читать дальше...
Kasha Patel, Phys.org
It was midafternoon, but it was dark in an area in Boulder, Colorado on Aug. 3, 1998. A thick cloud appeared overhead and dimmed the land below for more than 30 minutes. Well-calibrated radiometers showed that there were very low levels of light reaching the ground, sufficiently low that researchers decided to simulate this interesting event with computer models. Now in 2017, inspired by the event in Boulder, NASA scientists will explore the moon's eclipse of the sun to learn more about Earth's energy system.
Amanda Ruggeri, BBC
The railway is all but invisible. Burrowed beneath the steep slope of Bristol's Avon Gorge, even its two entrances are relatively hidden. On the hilltop, the railway's shiny new sign is overshadowed by the Victorian-era Avon Gorge Hotel; at the bottom, the tunnel spits out onto a freeway where few pedestrians would stop to notice the worn stone entrance.As a result, only in-the-know locals tend to realise there is a tunnel here at all never mind why it's special.
Mike Wall, Space.com
Elon Musk is tamping down expectations about the maiden launch of SpaceX's huge new Falcon Heavy rocket.There's a "real good chance" the vehicle won't make it to orbit during the liftoff, Musk said Wednesday (July 19) at the 2017 International Space Station Research and Development (ISSR&D) conference in Washington, D.C. That launch is expected to take place later this year from Florida's Space Coast.
Chris Lee, Ars Technica
In my younger daysabout the time that Erik the Red was making a name for himselfI was really into electronics. Countless never-quite-working-as-expected circuits should have taught me the futility of telling electrons what to do. Yet my interest in electronics peaked with the construction of an electronically steerable phased-array antenna. This is where, by varying the timing slightly, numerous small antennas create a signal that can be sent in specific directions without moving any hardware.
Ethan Siegel, SWaB!
Winter is coming. Here on Earth, we can accurately predict when it will arrive, how long it will last, and even to a large extent how severe it will be. But that isn't the case for the continents of Westeros and Essos in George R.R. Martin's epic series and television show. Imagine living on a world where the seasons were unpredictable: their onset, duration, and severity would be completely unknown. You may go months, years, or decades between winters, and the winters themselves may be mild... Читать дальше...
