How much Cosmological Redshift can we expect in a flat, non-expanding universe?

The light coming from a single hydrogen molecule is red shifted because the hydrogen molecule has mass…not much mass, admittedly, and the amount of red shift is going to be extremely challenging to measure but it’s there.

Most of the hydrogen molecule is space. If the electron in a hydrogen atom orbited at the far end of a baseball stadium then the nucleus would be the size of a grain of salt on the pitcher’s mound. Likewise, in a gas, if we were seeing the hydrogen molecule as the size of a star then other hydrogen molecules would be far far away on average, even further if the gas heats up.

But if that hydrogen molecule is part of the gas which is a star then the light coming from that hydrogen molecule is now very measurable indeed as the mass of the entire star contributes to the redshift of our hydrogen molecule even though that molecule is, in its own world, far from other molecules of gas.

If we start our journey near the hydrogen molecule and then move away to the distance of, say, the Earth, we will note an increase in the redshift of the light from that molecule as we proceed. What if we continue?

As we exit the Milky way the redshift of the light from that molecule in the sun is further redshifted as now it is light from a galaxy and not just a star or a single molecule. As we proceed further away we receive light from a cluster of galaxies, our Local Group, and then the local supercluster of galaxies.

Returning to our molecule in the star we note that particles to the left, the right and all around the target molecule contribute to the mass as well as molecules behind and in front. Molecules in the entire region contribute to the mass of the star and this contributes to the redshift of the light from our target molecule.

Thus as we move further away the contribution of clusters of galaxies in an ever bigger area contribute to the increasing redshift of the light from our target molecule. Think of a patch of sky the size of the sun as seen from Earth as contributing mass and therefore to the redshift. With ever greater distance there are ever more galaxies occupying that same footprint in the sky.

That redshift will increase with distance in a flat universe is not the question, it does and we have measured it locally (redshift from the sun verses redshift from a single molecule). The only question is how much this phenomena contributes to the cosmological redshift that we observe ~ a little bit, a lot, or all of it??

Note that if we zoom in on just one molecule of a gas in the sun we will still measure the same redshift, that is, the entire sun’s mass produces the redshift whether we are focused on one molecule or the entire sun. Likewise when we focus in on just one galaxy far away we see the redshift contributed by nearby galaxies, ever more contributing with ever greater distance from us.

Note also that the fact that there is just as much mass behind us as in front of us does not reduce the amount of this form of redshift. If there were another sun equidistant from us so that the Earth was between them then we would measure redshift from both bodies in much the same way with only a very modest reduction in redshift.

Discovery of an extragalactic hot molecular core

Astronomers have discovered a 'hot molecular core', a cocoon of molecules surrounding a newborn massive star, for the first time outside our Galaxy. The discovery, which marks the first important step for observational studies of extragalactic hot molecular cores and challenges the hidden chemical diversity of our universe.

The scientists from Tohoku University, the University of Tokyo, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, and the University of Tsukuba, used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to observe a newborn star located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the closest neighbors of our Galaxy. As a result, a number of radio emission lines from various molecular gas are detected, which indicates the presence of a hot molecular core associated with the observed newborn star.

The observations have revealed that the hot molecular core in the Large Magellanic Cloud shows significantly different chemical compositions as compared to similar objects in our Galaxy. In particular, the results suggest that simple organic molecules such as methanol are deficient in this galaxy, suggesting a potential difficulty in producing large organic species indispensable for the birth of life.
The research team suggests that the unique galactic environment of the Large Magellanic Cloud affects the formation processes of molecules around a newborn star, and this results in the observed unique chemical compositions.
"This is the first detection of an extragalactic hot molecular core, and it demonstrates the great capability of new generation telescopes to study astrochemical phenomena beyond our Galaxy," said Dr. Takashi Shimonishi, an astronomer at Tohoku University, Japan, and the paper's lead author. "The observations have suggested that the chemical compositions of materials that form stars and planets are much more diverse than we expected. "
It is known that various complex organic molecules, which have a connection to prebiotic molecules formed in space, are detected from hot molecular cores in our Galaxy. It is, however, not yet clear if such large and complex molecules exist in hot molecular cores in other galaxies. The newly discovered hot molecular core is an excellent target for such a study, and further observations of extragalactic hot molecular cores will shed light on the chemical complexities of our universe.
http://iopscience.iop.org/artic…/10.3847/0004-637X/…/72/meta

Cecile G. Tamura

Geobacter bacteria clean up nuclear waste and generate biodiesel & electricity

Researchers from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst have recently engineered Geobacter metallireducens, a bacterium that can feed with hydrogen and carbon dioxide to produce electricity. 

 Geobacter metallireducens
“This represents the first result of current production solely on hydrogen,” says Amit Kumar, who worked with Derek Lovely, the scientist who first isolated Geobacter metallireducens 26 years ago, in the Potomac River.

Geobacter species are of interest because of their bioremediation, bioenergy potential, novel electron transfer capabilities, the ability to transfer electrons outside the cell and transport these electrons over long distances via conductive filaments known as microbial nanowires.

By studying a relative of Geobacter metallireducens called Geobacter sulfurreducens, Kumar and the team produced electricity by having the bacteria reduce organic carbon compounds with a graphite electrode like iron oxide or gold to serve as the only electron receptor. The bacteria they chose for engineering did not have the need for carbon to grow in a microbial fuel cell.

Allison Speers, MSU graduate student, works on a fuel cell that can eliminate biodiesel producers' hazardous wastes and dependence on fossil fuels. Image by Kurt Stepnitz.

MSU microbiological Gemma Reguera, a co-author on the study, developed patented adaptive-engineered bacteria called Geobacter sulfurreducens. Geobacter are naturally occurring microbes that have proved promising in cleaning up nuclear waste and in improving other biofuel processes.

“Geobacter shield themselves from uranium by producing hair-like filaments that attract and bind the uranium very strongly,” Reguera said. “The bacterial hairs are fully charged with electricity, just like a live electrical wire, and zap the uranium. And what happens next is simple chemistry - the soluble, dangerous uranium is immobilised onto the wires as a mineral. This prevents its spread and protects us from exposure.”

Reguera, along with lead authors and MSU graduate students Allison Speers and Jenna Young, evolved Geobacter to withstand increasing amounts of toxic glycerol. They then searched for partner bacteria that could ferment it into ethanol while generating by-products that ‘fed’ the Geobacter.

“It took some tweaking, but we eventually developed a robust bacterium to pair with Geobacter,” Reguera said. “We matched them up like dance partners, modifying each of them to work seamlessly together and eliminate all of the waste.

“[The bacteria] feast like they’re at a Las Vegas buffet. One bacterium ferments the glycerol waste to produce bioethanol, which can be re-used to make biodiesel from oil feedstocks. Geobacter removes any waste produced during glycerol fermentation to generate electricity. It is a win-win situation.”

Image courtesy of Gemma Reguera.
The microbes are the featured component of Reguera’s microbial electrolysis cells, or MECs. These fuel cells do not harvest electricity as an output - rather, they use a small electrical input platform to generate hydrogen and increase the MEC’s efficiency even more.
Through a Michigan Translational Research and Commercialization grant, Reguera and her team are now developing prototypes that can handle larger volumes of waste. She is also in talks with MBI, an enterprise operated by the MSU Foundation, to develop industrial-sized units that could handle the capacities of a full-scale biodiesel plant.
“Traditional approaches see producers pay hefty fees to have toxic wastewater hauled off to treatment plants,” Reguera said. “By cleaning the water with microbes on-site, we’ve come up with a way to allow producers to generate bioethanol, which replaces petrochemical methanol. At the same time, they are taking care of their hazardous waste problem.”

Read more: http://sustainabilitymatters.net.au/content/energy/article/microbes-to-clean-up-nuclear-waste-and-generate-biodiesel-995091874#ixzz4LnTvPgPp

The Indian physicist who ‘created’ a black hole Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Cecile G. Tamura 

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was known to the world as Chandra. The word chandra means "moon" or "luminous" in Sanskrit.

As a young doctoral student at Cambridge, Subramanian Chandrasekhar had deduced that certain types of stars, called white dwarfs, could not have a mass more than roughly 1.44 solar masses (the Chandrasekhar limit). If they exceeded this mass, they would undergo collapse under the pull of gravity. The collapse of a star exceeding the Chandrasekhar limit was a precursor to the idea of black holes.

 
When he presented his results in 1935 to the Royal Society, Britain’s most celebrated astronomer, Arthur Eddington (1882–1944) took violent objection on the grounds that Chandrasekhar had wrongly used quantum mechanics and that his proposed behavior for a star was simply absurd.

Physicists knew Eddington’s argument to be incorrect, but did not come out in Chandrasekhar’s defense—some thought it obvious, and some were afraid to contradict Eddington. Chandrasekhar left England (where all doors were closed to him in view of the above) and migrated to the USA to become one of the most influential and respected astrophysicists in the world.

His results came to be universally accepted and he won the Nobel Prize in 1983, over 50 years after his great discovery.

http://chandra.harvard.edu/blog/node/587

https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/…/the-indian-physicist-that-c…/

http://www.nobelprize.org/…/lau…/1983/chandrasekhar-bio.html

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, (born October 19, 1910, Lahore, India [now in Pakistan]—died August 21, 1995, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.) Indian-born American astrophysicist who, with William A. Fowler, won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics for key discoveries that led to the currently accepted theory on the later evolutionary stages of massive stars.

Chandrasekhar was the nephew of Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930.

Chandrasekhar was educated at Presidency College, at the University of Madras, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. From 1933 to 1936 he held a position at Trinity.

By the early 1930s, scientists had concluded that, after converting all of their hydrogen to helium, stars lose energy and contract under the influence of their own gravity. These stars, known as white dwarf stars, contract to about the size of Earth, and the electrons and nuclei of their constituent atoms are compressed to a state of extremely high density. Chandrasekhar determined what is known as the Chandrasekhar limit—that a star having a mass more than 1.44 times that of the Sun does not form a white dwarf but instead continues to collapse, blows off its gaseous envelope in a supernova explosion, and becomes a neutron star. An even more massive star continues to collapse and becomes a black hole. These calculations contributed to the eventual understanding of supernovas, neutron stars, and black holes.

Chandrasekhar joined the staff of the University of Chicago, rising from assistant professor of astrophysics (1938) to Morton D. Hull distinguished service professor of astrophysics (1952), and became a U.S. citizen in 1953. He did important work on energy transfer by radiation in stellar atmospheres and convection on the solar surface. He also attempted to develop the mathematical theory of black holes, describing his work in The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes (1983).

Chandrasekhar was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1953, the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1962, and the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1984. His other books include An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure (1939), Principles of Stellar Dynamics (1942), Radiative Transfer (1950), Hydrodynamic and Hydromagnetic Stability (1961), Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science (1987), and Newton’s Principia for the Common Reader (1995).

https://www.britannica.com/biogr…/Subrahmanyan-Chandrasekhar

Enrico Fermi an Italian physicist

Enrico Fermi (September 29, 1901 – November 28, 1954) was an Italian physicist, who created the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and the "architect of the atomic bomb". He was one of the few physicists to excel both theoretically and experimentally.

Fermi held several patents related to the use of nuclear power, and was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and the discovery of transuranic elements. He made significant contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics.

Fermi's first major contribution was to statistical mechanics. After Wolfgang Pauli announced his exclusion principle in 1925, Fermi followed with a paper in which he applied the principle to an ideal gas, employing a statistical formulation now known as Fermi–Dirac statistics. Today, particles that obey the exclusion principle are called "fermions". Later Pauli postulated the existence of an uncharged invisible particle emitted along with an electron during beta decay, to satisfy the law of conservation of energy.

Fermi took up this idea, developing a model that incorporated the postulated particle, which he named the "neutrino". His theory, later referred to as Fermi's interaction and still later as weak interaction, described one of the four fundamental forces of nature. Through experiments inducing radioactivity with recently discovered neutrons, Fermi discovered that slow neutrons were more easily captured than fast ones, and developed the Fermi age equation to describe this.

After bombarding thorium and uranium with slow neutrons, he concluded that he had created new elements; although he was awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery, the new elements were subsequently revealed to be fission products.

Fermi left Italy in 1938 to escape new Italian Racial Laws that affected his Jewish wife Laura Capon. He emigrated to the United States where he worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II.

Fermi led the team that designed and built Chicago Pile-1, which went critical on 2 December 1942, demonstrating the first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. He was on hand when the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, went critical in 1943, and when the B Reactor at the Hanford Site did so the next year. At Los Alamos he headed F Division, part of which worked on Edward Teller's thermonuclear "Super" bomb. He was present at the Trinity test on 16 July 1945, where he used his Fermi method to estimate the bomb's yield.

After the war, Fermi served under J. Robert Oppenheimer on the General Advisory Committee, which advised the Atomic Energy Commission on nuclear matters and policy. Following the detonation of the first Soviet fission bomb in August 1949, he strongly opposed the development of a hydrogen bomb on both moral and technical grounds.

He was among the scientists who testified on Oppenheimer's behalf at the 1954 hearing that resulted in the denial of the latter's security clearance. Fermi did important work in particle physics, especially related to pions and muons, and he speculated that cosmic rays arose through material being accelerated by magnetic fields in interstellar space.

Many awards, concepts, and institutions are named after Fermi, including the Enrico Fermi Award, the Enrico Fermi Institute, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station, and the synthetic element fermium (one of just over a dozen elements named after people). Source Wikipedia

Chemistry facts

Like most materials, the material glass expands when it gets warmer. When you place your thick glass in hot water, the outside of the glass gets hot right away. Glass is not good at transferring heat, so the inside of the glass gets hot later. Due to the thickness of the glass it takes some time until the warmth has reached the inner layer of the thick glass. This uneven distribution of warmth causes the outer layer of your glass to expand first. Because the inner layer is not yet warm and does not expand yet, a strong tension is being grated within the glass layer. And if you're unlucky, your glass cracks because of that!

How we escaped from the Big Bang

 Credit : app.griffith.edu.au

A Griffith University physicist is challenging the conventional view of space and time to show how the world advances through time.

Associate Professor Dr Joan Vaccaro, of Griffith’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics, has solved an anomaly of conventional physics and shown that a mysterious effect called ‘T violation’ could be the origin of time evolution and conservation laws.

“I begin by breaking the rules of physics, which is rather bold I have to admit, but I wanted to understand time better and conventional physics can’t do that,” Dr Vaccaro says.

“I do get conventional physics in the end though. This means that the rules I break are not fundamental. It also means that I can see why the universe has those rules. And I can also see why the universe advances in time.”

In her research published in The Royal Society Dr Vaccaro says T violation, or a violation of time reversal (T) symmetry, is forcing the universe and us in it, into the future

“If T violation wasn’t involved we wouldn’t advance in time and we’d be stuck at the Big Bang, so this shows how we escaped the Big Bang.

“I found the mechanism that forces us to go to the future, the reason why you get old and the reason why we advance in time.”

“The universe must be symmetric in time and space overall. But we know that there appears to be a preferred direction in time because we are incessantly getting older not younger.”

The anomaly Dr Vaccaro solves involves two things not accounted for in in conventional physical theories – the direction of time, and the behaviour of the mesons (which decay differently if time went in the opposite direction).

“Experiments show that the behaviour of mesons depends on the direction of time; in particular, if the direction of time was changed then their behaviour would also,” she says.

“Conventional physical theories can accommodate only one direction of time and one kind of meson behaviour, and so they are asymmetric in this regard. But the problem is that the universe cannot be asymmetric overall.

I begin by breaking the rules of physics, which is rather bold I have to admit

“This means that physical theories must be symmetric in time. To be symmetric in time they would need to accommodate both directions of time and both meson behaviours. This is the anomaly in physics that I am attempting to solve.”

Dr Vaccaro is presenting her work at the Soapbox Science event held in Brisbane as part of National Science Week, titled “The meaning of time: why the universe didn’t stay put at the big bang and how it is ‘now’ and no other time”.

Without any T violation the theory gives a very strange universe. An object like a cup can be placed in time just like it is in space.
“It just exists at one place in space and one point in time. There is nothing unusual about being at one place in space, but existing at one point in time means the object would come into existence only at that point in time and then disappear immediately.

“This means that conservation of matter would be violated. It also means that there would be no evolution in time. People would only exist for a single point in time – they would not experience a “flow of time”.

When Dr Vaccaro adds T violation to the theory, things change dramatically.

“The cup is now found at any and every time,” she says,

“This means that the theory now has conservation of matter – the conservation has emerged from the theory rather than being assumed. Moreover, objects change over time, cups chip and break, and people would grow old and experience a “flow of time”. This means that the theory now has time evolution.
The next stage of the research is to design experiments that will test predictions of the theory.

Dr Vaccaro will be speaking from a soapbox on Saturday August 20 between 1pm and 4pm in King George Square.

http://app.griffith.edu.au/…/uploa…/2016/08/joan-vaccaro.pdf

http://app.griffith.edu.au/sciencesimpact/escaped-big-bang/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-symmetry

 Cecile G. Tamura

The Solvay Conference

Cecile G. Tamura

Is this the greatest meeting of minds ever? Einstein and Curie among SEVENTEEN nobel prize winners at historic conference
It would be hard to imagine a more intelligent and brilliant group of people, let alone all these great minds in the same room together.
However this was the case in 1927 when Einstein and his venerable colleagues gathered at the Solvay Conference on Electrons and Photons in Brussels.

The International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry was founded by the Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay in 1912, following the historic invitation-only 1911 Conseil Solvay, the first world physics conference.

Since then some of the greatest scientists in the world have come together about every three years to discuss the most perplexing problems in both physics and chemistry.

The most famous conference was the October 1927 Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons, where the world’s most notable physicists met to discuss the newly formulated quantum theory.

The leading figures were Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. Einstein, disenchanted with Heisenberg’s 'Uncertainty Principle,' remarked 'God does not play dice.' Bohr, who won his Nobel prize in 1922. replied, 'Einstein, stop telling God what to do.'

This was not the only squabble between Einstein and Bohr however, as the two interpretations of the laws of physics was a great source of controversy between the pair. More recent research published in the academic journal, Physical Review Letters, has shown Bohr's theory to be the stronger of the two.

Despite Bohr's obvious talent and immense intelligence, Einstein is still a lot more well known. 'You don't need to be Einstein to work that out' is a common saying still used, whereas Bohr is not nearly as much of a household name.

Einstein received his Nobel Prize in 1922 also, 'for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect'. However the Nobel Committee for Physics decided that none of the year’s nominations met the criteria as outlined in the will of Alfred Nobel.

According to the Nobel Foundation's statutes, the Nobel Prize can in such a case be reserved until the following year, and this statute was then applied.

Seventeen of the twenty-nine attendees were or became Nobel Prize winners, including Marie Curie, who is not hard to spot as the only woman in the photograph.

The charity Marie Curie Cancer is one of the biggest cancer charities in the country, which began in 1948 when committee members decided to preserve the Marie Curie name in the charitable medical field.

Marie Curie had won Nobel Prizes in two separate scientific disciplines.

Also among the distinguished panel was Erwin Schrodinger. Eight years after this group photograph was taken he devised his famous quantum theory called Schrodinger’s Cat.

This suggested something could exist in two different states at the same time until it was observed.

In the experiment, Schrodinger proposed the idea of a cat left in a box with a radioactive substance, which had a 50 per cent chance of decaying and releasing a poison, thus killing the cat within an hour.

Because there is also a 50 per cent chance the substance would not decay, and thus not release the poison, quantum mechanics dictate that the cat is neither alive, nor dead, until the box is opened for measurement.

 Photograph of the first conference in 1911 at the Hotel Metropole. Seated (L-R): W. Nernst, M. Brillouin, E. Solvay, H. Lorentz, E. Warburg, J. Perrin, W. Wien, M. Skłodowska-Curie, and H. Poincaré. Standing (L-R): R. Goldschmidt, M. Planck, H. Rubens, A. Sommerfeld, F. Lindemann, M. de Broglie, M. Knudsen, F. Hasenöhrl, G. Hostelet, E. Herzen, J.H. Jeans, E. Rutherford, H. Kamerlingh Onnes, A. Einstein and P. Langevin.

Back row L-R: A Piccard, E Henriot, P Ehrenfest, Ed Herzen, Th. De Donder, E Schroedinger, E Verschaffelt, W Pauli, W Heisenberg, R. H Fowler, L Brillouin
Middle row L-R: P Debye, M Knudsen, W. L Bragg, H. A Kramers. P. A. M Dirac, A. H Compton, L. V. De Broglie, M Born, N Bohr
Front row: L-R: Angmeir, M Planck, M Curie, H. A Lorentz, A Einstein, P Langevin, Ch. E Guye, C. T. R Wilson, O. W Richardson

Back row L-R

Auguste Picard

DOB: 28 January 1884 Nationality: Swiss Fact: Made record-breaking ascent to 53,152ft in a balloon and also designed submarines. Basis for character Professor Cuthbert Calculus in TinTin. Gene Roddenberry named the Star Trek captain Jean Luc Picard after him.

Émile Henriot

DOB: 2 July 1885 Nationality: French Fact: First to show definitely that potassium and rubidium are naturally radioactive.

Paul Ehrenfest

DOB: 18 January 1880 Nationality: Austrian Fact: Mathmetician who worked on statistical mechanics. In his final years he suffered severe depression. At one point Einstein was so worried that he wrote to the Board of the University of Leiden, suggesting ways to reduce Ehrenfest's workload.
Edouard Herzen
DOB: 1876 Nationality: French Fact: Paris-based artist with an interest in pscyhoanalysis. He was good friends with Sigmund Freud.

Théophile Ernest de Donder

DOB: 1872 Nationality: Belgian Fact: He is considered the father of thermodynamics of irreversible processes, and wrote several books.

Erwin Schrödinger

DOB: 12 August 1887 Nationality: Austrian Fact: Conducted the famous experiment known as Schrödinger's cat, which postulated that something could exist in two states until it was observed.

Jules-Émile Verschaffelt

DOB: 27 January 1870 Nationality: Belgian Fact: He specialised in crystallography - the experimental science of the arrangement of atoms in solids.

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli

DOB: 25 April 1900 Nationality: Austrian Fact: Theoretical physicist who won a Nobel Prize in 1945 for his discovery of a new law of nature known as the exclusion principle. He had a severe breakdown following his divorce in 1930 and consulted psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung.

Werner Heisenberg

DOB: 5 December 1901 Nationality: German Fact: Awarded Nobel prize for physics in 1932. Best known for asserting the uncertainty principle in quantum theory. He was head of Germany's nuclear fusion research during World War Two.

Sir Ralph Howard Fowler

DOB: 17 January 1889 Nationality: English Fact: He worked as second in command working with the Experimental Department of HMS Excellent on Whale Island and made a major contribution on the aerodynamics of spinning shells, for which he was awarded an OBE in 1918.

Léon Nicolas Brillouin

DOB: August 7 1889 Nationality: French Fact: He contributed to quantum mechanics and radio wave propagation in the atmosphere.

Middle row L-R

Peter Joseph William Debye

DOB: March 24 1884 Nationality: Dutch Fact: Won theNobel prize for chemistry in 1936 for his study of molecular structure.

In January 2006, a book written by Sybe Rispens, alleged Debye had been actively involved in cleansing German science institutions of Jewish and other 'non-Aryan elements.'

Martin Hans Christian Knudsen

DOB: 15 February 1871 Nationality: Danish Fact: Knudsen was very active in physical oceanography, developing methods of defining properties of seawater.

Sir William Lawrence Bragg

DOB: 31 March 1890 Nationality: Australian Fact: He was joint winner with his father, Sir William Bragg, of the Nobel Prize for physics in 1915. He is most famous for his law on the diffraction of X-rays by crystals.

Hendrik Anthony Kramers

DOB: February 2 1894 Nationality: Dutch Fact: The physicist was one of the founders of the Mathematisch Centrum in Amsterdam. He won the Lorentz Medal in 1947 and Hughes Medal in 1951.

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac

DOB: August 8 1902 Nationality: Dutch Fact: Dirac shared the Nobel Prize in physics for 1933 with Erwin Schrödinger, 'for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory.'

Arthur Holly Compton

DOB: September 10 1892 Nationality: American Fact: Along with being an academic his father was a Presbyterian clergyman. Won nobel prize in physics in 1927. Discovered Compton scattering - a type of scattering that X-rays and gamma rays undergo in matter.

Louis-Victor-Pierre-Raymond, 7th duc de Broglie

DOB: August 15 1892 Nationality: French Fact: In addition to strictly scientific work, de Broglie thought and wrote about the philosophy of science, including the value of modern scientific discoveries.

Max Born

DOB: December 11 1882 Nationality: German Fact: Born was one of the 11 signatories to the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. He is also the great-grandfather of the famous TV editor and percussionist Kip Thompson-Born.

Niels Henrik David Bohr

DOB: 7 October 1885 Nationality: Danish Fact: Bohr married Margrethe Nørlund in 1912, and one of their sons, Aage Bohr, grew up to be an important physicist who in 1975 also received the Nobel prize.

Front row L-R

Irving Langmuir

DOB: 31 January 1881 Nationality: American Fact: Langmuir was married to Marion Mersereau in 1912 with whom he adopted two children: Kenneth and Barbara. After a short illness, he died in Woods Hole, Massachusetts from a heart attack in 1957. His obituary ran on the front page of The New York Times.

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck

DOB: 23 April 1858 Nationality: German Fact: Planck is a space observatory launched in 2009 was named after him. It is designed to observe the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) over the entire sky, using high sensitivity and angular resolution.

Marie Skłodowska Curie

DOB: 7 November 1867 Nationality: Polish Fact: While an actively loyal French citizen, Skłodowska–Curie (as she styled herself) never lost her sense of Polish identity. She taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland. She named the first chemical element that she discovered 'polonium' (1898) for her native country.

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz

DOB: 18 July 1853 Nationality: Dutch Fact: In addition to the Nobel prize, Lorentz received a great many honours for his outstanding work. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1905. The Society awarded him their Rumford Medal in 1908 and their Copley Medal in 1918.

Albert Einstein

DOB: 14 March 1879 Nationality: German Fact: Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers along with over 150 non-scientific works. His great intelligence and originality have made the word 'Einstein' synonymous with genius.

Paul Langevin

DOB: 23 January 1872 Nationality: French Fact: His daughter, Hélène Solomon-Langevin, was arrested for Resistance activity and survived several concentration camps. She was on the same convoy of female political prisoners as Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier and Charlotte Delbo.

Charles Eugene Guy

DOB: 1866 Nationality: Swiss Fact: His research focus was on the field of electric currents, magnetism, gas discharges. He was involved in Einstein’s work on the special theory of relativity.

Charles Thomson Rees Wilson

DOB: 14 February 1869 Nationality: Scottish Fact: The Wilson Condensation Cloud formations, occurring after a very large explosion (such as a nuclear detonation), are named after him.
The Wilson Society, the natural sciences society of Sidney Sussex College, is also named for him.

Sir Owen Willans Richardson

DOB: 26 April 1879 Nationality: English Fact: He demonstrated that the current from a heated wire seemed to depend exponentially on the temperature of the wire with a mathematical form similar to the Arrhenius equation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_Conference

http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/solvay-conference-probably…/

http://www.businessinsider.com/solvay-conference-1927-2015-4

How big is a proton? No one knows exactly, and that’s a problem

It’s a subatomic mystery with big implications. Six years after physicists announced a bafflingly too small measurement of the size of the proton, we’re still not sure what’s going on. With the release of new data today, the mystery has, if anything, got deeper.

Protons are particles found inside the nucleus of atoms. For years, the proton’s radius seemed pinned down at about 0.877 femtometres, or less than a quadrillionth of a metre.

But in 2010, Randolf Pohl at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, got a worryingly different answer using a new measurement technique.

Pohl’s team altered the one proton, one electron composition of a hydrogen atom by switching the electron for a heavier particle called a muon. They then zapped this altered atom with a laser. Measuring the resulting change in its energy levels allowed them to calculate the size of its proton nucleus. To their surprise, it came out 4 per cent smaller than the traditional value measured via other means.

A 2013 measurement strengthened the finding, sending physicists searching for an explanation to the “proton radius puzzle“.

Pohl’s experiment also applied the new technique to deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen that has one proton and one neutron – collectively known as a deuteron – at its nucleus. Accurately calculating the size of the deuteron took plenty of time, however.

“The only thing that’s going to allow us to solve it is new data”
Today, the team have published their measurements, revealing that like the proton, the deuteron comes up short: in this case by 0.8 per cent.

These new numbers show that the proton radius problem isn’t going away, says Evangeline J. Downie at the George Washington University in Washington DC. “It tells us that there’s still a puzzle,” says Downie. “It’s still very open, and the only thing that’s going to allow us to solve it is new data.”

Several more experiments, at Pohl’s lab and others, are already under way. One will return to the same muon technique to measure the size of heavier atomic nuclei, like helium. Another plans to simultaneously measure the scattering of muons and electrons.

Pohl suspects the culprit may not be the proton itself, but an incorrect measurement of the Rydberg constant, a number that describes the wavelengths of light emitted by an excited atom. But this constant is well established through other precision experiments, so something drastic would have to have gone wrong.

Another explanation proposes new particles that cause unexpected interactions between the proton and the muon, without changing its relationship with the electron.

That could mean the puzzle is taking us beyond the standard model of particle physics. “If at some point in the future, somebody will discover something beyond the standard model, it would be like this,” says Pohl, with first one small discrepancy, then another and another, slowly building to a more monumental shift.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6300/669

https://www.newscientist.com/…/2100834-how-big-is-a-proto…/…

http://arstechnica.com/…/researchers-orbit-a-muon-around-a…/

https://www.newscientist.com/…/dn23105-shrinking-proton-pu…/

http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/pictures/deuteron.cfm

https://www.psi.ch/media/the-psi-proton-accelerator

Thermonhaline Circulation

 

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Winds drive ocean currents in the upper 100 meters of the ocean’s surface. However, ocean currents also flow thousands of meters below the surface. These deep-ocean currents are driven by differences in the water’s density, which is controlled by temperature (thermo) and salinity (haline). This process is known as thermohaline circulation.

In the Earth's polar regions ocean water gets very cold, forming sea ice. As a consequence the surrounding seawater gets saltier, because when sea ice forms, the salt is left behind. As the seawater gets saltier, its density increases, and it starts to sink. Surface water is pulled in to replace the sinking water, which in turn eventually becomes cold and salty enough to sink. This initiates the deep-ocean currents driving the global conveyer belt.

Physicists Successfully Perform the world’s first Time Travel experiment

Scientists have conducted the world’s first successful time travel experiment, proving once and for all that time travel is possible.

Physicists at the University of Queensland, Australia, have shown that single particles of light (photons) can pass through a wormhole and interact with its older self.

Ewao.com reports:

The study of closed timelike curves (CTC’s) provides valuable insight into particles that can loop back on themselves, breaking free of linear time.

“One aspect of general relativity that has long intrigued physicists is the relative ease with which one can find solutions to Einstein’s field equations that contain closed timelike curves (CTCs)—causal loops in space–time that return to the same point in space and time.”

The Science

Closed time like curves are a necessary concept to understand this experiment.

CTCs are used to simulate powerful gravitational fields, like the ones produced by a spinning black hole, that could theoretically (based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity), warp the fabric of existence so that space-time bends back on itself. This creates a CTC, almost like a pathway to travel back through time.

The source of time travel speculation lies in the fact that our best physical theories seem to contain no prohibitions on traveling backward through time. The feat should be possible based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which describes gravity as the warping of spacetime by energy and matter. An extremely powerful gravitational field, such as that produced by a spinning black hole, could in principle profoundly warp the fabric of existence so that spacetime bends back on itself. This would create a “closed timelike curve,” or CTC, a loop that could be traversed to travel back in time. (source)

Experimenting With CTC’s

Single particles of light (photons) to simulate quantum particles travelling through time were just used by scientists from the University of Queensland, Australia. They showed that one photon can pass through a wormhole and then interact with its older self. Their findings were published in Nature Communications.

Much of their simulation revolved around investigating the “grandfather paradox,” a hypothetical scenario in which someone uses a CTC to travel back through time to murder her own grandfather, thus preventing her own later birth.

The Grandfather Paradox in Quantum Physics

Instead of a human being traversing a CTC to kill her ancestor, imagine that a fundamental particle goes back in time to flip a switch on the particle-generating machine that created it. If the particle flips the switch, the machine emits a particle—the particle—back into the CTC; if the switch isn’t flipped, the machine emits nothing.

“It’s intriguing that you’ve got general relativity predicting these paradoxes, but then you consider them in quantum mechanical terms and the paradoxes go away.” – University of Queensland physicist Tim Ralph (source)

Tim Ralph (quoted above) and his PhD student Martin Ringbauer simulated a Deutsch’s model of CTCs, according to Scientific American, “testing and confirming many aspects of the two-decades-old theory.” Although it’s just a mathematical simulation, the researchers (and their team/colleagues) emphasize that their model is mathematically equivalent to a single photon traveling through a CTC. (source)

Nothing has actually been sent back through time though; to do that, scientists would have to find a real CTC, which has yet to happen as far as we know. Of course, there always remains the possibility…

Thanks to

Sean Adl-Tabatabai

Editor-in-chief at Your News Wire

மின்சாரத்தைக் கண்டு பிடித்தவர் நம் குள்ள முனிவர் அகத்தியர் என்றால் நம்புவீர்களா?

குட்டை உருவமும், நீண்ட தாடியும் கொண்ட ஒரு சாமியாரும், ஒரு மண் குடுவையும் ஒரு சில ஆங்கில வார்த்தைகளும் உங்களுக்கு குழப்பத்தை ஏற்படுத்தி இருக்கலாம்.
முதலில் யாரிந்த சாமியார் என்பதை தெரிவித்து விடுகிறோம். இவர் தாங்க "அகத்தியர்". ஒரு சிலர் படத்தைப் பார்த்ததும் யூகித்திருப்பீர்கள்! சரி இவருக்கும் இந்த பதிவுக்கும் என்ன சம்மந்தம் என்பதைப் பார்க்கலாம்.

தமிழர்கள் மற்றும் இந்தியர்களின் பழங்கால அறிவியல் தொழில் நுட்பத்தைப் பற்றி ஏற்கனவே ஒரு சில பதிவுகளை நாம் தந்திருந்தோம். சுமார் 9000 ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன் இந்தியர்கள் கண்ட விமான அறிவியல், வானவியல் சாஸ்திரம் என்ற வரிசையில் இப்போது சுமார் 4000 ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன்னர் தமிழன் அறிந்து வைத்திருந்து ஒரு அரிய தொழில் நுட்பத்தைப் பற்றி விவரிப்பது தான் இந்த பதிவு.

"சன்ஸ்தப்ய ம்ரின்மாய பத்ரே
தாம்ரப்பத்ரம் சுசான்ஸ்க்ரிதம்
சாட்யெச்சிகிக்ரிவன் சர்த்ரர்ப்ஹி
கஷ்த்பம்சுப்ஹி
தஸ்தலொஷ்தோ நிததவ்யாஹ்
பர்தச்சடிதஸ்த்ஹா
சன்யோகஜ்ய்தே தேஜோ
மித்ரவருனசங்கியதம்"

புரியலை நா விட்டுடுங்க..., நீங்கள் இப்போது படித்த வரிகள் பைந்தமிழ் முனிவர் அகத்தியர் எழுதிய அகத்திய சம்கிதம் என்ற அறிவியல் பொக்கிடத்தின் ஒரு பகுதி.
இதற்கான விளக்கத்தை இப்போது பார்க்கலாம்,

"ஒரு மண் குடுவையை எடுத்து அதனுள்ளே தாமிர தகடை செலுத்தி சிறிதளவு சிகிக்ரிவம் நிறப்ப வேண்டும். பின்னே அதை ஈரமான மரத்தூள், பாதரசம் மற்றும் துத்தநாகத்தைக் கொண்டு பூசி, இரண்டு கம்பிகளை இணைத்தால் மித்ரவருனசக்தியைப் பெறலாம்"

மித்ரவருனசக்தியா அப்படினா என்ன? சித்தர்கள் தவமிருந்து கிடைக்கிற சக்தியா?

Rao Saheb Krishnaji Vajhe (சுருக்கமாய் கிருஷ்ணாஜி) 1891 ஆம் ஆண்டு புனேவில் தமது பொறியியல் படிப்பை முடித்துவிட்டு, தமது துறை சார்ந்த விடயங்களை பண்டைய கால படைப்புகளில் தேடலைத் தொடங்கினார். அப்போது உஜ்ஜெய்னி மாகாணத்தைச் சேர்ந்த Damodar Tryambak Joshi (சுருக்கமாய் ஜோஷி) ஜோஷியிடம் ஒரு சில பண்டைய ஆவனங்களைப் பெற்றுத் தனது ஆய்வுகளைத் தொடர்ந்தார். அது சுமார் கி.மு 1550 ஆம் ஆண்டின் ஆவணம்.

நாம் மேலே பார்த்த அந்த வரிகளைப் படித்த உடன் அதைப் பற்றி தெரிந்து கொள்ள சமஸ்கிருத வல்லுனரான Dr.M.C.Sahastra buddhe (சுருக்கமாய் புத்தே) அவர்களை அணுகினார். புத்தே அப்போது நாக்புர் பல்கலைக்கழக சம்ஸ்கிருதத் துறைத் தலைவர். அவர் இதைப் படித்துப் பார்த்ததும் ஆச்சரியத்துடன் அதிர்ந்து போய் இது ஏதோ ஒரு டேனியல் செல்லைப் போன்ற மின்கலத்தின் கட்டுமானத்தைப் போன்று இருக்கிறது என்றார்.

சரி இதை மேலும் ஆராய வேண்டும் என்ற ஆர்வம் தொற்றிக் கொள்ள புத்தே அதை நாக்பூரைச் சேர்ந்த பொறியியல் வல்லுனர் P.P. Hole (ஹோல்) அவர்களிடம் அதைக் கொடுத்து ஆராயச் சொன்னார். இதைக் கேட்டதும் நமது கிருஷ்ணாஜிக்கு உற்சாகம் பீறிட்டு வர அவரும் களத்தில் குதித்தார்.

ஒவ்வொன்றாய் படித்து படித்து அதில் கூறப்பட்டதைப் போன்றே தனது மின்கலத்தை வடிவமைக்கும் போது அவர் வந்து முட்டி மோதி நின்ற இடம் சிகிக்ரிவம் என்ற சொல். நாமும் கூட அதை படிக்கையில் என்ன அது என்று சற்று யோசித்திருப்போம். அவர்களும் இது என்னவாய் இருக்கும் எனத் திணரும் போது ஒரு சமஸ்கிருத அகராதியில் "மயிலின் கழுத்துப் பகுதி" என்று இருந்ததைப் பார்த்தார்கள்.

உடனே அவர்கள் இருவரும் பக்ஹ் என்ற ஒரு மயில் சரணாலயத்தில் தலைமைப் பொருப்பாளராய் இருந்தவரிடம் போய் ஏதாவது இறந்த மயில்கள் உள்ளதா அல்லது இங்கிருக்கும் மயில்கள் எப்போது சாகும் என கேட்க அவருக்கு கோபமே வந்துவிட்டது. பிறகு இவ்விருவரும் நிலைமையை விளக்கிக் கூற உடனே பக்ஹ் சிரிக்க ஆரம்பித்துவிட்டார். இருவரும் திகைப்புடன் அவரை நோக்க பக்ஹ் சொன்னார் "அது மயிலின் கழுத்து அல்ல மயிலின் கழுத்தைப் போன்ற நிறம் உள்ள பொருள்". இதைக் கேட்டதும் அவர்களுக்கு சிந்தனை முளைத்தது. ஆஹா! ஆம்! அது தான் அது!, மயிலின் கழுத்து நிறம்! அதே தான். காப்பர் சல்ஃபேட்! கண்டுபிடித்தாகிவிட்டது.

அடுத்த சில மணி நேரங்களில் மின் கலமும் தயாரானது. அந்த மின் கலத்தை ஒரு மல்டி மீட்டரை வைத்து ஆராய்ந்த போது 1.38 Open Circuit Voltage மற்றும் 23 milliampere Short Circuit Current. கிடைக்கப்பெற்றது. ஆமாம்! வெள்ளைக்காரன் Electric current என்றதை அலுப்பே இல்லாம மின்சாரம் என்று பெயர் மாற்றி பயன்படுத்தி வருகிறோமே அதற்கு நம் பாட்டன் இட்ட பெயர் மித்ரவருண சக்தி.

இந்த மித்ரவருண சக்தி என்ற பெயருக்கும் கூட விளக்கமுண்டு. வருணன் என்றால் தண்ணீர் என்பது நாம் அறிந்ததே, மிதரன் என்றால் சூரியன் என்று பொருள். ஆனால் இங்கே ஹைட்ரஜன் என்ற பொருளைக் கொள்ளும். ஏனெனில் சூரியனின் சக்தி ஹைட்ரஜனில் தான் உள்ளது. அதனால் இங்கே ஹைட்ரஜனைக் குறிக்க மித்ரா என்று குறிப்பிடுகிறார். தண்ணீரில் இருந்து ஹைட்ரஜனைப் பிறித்து எடுத்தால் மாபெரும் சக்தியை நாம் பெறலாம். எனவே அவ்வாறு பெறப்பட்ட சக்தியையே மித்ரவருண சக்தி என்கிறார் அகத்தியர்.

என்னப்பா இது அந்த காலத்துல மின்சாரமா என்று கேட்கிறீர்களா? தேடுங்கள் கூகுள் தளத்தில், பாக்தாத் பேட்டரி என்று ஆங்கிலத்தில். அது மட்டும் அல்ல ஹிஸ்டரி சேனலின் "தி ஏன்ஸியண்ட் ஏலியன்ஸ்' தொட்ரைப் பார்த்தவர்களுக்கு இது தெரிந்திருக்கக் கூடும்.

இருங்க இருங்க.., நம்ம பாட்டன் இதோட நிருத்திடல.. இன்னும் கொஞ்சம் தகவல் மட்டும் சுருக்கமாய் சொல்லி முடித்து விடுகிறோம்..

அவர் மேலும் கூறுவது, இது போல 100 கலன்களை செய்து தண்ணீரைப் பயன்படுத்தினால் அது பிராண வாயுவாகவும் ஹைட்ரஜனாகவும் பிரியும் என்கிறார். இந்த ஹைட்ரஜன் மிதக்கும் தன்மையுடையது எனவும் இதை ஒரு பையில் அடைத்தால் பறக்கப் பயன்படுத்தலாம் எனவும் தெரிவிக்கிறார். அது மட்டுமல்லாமல் இதே அகஸ்திய சம்ஹிதாவில் நமது நவீன கால "electroplating" என்று சொல்லக் கூடிய அதே முறையை தெள்ளத் தெளிவாக விவரித்து செயற்கையாக தங்கத்திற்கு சாயம் பூசுவது எப்படி என்றும் குறிப்பிட்டுள்ளார்.

குறிப்பு : அகத்தியர் வாழ்ந்த காலகட்டம் குறித்த தெளிவான புள்ளி விவரம் கிடைக்கப்பெறவில்லை. சுமார் 9000 ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன் இருந்து 3500 ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன் வரை வெவ்வேறு காலகட்டங்களில் அவர் வாழ்ந்ததைப் பற்றிய குறிப்புகள் உள்ளது. அதனால் இந்த அறிவியல் பொக்கிடம் நிச்சயம் குறைந்தது 3500 முதல் 4000 ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன்னர் ஒரு தமிழனால் கண்டுபிடிக்கப்பட்டது என்று கூறலாம்.