Sounds Of Life
Queen mum on Flickr.
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Einstein Was Right: Space-Time Is Smooth, Not Foamy
Space-time is smooth rather than foamy, a new study suggests, scoring a possible victory for Einstein over some quantum theorists who came after him.
In his general theory of relativity, Einstein described space-time as fundamentally smooth, warping only under the strain of energy and matter. Some quantum-theory interpretations disagree, however, viewing space-time as being composed of a froth of minute particles that constantly pop into and out of existence.
It appears Albert Einstein may have been right yet again.
A team of researchers came to this conclusion after tracing the long journey three photons took through intergalactic space. The photons were blasted out by an intense explosion known as a gamma-ray burst about 7 billion light-years from Earth. They finally barreled into the detectors of NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in May 2009, arriving just a millisecond apart.
Their dead-heat finish strongly supports the Einsteinian view of space-time, researchers said. The wavelengths of gamma-ray burst photons are so small that they should be able to interact with the even tinier “bubbles” in the quantum theorists’ proposed space-time foam.
If this foam indeed exists, the three protons should have been knocked around a bit during their epic voyage. In such a scenario, the chances of all three reaching the Fermi telescope at virtually the same time are very low, researchers said.
So the new study is a strike against the foam’s existence as currently imagined, though not a death blow.
“If foaminess exists at all, we think it must be at a scale far smaller than the Planck length, indicating that other physics might be involved,” study leader Robert Nemiroff, of Michigan Technological University, said in a statement. (The Planck length is an almost inconceivably short distance, about one trillionth of a trillionth the diameter of a hydrogen atom.)
“There is a possibility of a statistical fluke, or that space-time foam interacts with light differently than we imagined,” added Nemiroff, who presented the results Wednesday (Jan. 9) at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, Calif.
If the study holds up, the implications are big, researchers said.
“If future gamma-ray bursts confirm this, we will have learned something very fundamental about our universe,” Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University said in statement.
The nervous system of an adult fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster.
Image by Dr. Jana Boerner, Florida Atlantic University.
First flexible smartphones to launch in 2013.
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Samsung are getting ready to launch the first flexible smartphones to market in the first half of 2013. The company - along with many other smartphone makers - have been researching the the technology for as long as 10 years, but it’s been difficult to bring it to market due to difficulties mass producing the technology. Pictured above are prototype devices which Samsung exhibited last year, although it’s not clear exactly what form the final product will take.
The flexible displays will use OLEDs, which can be put on flexible material such as plastic or metal foil.
“The key reason for Samsung to use plastic rather than conventional glass is to produce displays that aren’t breakable. The technology could also help lower manufacturing costs and help differentiate its products from other rivals,” said Lee Seung-chul, an analyst at Shinyoung Securities.
So many yesses!
These photos are of violinist Jascha Heifetz as photographed by Gjon Mili in 1952 for LIFE Magazine.
Those squiggles are exactly what you suspect they are — a light attached to Jascha’s bow.
Thanks, Darrell!
When you stare into the App-yss, sometimes the App-yss stares back.
Get distracted by more comics at Loldwell.com
“ I am guilty of all the smartphone sins—in essence, staring at the phone when you should be staring at life… Am I deceiving myself? Because if you are taking a picture of your children, which is to say if you are holding a camera (in the form of a phone) and snapping a picture, then are you, in that moment, looking at them? Or are you anticipating a moment in the future—it is sometimes ten seconds in the future but it could well be ten years—when you will be looking at this very moment? ”
Thomas Beller reflects on how iPhone photos impact our experience: http://nyr.kr/Vu6dEG (via newyorker)
