Time Itself May Be Slowing Down

For a decade, scientists have puzzled over a surprising phenomenon: Supernovae stars viewed at extreme distances seem to be moving away from us faster than those nearby. Most researchers have assumed that the stars have somehow accelerated – or that, more precisely, the rate of the expansion of the post-Big Bang universe itself has accelerated over time. But hold on just a minute. A group of scientists from the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, and Spain’s University of Salamanca have offered a different idea. Maybe it’s the passage of time itself that’s slowing down, they say. The distant galaxies only look like they’re accelerating because our deep-space telescopes are essentially looking back in time to see them, to when time was going faster.

Site – http://blog.wired.com

René Magritte

Magritte was born in Lessines, in the province of Hainaut, in 1898, the eldest son of Léopold Magritte, a tailor, and Adeline, a milliner. He began drawing lessons in 1910. In 1912, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Sambre. Magritte was present when her body was retrieved from the water. The image of his mother floating, her dress obscuring her face, may have influenced a 1927-1928 series of paintings of people with cloth obscuring their faces, including Les Amants, but Magritte disliked this explanation. His art shows a more representational style of surrealism compared to the “automatic” style seen in works by artists like Joan Miró. In addition to fantastic elements, his work is often witty and amusing. He also created a number of surrealist versions of other famous paintings.

René Magritte described his paintings by saying,

My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, ‘What does that mean?’. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.

Largest ever telescope gets $200m to proceed

The prospect of a ground-based telescope that can directly see extrasolar planets, the earliest stellar systems and the birth of distant galaxies is nearing reality. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has pledged $200m for the design and construction of the Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT), which is being developed by a consortium of astronomers in the US and Canada, including the California Institute of Technology and the University of California. As its name suggests, the TMT will consist of a mirror 30 m in diameter, giving it eight times the collecting area of any current telescope. But unlike conventional telescopes, the size of the mirror means that it will have to be split up into 492 individual hexagonal segments, all packed together into a curved honeycomb arrangement.

Site – http://physicsworld.com

Google-backed Nanosolar rolls out first set of panels

Even without additional funding from Congress via the recently passes energy bill, the future of solar power is looking bright. As reported the other day in the New York Times, Google-backed solar-panel start-up Nanosolar has started cranking out a new breed of panels that can be manufactured “at a price at which solar energy becomes less expensive than coal.”

Site – http://weblog.infoworld.com

Science Magazines Top 10 Breakthroughs 2007

As this trip around Sol comes to a close, the annual tradition of creating “best of the year” lists is in full swing. Here, we cover Science magazine’s top scientific breakthroughs of 2007. As one can see at a quick glance, a diverse set of scientific fields are represented, from genetics to neuroscience to computer science. We’ll start out with the breakthrough that earned top honors, then continue onto the nine runners-up, in no particular order.

Site – http://arstechnica.com

Toshiba Builds Micro Nuclear Reactor

Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs.

Site – http://www.nextenergynews.com

TIME Magazine Top 10 Scientific Discoveries

Reprogramming regular skin cells to behave just like embryonic stem cells, publications of Craig Venter’s entire diploid genetic sequence, and turning stem cells into functioning human heart-valve tissue were the top 3 in TIME Magazine’s list of top 10 scientific discoveries of 2007.

Site – http://www.time.com

Neuromancer

Neuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Gibson, notable for being the most famous early cyberpunk novel and winner of the so-called science-fiction “triple crown” (the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award). It was Gibson’s first novel and the first of the Sprawl trilogy. The title seems to be a play on words based on its close resemblance to Necromancer, a person who receives divinations from disembodied spirits.

Neuromancer tells the story of Case, an out-of-work computer hacker hired by a mysterious patron to participate in a seemingly impossible crime. The novel examines the concepts of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, genetic engineering, multinational corporations overpowering the traditional nation-state and cyberspace long before these ideas became fashionable in popular culture including the internet itself.

Universe’s first stars may have been ‘dark stars’

The universe’s first stars may have been bloated behemoths powered by dark matter, suggests an intriguing, if speculative, new study. These ‘dark stars’ might have delayed the creation of heavy elements, which make up everything from planets to people, as well as cosmic reionisation, which made the universe transparent to light billions of years ago. Theorists believe the first stars formed in cradles of dark matter, condensing from clouds of gas until their cores became so dense that nuclear fusion ignited, preventing the cores from collapsing further. This could heat up the cloud so much that it would stop contracting, so that it was supported by the annihilation of dark matter rather than by nuclear fusion, like normal stars. Such a ‘dark star’ would be about as massive as the Sun and would glow at infrared wavelengths. But it would be much larger – depending on the mass of the neutralino used, the star could span anywhere from the distance between the Sun and Uranus in our solar system to nearly 60 times that size.

Site – http://space.newscientist.com

The 6 Most Important Experiments in the World

Scientists rely on computer models to understand the toughest concepts in science: the origin of the universe, the human brain, artificial life, the behavior of atoms, and the future climate of the planet. These are some of the most important experiments that are currently active in the world.

Site – http://discovermagazine.com