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Category: space – Page 890

How Bacteria Could Generate Radio waves

I call them “BATS”.

Can bacteria generate radio waves?

On the face of it, this seems an unlikely proposition. Natural sources of radio waves include lightning, stars and pulsars while artificial sources include radar, mobile phones and computers. This is a diverse list. So it’s hard to see what these things might have in common with bacteria that could be responsible for making radio waves.

But today, Allan Widom at Northeastern University in Boston and a few pals, say they’ve worked out how it could be done.

Welcome to Experiments that Time has Forgotten!

Courtesy of Microcosmos ISBN 0 521 30433 4

© Cambridge University Press 1987

fig. 7.

ATOMS

The smallest unit of matter that can be imaged my microscopy today is the atom. The use of high resolution electron microscopy or HREM enables the scientist to study the neat lines and rows of atoms arranged in their unit cells. The world of atomic level microscopy is bathed in hyperbole. Imaging an atom at a magnification of x 100 million is equivalent to observing from Earth the golf ball that Neil Armstrong hit on the moon. The microscopists at the forefront of high resolution imaging are now trying to read the golf ball’s number!

Strange warping geometry helps to push scientific boundaries

Atomic interactions in everyday solids and liquids are so complex that some of these materials’ properties continue to elude physicists’ understanding. Solving the problems mathematically is beyond the capabilities of modern computers, so scientists at Princeton University have turned to an unusual branch of geometry instead.

Researchers led by Andrew Houck, a professor of electrical engineering, have built an electronic array on a microchip that simulates in a hyperbolic plane, a geometric surface in which space curves away from itself at every point. A hyperbolic plane is difficult to envision—the artist M.C. Escher used in many of his mind-bending pieces—but is perfect for answering questions about particle interactions and other challenging mathematical questions.

The research team used superconducting circuits to create a lattice that functions as a hyperbolic space. When the researchers introduce photons into the lattice, they can answer a wide range of difficult questions by observing the photons’ interactions in simulated hyperbolic space.

Discovered: A new way to measure the stability of next-generation magnetic fusion devices

Scientists seeking to bring to Earth the fusion that powers the sun and stars must control the hot, charged plasma—the state of matter composed of free-floating electrons and atomic nuclei, or ions—that fuels fusion reactions. For scientists who confine the plasma in magnetic fields, a key task calls for mapping the shape of the fields, a process known as measuring the equilibrium, or stability, of the plasma. At the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), researchers have proposed a new measurement technique to avoid problems expected when mapping the fields on large and powerful future tokamaks, or magnetic fusion devices, that house the reactions.

Neutron bombardments

Such tokamaks, including ITER, the large international experiment under construction in France, will produce neutron bombardments that could damage the interior diagnostics now used to map the fields in current facilities. PPPL is therefore proposing use of an alternative diagnostic system that could operate in high-neutron environments.

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