A team of researchers from the University of California, HRL Laboratories and the California Institute of Technology has developed the lightest material in the world, approximately 100 times lighter than extruded polystyrene (marketed under the brand name Styrofoam), which until now held the record. The new material contains 99.99% air and only 0.01% solids.
Two decades ago an astonishing phenomenon was discovered: intense flashes were observed in the mesosphere, a region of the atmosphere located thirty miles above the ground and believed to be devoid of activity. Related to storm lightning but located tens of kilometers above the clouds, they were dubbed delayed sprites.
To the strange nature of one of the seemingly simpler chemical compounds, water, a new rarity has just been added. Scientists have discovered that when it is cooled below freezing, water can transform into a new type of liquid. Details appear in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) Journal of Physical Chemistry B.
British scientists have developed a system to generate electricity directly from urine, using microbial fuel cells (CCMs). The method could be interesting if we consider that each day an adult human being produces 2.5 liters of urine, and that each year 6.4 trillion liters of urine are produced in the world, which are discarded.
The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics has recognized the work of three physicists - Saul Perlmutter (USA), Brian P. Schmidt (Australia) and Adam G. Riess (USA) - who discovered that the Universe is expanding at a rate each time accelerated by observing distant supernovae.
The circular particle accelerator Tevatron, the American equivalent of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of the European CERN, which recreated the Big Bang for almost 26 years, has announced that it is closing its doors definitively today due to lack of funding.
On the surface, if a weatherman had to inform us daily of the meteorology of Venus, his job would be quite boring. Generally, the climate on this neighboring planet is characterized by temperatures of 430 degrees on the surface, a sky covered with a suffocating mass of sulfuric acid clouds, and an atmosphere with 90 times the pressure of Earth.
The fundamental pillars of physics and Einstein's theory of relativity falter after the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has discovered through the OPERA experiment that there is something that could move faster than light: neutrinos.
Danni Büchner is invited to Sam Dylan's Halloween party. But the "Goodbye Germany" emigrant has no desire for many other party guests. And find clear words.
