Sniffing Out the One in a Quadrillion

ScienceJon Cartwright

Published in ScienceNOW, 9 Dec 2011

Detecting tiny amounts of gases might seem dull, but when it comes to spotting traces of toxic substances that are intended for chemical attacks, it can make the difference between life and death. Now, scientists have improved the sensitivity of gas detection almost 1000 times over, paving the way for more-rigorous security operations and even a novel way of performing carbon dating. […]

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Latest Fermi studies find no trace of dark matter

Physics WorldJon Cartwright

Published in Physics World, 8 Dec 2011

Independent analyses of data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have found no trace of low-mass dark matter – the mysterious substance thought to make up much of the universe. The results appear to go against recent direct evidence for low-mass dark matter, although some physicists believe there is no conflict.

Dark matter is an invisible substance thought to make up nearly a quarter of the mass/energy of the universe. While its gravitational pull is needed to explain the properties of massive structures such as galaxies, it does not interact strongly with light and has therefore yet to be observed directly. The most popular candidates for dark matter are so-called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). To spot these WIMPs directly, researchers have built detectors in underground labs where the low background noise ought to allow any signals to stand out. These detector experiments include DAMA and CRESST, both based underground at the Gran Sasso laboratory in central Italy, and CoGeNT, based in the Soudan mine in the US. […]

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Atmospheric carbon capture costs underestimated

Chemistry WorldJon Cartwright

Published in Chemistry World, 6 Dec 2011

Capturing carbon dioxide from the air to mitigate climate change is likely to be too expensive to be practical, a new study suggests. The study, which has examined the thermodynamics of different carbon-capture methods, implies that removing a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere will cost in the region of $1000 (£640).

Carbon capture is one of the most popular ideas to combat climate change. The process can either be performed at large ‘point sources’ like fossil-fuel power plants, which emit high concentrations of CO2, or indeed anywhere to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels. Once the CO2 is captured, it must be purified and stored so it can no longer have an effect on the climate. […]

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Radio-wave excess could point to dark matter

Physics WorldJon Cartwright

Published in Physics World, 1 Dec 2011

An excess of radio waves recorded by a balloon-borne experiment could be a signal of dark matter, a new study suggests. Data from the ARCADE mission seem to fit in with other direct, recently reported evidence for dark matter, although some believe they may have a mundane explanation.

Dark matter is an elusive substance thought to make up more than 80% of the matter in the universe. While dark matter is invoked to explain the anomalous rotational velocity of galaxies and other mysterious astronomical phenomena, no-one has yet detected it conclusively. In recent years, however, hints of detections have been reported by several experimental collaborations, namely CRESST and DAMA at the underground lab in Gran Sasso, Italy, and CoGeNT at the Soudan mine in Minnesota, US. Other secondary evidence for dark matter has been reported by the satellite-borne experiment PAMELA and possibly the balloon-borne experiment ATIC – both of which have looked for excesses of electrons and positrons generated by dark-matter collisions. […]

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E-mail Reveals Your Closest Friends

ScienceJon Cartwright

Published in ScienceNOW, 30 Nov 2011

It’s not surprising that someone could guess your friends simply by peeking at your e-mail. But a more detailed look at your electronic communications could reveal which friends are closer to you than others, according to a new study.

In recent years, researchers have come up with several methods to suss out personal relationships from e-mails without actually reading the messages themselves. One is to set a volume threshold: If a person sends e-mails to someone else more than, say, 30 times over 6 months, the two people are probably well acquainted—that is, they are probably in each other’s social network. Another tack is to ignore the volume of e-mail and simply look at whether a letter elicits a response. […]

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Shocking osmotic route to nanopores

Chemistry WorldJon Cartwright

Published in Chemistry World, 28 Nov 2011

Scientists in the UK have come up with a new method to create nanoporous materials. The method, which uses osmosis to drive a minor component from a material, should make nanoporous materials easier to manufacture for applications such as filtration.

Nanoporous materials have become important for many emerging applications. Their high surface area makes them ideal for catalysis, while the compact structure of their pores can make them excellent for photonics or water filtration. However, the manufacture of nanoporous materials is not always straightforward. One component of a material – the one that becomes the pores – needs to be removed, and to make this possible it must be connected throughout the structure, as well linked to the outside. […]

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How to Make a Tank Disappear

ScienceJon Cartwright

Published in ScienceNOW, 23 Nov 2011

For several years, researchers have known that carbon nanotubes are one of the blackest known materials. These tiny scaffolds—which have a structure like rolled-up chicken wire—barely scatter light. Indeed, some believe the nanotubes are so black that they might make a new type of camouflage—one that conceals anything as a flat black blob. To test the idea, scientists etched a picture of a tank onto a silicon surface. […]

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How Ink Flows

ScienceJon Cartwright

Published in ScienceNOW, 22 Nov 2011

“True ease in writing comes from art,” wrote Alexander Pope in the early 18th century. Three hundred years on, however, we might get a little extra help from science—thanks to researchers who have been studying how ink flows from pen to paper. Performing theoretical calculations first, the team devised equations for predicting the spreading of ink from a moving pen. […]

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LHC could shed light on superluminal neutrinos

Physics WorldJon Cartwright

Published in Physics World, 22 Nov 2011

The recent result that neutrinos appear to travel faster than light could be tested at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), according to a pair of physicists in the US. Although the European particle accelerator would not be able to fully confirm or refute the result, it would be able to test a mechanism that is thought to occur when neutrinos move faster than light.

The result that neutrinos may travel faster than light came in September, when physicists at the OPERA experiment in Italy reported that neutrinos travelling 730 km underground appeared to arrive 60 ns too early. If the result is correct, it will contradict Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which says the speed of light is the maximum speed possible. […]

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Particle Smasher Hints at Physics Breakthrough

ScienceJon Cartwright

Published in ScienceNOW, 17 Nov 2011

In late 2008, a few onlookers believed that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) would bring the end of the world. Three years later, our planet remains intact, but the European particle smasher may have made its first crack in modern physics.

If this crack turns out to be real, it might help explain an enduring mystery of the universe: why there’s lots of normal matter, but hardly any of the opposite—antimatter. “If it holds up, it’s exciting,” says particle physicist Robert Roser of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. […]

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