Bulletin On Mini Black Holes: existence, artificiality and reality

• Laser light creates black holes in the lab: As it is hard to experimentally observe what happens to the light’s wavelength, when it approaches a black hole’s horizon, Ulf Leonhardt at the University of St Andrews, UK, and his colleagues seem to have found an alternative route. By firing two laser beams along an optical fiber, first the slower one and then the faster one (the speed depends on the wavelength), the faster light beam tries chases the first bundle of light. When the fast light beam reaches the slower one, it dramatically drops its speed in order to take the lead; however, if the speed difference is large, then the faster light beam becomes trapped by means of the slower bundle — an effect that is intuitively similar to what happens to the light beam at a black hole’s horizon. The team was able to measure the light’s shift patters, which closely correspond to those predicted by cosmologist at event horizons. [full article here].
• Black Holes at the LHC: I found this article by P. Kanti to be quite informative and relatively easy to follow. It is an nice overall outlook at the black-hole creation at the LHC.
• As CERN will make an attempt at observing — or disproving the existence of — mini black holes, which is one of the consequences of — and hence one of the ways to prove or disprove — the superstring theory, here appeared another absolutely pointless, inconstructive, inconclusive, badly written, and subtly and deliberately offensive article, aimed at “string theory is wrong, get over it…”.

Found online

I post here a couple of extracts from the world of (1) astronomy and astrophysics, (2) biology and archaeology, (3) technology, (4) politics and the world that I have found on the internet.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Discovery of the Candidacy for the Furthest Galaxy: The Hubble telescope has come across a galaxy, presumably 13 billion light-years away, making it a strong candidate for the furthest and hence youngest galaxy ever observed. It has been given the name (or the code, rather) A1689-zD1. The galaxy would have formed only 700 million years after the Big Bang; if this is the case, then this galaxy must be one of the first few that helped end the dark ages of the Universe. The discovery was made by means of the natural magnification, provided by the galaxy cluster Abell 1689. [full article here]. Update: 13 billion light years away is actually so very huge. If you think about it, it amounts to about metres away; that’s 4,000,000,000,000,000,000 metres. And we worry that our work is too far away from our home!
2. Dark-matter powered first stars: When a star emits radiation, it does it through thermonuclear fusion reactions that occur deep inside it and its nucleus. There is a suggestion that the early stars — that existed about 100 to 200 million years after the Big Bang — were predominantly fueled not by fusion, but rather by annihilation. As the Universe was still relatively small at that time, matter and antimatter existed in high proximity (as opposed to, for example, what it is today), this suggestion has a significant base. [full article here].
3. Smaller Version of the Solar System Is Discovered: Scott Gaudi of Ohio State University and his colleagues “said Wednesday that they had found a miniature version of our own solar system 5,000 light-years across the galaxy — the first planetary system that really looks like our own, with outer giant planets and room for smaller inner planets.” The object was named OGLE-2006-BLG-109. “… a planet about two-thirds of the mass of Jupiter and another about 90 percent of the mass of Saturn are orbiting a reddish star at about half the distances that Jupiter and Saturn circle our own Sun. The star is about half the mass of the Sun.” “… warm rocky planets — suitable for life — could exist undetected in the inner parts of the system.” The planets were discovered by means of the microlensing. ” … on March 28, 2006, a star 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius began to pass in front of one 21,000 light-years more distant, causing it to flash. That was picked up by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, or Ogle.” The collected data provided the knowledge of “not just the masses of the interloper star and its two planets, but also rough approximations of their orbits”. [full article here; for those who have access to Science articles, here are their results].
4. Beautiful Nebula (photo): (Traffic Alert!!!) view photo.
5. Crab Nebula (photo): (Traffic Alert!!!) view photo.

Biology and Archaeology

1. Modern Birds Existed Before Dinosaur Die-Off: “Modern birds originated a hundred million years ago—long before the demise of dinosaurs, according to new research.” Until recently, fossil records were interpreted as if modern birds originated about 60 million years ago; however, the genetic analyses (based on the concept of molecular clock) suggest that these originated some 40 million year earlier (that being 100 million years ago). Dinosaurs disappeared some 65 million years ago. [full article here].
2. 20 Facts About the Human Genome: Here. Perhaps you will find something you don’t know (I did).
3. Who Eats Who: What a great shot!
4. Finding an Underwater Lake (video): Excellent extract from “The Deep” programme. (Traffic Alert!!!) Watch video.

Technology

1. Air-Fueled Car: “A French engineer has claimed he will be ready to start selling a car with no carbon emissions within a year.” (Traffic Alert!!!) Watch video.
2. Zero Emission Car: Here is a short explanation of the suggestion of collecting the carbon dioxide, emitted by a car, in order to later reuse it. Good idea, but, as someone mentioned it in the comments, the overall energy produced from this ‘recycling’ is probably not going to be much. But then again, we need to see the actual calculations.
3. These are in tight connection with point 3 of the list of 2008’s saver technologies.
4. Information age: How exactly has information and communication technology evolved over time? A very nice photographic timeline (here).

Politics and the World

1. The (supposed) 1980 Soviet particle beam weapon construction site (photo): If Soviet Union indeed ever had a project of developing the particle beam weapon around 1980, the construction site is believed to be captured in this American satellite image.
2. Chicago to Raise the Environmental Awareness by Turning Lights Off: On March 29 from 20:00 to 21:00, as part of the Earth Hour 2008, Chicago will turn the lights off. I wonder what is the estimated cost of saved energy over this hour — must be a very-very large number. If anyone among the readers is from Chicago, I would like to see a few photographs of the city during the hour — that must be magnificent! [reference]
3. View from Mountain Everest: Have you ever stood on “the top of the world”? Are you planning on doing so any time soon? Well, me neither. But at least we can can a sense of what it is like, by taking a look at this splendid panoramic photograph: (Traffic Alert!!!) here.

Physics World’s Best of Two Thousand and Seven

The well renown magazine Physics World (~) published an article in their online news section a week ago, entitled “The Best of 2007″ [note: in order to be a little different, I spelled out "2007" ;)]

In it (which can be found here), they list the most interesting articles that appeared in the Physics World magazine in 2007. The intro is a very good summary of the year, so I thought I’d copy it here too:

It was the year that the first “commercial” quantum computer was unveiled, and 2007 also saw a flurry of research into the supersolid state of matter. Astronomers improved our understanding of the cosmos by zeroing in on the origins of ultra-high energy cosmic rays and providing the best-ever map of dark matter in the Universe. While the Nobel Prize in Physics – awarded for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance — demonstrated how investing in fundamental research could lead to rapid improvements in technology, the year ended on a sour note with some physicists in the US and UK facing significant cuts in their research funding.

The financial cut is indeed a very sad instance of this past year (more here).

To the list, I would also, however, add the ruling out of PVLAS axion, which, I think, was also quite important.