DailyDirt: Customized (Super) Atomic Particles...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Chemists haven't quite mastered manipulating atoms and molecules, but physicists are making some progress in making/discovering all kinds of new particles -- and not just sub-atomic scale particles. We've mentioned "super heavy hydrogen" before, but there are a few other unnatural bits of matter brewing in labs, too. Check out a few of them below.

• Powerful X-ray pulses can blast away the guts of atoms, making hollow atoms. Giant Rydberg atoms, antimatter atoms (e.g. antihydrogen) and elements beyond Ununoctium (atomic #118) are extremely difficult to observe (or create in the first place), but these particles might prove useful someday. But even if they don't, it's interesting to see how far we can push the boundaries of atoms and groups of sub-atomic particles. [url]
• Magnetic superatoms are clusters of atoms with electrons in orbitals that surround the entire cluster instead of just the individual atoms. A stable magnetic superatom VNa₈ can be synthesized -- but not in macroscopic quantities yet. These kinds of superatoms could have spintronics applications, but it's really too early to make any kind of useful device out of these things. [url]
• A variant of atomic force microscopy can produce images of atomic bonds in molecules with amazing detail, gaining picometer resolution. Imaging at this scale could help develop molecular electronics and keep Moore's law from faltering more than it already has. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: afm, antimatter, chemistry, hollow atoms, molecular electronics, moore's law, particles, physics, rydberg atoms, spintronics, super heavy hydrogen, superatoms, vna8

DailyDirt: If I Could Catch Time In A Bottle...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The scientific method relies on independent verification of measurements and results, but sometimes it's not easy to replicate experiments or measure things at the leading edge of science. Scam artists are often identified when they explain that their results are so far advanced that no one else can replicate them. Real scientists, though, don't buy that. Here are a few scientific discoveries that still need a bit more verification.

• Neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light don't seem to exist, and the CERN team that first said they saw some FTL neutrinos, now admit they made a couple mistakes. the CERN team, after reporting unusual data, determined definitively that it was caused by a mistake (and what that mistake was) with input from the broader scientific community. As some expected, there were systematic errors that produced a timing error of just 60 nanoseconds. [url]
• CERN scientists have trapped anti-hydrogen for a little over 15 minutes -- a new record that could allow them to determine more about how antimatter behaves. Does anti-hydrogen rise, fall or do nothing in a gravitational field? [url]
• The Large Hadron Collider is still hunting down the elusive Higgs boson which might not exist at all. This sub-atomic particle has been nicknamed the "God Particle" -- but it looks like it's just a matter of time before people either find it or start re-writing modern physics. [url]
• To discover more interesting science-related stuff, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: anti-hydrogen, antimatter, ftl, gravity, higgs boson, lhc, measurements, neutrinos, particles, physics, science
Companies: cern