Anti-Hydrogen Captured!

10:34:40AM, 27/11/10 AEST-11:05:01AM, 27/11/10 AEST

As you may have already heard, or you may already know a lot about it (whether your a physicist, technician or enthusiast), Antimatter has been captured for the first time. It has been created artificially in experiments.

I already knew about the discovery and capture, and know a lot about the physics behind it, however I wanted to inform and educate you all on the subject.

Please note, some of the quotes and statistics come from http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-tech/large-hadron-collider-traps-antimatter/story-fn5fsgyc-1225956290864 and other sources, while most of it comes from me. I will cite these sources correctly.

Antimatter is the opposite of matter and is annihilated when it comes into contact with matter and vice versa. Instead of an electron, it has a positron (also called an antielectron-but I prefer positron). A positron has the opposite elementary charge to an electron. Instead of a proton it has an antiproton which also has the opposite elementary charge to a proton. Then there is the antineutron which has an elementary charge of 0 (like a neutron).

Now that the basic (and I mean basic) structure of an antimatter atom has been explained, we can get on to the story.

Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider have trapped 38 atoms of antihydrogen for 0.166 seconds using incredibly powerful magnetic fields. [1]

"We’ve been able to trap about 38 atoms, which is an incredibly small amount, nothing like what we would need to power Star Trek’s starship Enterprise or even to heat a cup of coffee,"

Robert Thompson, Head of Physics and Astronomy, University of Calgary said. [1]

Now this may seem like nothing, but that is incredible, this means with the huge amounts of data collected, that we can confirm what we are theorising and/or discover completely new ideas and theories.

For Star Trek fans (like myself) the whole concept of a warp drive revolves around anitmatter. Matter (deuterium) and anitmatter (antideuterium)  are injected in to the core by powerful containments fields (magnetic fields to control the particle flow) and collide releasing vast quantities of energy (gamma rays, X-rays, etc.). This powers the warp nacelles and generates a "warp field" and warps spacetime in that field to propel the vessel at FTL velocities.

A paper from the study was published in well known peer-reviewed, scientific journal Nature. [1]

That paper involved cooling negatively charged antiprotons and compressing them into a cold cloud of positrons.[1]

This possibly involves Bose-Einstein condensate temperatures.

“Understanding antimatter will hopefully enable us to shed light on why almost everything in the known universe consists of matter,"

Micheal Charlton, University of Swansea said.[1]

Footnotes:

[1] http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-tech/large-hadron-collider-traps-antimatter/story-fn5fsgyc-1225956290864

Cubans Don't Like COD?

04:27:10PM, 25/11/10 AEST-04:46:20PM, 25/11/10 AEST

As I am typing this post, I am also looking at this article (http://www.news.com.au/technology/gaming/call-of-duty-black-ops-attempt-on-castros-life-is-perverse-says-cuba/story-e6frfrt9-1225951908748) on http://www.news.com.au and I don't want to take any credit for something I didn't do (that's just how I roll). However, I do provide commentary and express my opinion.

CUBAN authorities say Americans are living out their Fidel Castro assassination fantasies through video games. Ouch Cuba, I bet that hurt!

"What the United States couldn't accomplish in more than 50 years, they are now trying to do virtually," said an article posted on Cubadebate, a state-run news website.

The brouhaha surrounds highly anticipated game Call of Duty: Black Ops, which went on sale on Tuesday.

The game takes players on secret missions to American Cold War enemies such as the Soviet Union, Cuba, Vietnam and Laos.

The Cuban operation is one of the first challenges players face. Well one of them have to come first!

The mission takes place with John F. Kennedy in the White House in the months leading up to the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon.

Players must shoot their way through the colonial streets of Havana on a mission to assassinate Castro, then a young revolutionary who had recently overthrown dictator Fulgencio Batista.

In a twist, they end up killing a body-double and are sent to prison in Siberia.

Cuba said the game attempts to legitimise murder and assassination in the name of entertainment

"This new video game is doubly perverse," the Cubadebate article said.

"On the one hand, it glorifies the illegal assassination attempts the United States government planned against the Cuban leader ... and on the other, it stimulates sociopathic attitudes in North American children and adolescents."

Hey, I'm an adolescent and I'm not adversely affected by playing COD 4, COD 6 and COD 7 (maybe it's because I suck at them-well only on PC. Even though I do love the PC as a gaming platform).

Messages left by The Associated Press with Activision were not immediately returned. 

The article said psychological studies show that violent video games can produce anti-social behaviour in the young because players must take an active part in the bloodletting in order to win.

Let me get one thing straight, bloodletting is a far, far obsolete medical practice, used thousands of years ago by Chinese doctors and other cultures. I don't think they would do that at all!

Watching violent movies, by contrast, is a more passive pursuit and thus less likely to produce copycat behavior.

Christopher J. Ferguson, a psychology professor at Texas A&M International University who studies video game violence, said such studies were off-base.

Frankly, I agree with him, not only as a COD-lover, but as a scientifically minded person.

"There is really a lot of, obviously, rhetoric and politics going on," he told the AP.

Which the Cubans said themselves with their remarks on the Americans reliving their assassination 

fantasies virtually.

"At this point, there is no evidence that video games, violent or otherwise, cause harm to minors."

Prof Ferguson said youth violence in the United States "is at its lowest level in 40 years", yet studies show that as many as 95 percent of young men have played violent video games at some point in their lives.

Cuba says Castro has survived more than 600 attempts on his life. He must be prestige or something...I wonder if that is on COD 7, COD 6, COD 4 or some other one?

Others count the number of serious plots in the dozens, including CIA attempts to poison his pen and his trademark cigars; as well as efforts to recruit a former young German lover and to hide a gun in a TV camera.

American intelligence agents once allegedly hired a hotel worker to slip a fatal pill into Castro's milkshake.

Like all the others, the plot was unsuccessful.

"I think I hold the dubious record of having been the target of more assassination attempts than any politician, in any country, in any era," Castro said in a July 1998 speech, drawing laughter from the crowd.

"The day I die, nobody will believe it." I will...we all die at some point.

North Korea Fires at Yeonpyeong

07:25:06AM, 25/11/10 AEST-07:35:33AM, 25/11/10 AEST


On Tuesday (23/11/10) at 02:34pm, North Korea fired several rounds of artillery at South Korean waters and an island called Yeonpyeong. It was largely a coastal bombardment, injuring several soldiers.

Col. Lee Bung-woo, spokesman at South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff has stated that most of them hit the waters just off the island although some of them hit the actual island.

The South Korean military responded with their own artillery.

 Source: http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2010/11/23/93/0301000000AEN20101123006100315F.HTML

Today at 07:33am AEST, The Today Show stated that a total of 4 people had been killed (2 of which were civilian).


The US Navy is headed to South Korea to join in "naval exercises" following the attack.

MIT's Transient Imaging Camera

04:23:00PM, 22/11/10 AEST-05:26:37PM, 22/11/10 AEST

Well, MIT keeps pumping out new technology. One of the latest is a Transient Imaging Camera-with the ability to capture objects not within it's direct view.

It uses multiple bursts of light quadrillionths of a second apart, and only open for a femtosecond, then counts the quantity of photons it receives. Then,it emits another pulse of light and opens for a fraction amount longer, then counts the new photons it receives and uses these to map out the area.

Currently, the images being generated are poor quality (and I mean really poor quality). However, the staff at Massachusetts Institute of Technology are attempting to make them more higher quality.

Here is the MIT link:

http://cameraculture.media.mit.edu/femtotransientimaging

Restructuring Complete!

07:20:15AM, 20/11/10 AEST-07:26:21AM, 20/11/10

ScienceWorld's organisational restructuring is finally complete! We have some new staff!

The Gaming department is now the Entertainment department, with three divisions:

• Gaming
• Film
• Music

Brady is  now our FPS Gamer and Kyle is now our Web Gamer. Ethan is now Head of Gaming division and Braeden is Head of Entertainment department.

Bailey is now President (as far authority goes, he's second in command).

Blogging will now return to normal!

Thanks for the wait!