Cosmic Rays

In the 3rd episode of Wonders of the Universe by Brian Cox (see below) there was the mention of cloud chambers. These chambers have allowed scientists to see the paths of ionising particles since 1912 (it is a chamber filled with supersaturated alcohol). These particles can also be affected by magnetic fields; the positive and negative particles curve in opposite ways to each other.

The particles that are seen in these cloud chambers do not come from the earth - they are travelling at a much too high speed with too much energy to come from such a close source.

Cosmic rays are most commonly protons. By travelling the paths of unaffected gamma rays (given off when protons collide with other protons) it can be seen that the high-speed protons originate from the two largest supernova remnants in the Milky Way. As these high speed protons collide with slower protons, it releases a neutral pion, instantaneously decaying into two gamma rays, having lower energy than normal gamma rays, therefore not showing up in the energy spectrum, making the discovery of the origin of the cosmic rays harder to trace. However, there are still questions regarding the MAIN causation of these rays.




Alice

Absolute Zero is no longer Absolute Zero

WHaT?! Something we learnt in GCSE  science isn't actually the whole truth?!???! Yeah, okay... welcome to my life

Scientists have rewritten the known laws of physics after hitting a temperature lower than absolute zero. Physicists at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany created a quantum gas using potassium atoms, fixing them in a standard lattice group using magnetic fields and lasers. When the magnetic fields were rapidly adjusted, the atoms shifted from a low energy state to their highest possible energy state. That rapid transition— along with the laser trapping field that kept the atoms in place — allowed the temperature of the gas to dip "a few billionths of a Kelvin below absolute zero."

The intriguing breakthrough could lead to the creation of "new forms of matter" in laboratories, but there are some side effects. Normally a cloud of atoms would be pulled downward by gravity, but some atoms in a group that’s below absolute zero could instead float upwards. Affected atoms in the modified gas also appear to mimic dark energy —hypothetically responsible for the expansion of the universe — by avoiding collapsing in on themselves.

Physics is so cool

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6115/52

I couldn't really find a suitable photograph for this post so please just enjoy this picture of a polar bear

Dayla

Euthanasia Coaster

Some people use Physics for good… and some use it to design a roller coaster that will kill you by the end of the ride. Behold, the Euthanasia Coaster!

“Euthanasia Coaster” is a hypothetic euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being. Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death. Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in space medicine, mechanical engineering, material technologies and, of course, gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasant, elegant and ritualistic. Celebrating the limits of the human body but also the liberation from the horizontal life, this ‘kinetic sculpture’ is in fact the ultimate roller coaster: John Allen, former president of the famed Philadelphia Toboggan Company, once sad that “the ultimate roller coaster is built when you send out twenty-four people and they all come back dead. This could be done, you know.”

Dayla

The Elements Song!

The elements song! One of our favourites... I really want to learn the words it would be such a cool party trick...

Alice and I might make a video of ourselves attempting to sing it and add it to this post soon... so stay tuned!
It's going to be pretty tragic.

Dayla (and Alice in spirit)

Are no two snowflakes alike?

Everyone’s heard the phrase “No two snowflakes are alike”,but is it true? and if so, how could we possibly know?

Complex snowflakes are made up of six symmetrical spokes, each extraordinarily detailed. If each tiny change in these details counts as new design of snowflake, these small variations result in a staggeringly huge amount of possible combinations.Clearly, checking every single snowflake that has ever fallen on Earth would be impossible. So we turn to mathematics...

To understand the maths  behind this (for those of you who haven't learnt about factorials), let’s think about a smaller number for a moment. Let’s say you have 10 books—how many possible ways can you arrange them on your bookshelf? You can decide on 10 different spots for the first book, then 9 for the second, 8 for the third, 7 for the fourth…and all the way down to just 1 for the tenth book. These numbers are then multiplied out to get the number of possible combinations, and although there are only ten numbers, multiplying them out gives you 3 628 800-i.e., over 3 million ways to organise just ten books. If you had 100 books, the combinations rocket up to a number a thousand times larger than the total number of atoms in the universe.

A complex snowflake easily has one hundred separate features, and because the maths behind the number of different designs of a snowflake is analogous to that othe bookcase example, the number of possible combinations for a snowflake is enormous, so the probability that there have ever been two identical snowflakes is so small that it is indistinguishable from zero.

So, now you know.

Dayla

The Scale of the Universe II

Hey guys!! If you enjoyed the video I posted a while ago about the universe in x10, check out this website!! http://htwins.net/scale2/

It's so amazing and goes EVEN smaller than the video and you can do it yourself!! My friend Emma wanted all of you to see it so please to check it out! It really doesn't take long and enjoy!

Alice

Wonders of Life

There is an easier way of getting interested in science, it isn't just all about the text books! Brian Cox is a physicist who has been on the radar for a few years, with his narrated series; Wonders of the Universe and lectures and podcasts.

Now he has branched out to the other sciences, Biology and Chemistry (mainly biology though!) with Wonders of Life. So far there have been 3 episodes, firstly focusing on how humans came to be related to other species, comparing our DNA with orang-utans and looking at how our jaw bone developed from small pieces to one large jaw bone, with the leftover bones forming the amplifiers for our ear drums.
He has also looked at how the earth as we know it formed, starting from a world filled with volcanic activity and how that difference in pH may have sparked the first signs of life.

Watching these programmes can really help to develop extra interests and information in the vast world of science, so we urge you to really give it a go!! Science really isn't all about what is on the school syllabus, and once you develop an inquisitive, scientific mind there is no stopping you!


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01qh3bb/Wonders_of_Life_What_Is_Life/

(find on bbciplayer)


Alice