Physics and Astronomy

One of sport’s greatest scientific mysteries has been solved, sort of. Two University of Northern British Columbia physicists have explained the centuries-old question of why a curling stone curls, or moves laterally, in a counter-intuitive direction.

The solution – published in the current issue of the Canadian Journal of Physics – isn’t an elegant equation of the kind mathematicians adore, say the scientists, but rather one that involved a lot of experimental sweeping.

Johns Hopkins team examines Kepler’s supernova using NASA’s three Great Observatories

On the night of October 9, 1604, sky watchers – including Johannes Kepler, an astronomer best known for discovering the laws of planetary motion – were startled by the sudden appearance in the western sky of a “new star” which rivaled the brilliance of the nearby planets. Now, exactly 400 years later, a pair of astronomers at The Johns Hopkins University is using NASA’s three Great Observatories to

Physicists at the University of Bonn build quantum data memory

Physicists from the University of Bonn have succeeded in taking a decisive step forward towards processing quantum information with neutral atoms: in the latest issue of the ’Physical Review Letters’ vol. 93 (2004) they describe how they managed to set up a quantum register experimentally. Their next aim is to construct a quantum gate in which two or more atoms interact with each other in a controlled way. By combining th

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have discovered a new melt curve of hydrogen, resulting in the possible existence of a novel superfluid – a brand new state of matter

As reported in the Oct. 7 edition of the journal Nature, the researchers present the results of ab initio calculations of the hydrogen melt curve at pressures up to 2 million atmospheres.

The measurement of the high-pressure phases of hydrogen has been the focus of numerous experiments

Tracking newly discovered asteroids and comets to identify their orbits is the work of a small number of observatories. Yet UK students, using the Faulkes Telescope North – a remotely operated research quality telescope dedicated for educational use – will now be swelling these ranks. The students have taken such accurate data of a number of asteroids that the telescope has been awarded an observatory code and can now submit official data to the international body that monitors asteroids and comets,

An asteroid 2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide zoomed past Earth Sept. 29 and came within 962,951 miles of the planet. While this might not seem like a near miss, technically it is relatively close – merely four times the distance between Earth and the moon.

But, it’s not likely that a large space rock like this one would actually hit Earth in our lifetime, says physics professor Perry Gerakines, Ph.D. “The odds that an asteroid of this magnitude would impact the Earth are in the millions t