Quantum Levitation Will Blow Your Mind

This video demonstration is in something called Quantum Levitation, a phenomenon that results from the fact that superconductors and magnets tend to not like each other.

When possible, the superconductor will expel all the magnetic field from inside. This is the Meissner effect. In our case, since the superconductor is extremely thin, the magnetic field DOES penetrate. However, it does that in discrete quantities called flux tubes.

Inside each magnetic flux tube superconductivity is locally destroyed. The superconductor will try to keep the magnetic tubes pinned in weak areas (e.g. grain boundaries). Any spatial movement of the superconductor will cause the flux tubes to move. In order to prevent that the superconductor remains “trapped” in midair.

‘Bolshoi’ supercomputer simulation provides new benchmark for cosmological studies

The Bolshoi supercomputer simulation, the most accurate and detailed large cosmological simulation run to date, gives physicists and astronomers a powerful new tool for understanding such cosmic mysteries as galaxy formation, dark matter, and dark energy. 

The simulation traces the evolution of the large-scale structure of the Universe, including the evolution and distribution of the dark matter halos in which galaxies coalesced and grew.

Scientists Reconstruct Brains’ Visions Into Digital Video In Historic Experiment

UC Berkeley scientists have developed a system to capture visual activity in human brains and reconstruct it as digital video clips. Eventually, this process will allow you to record and reconstruct your own dreams on a computer screen. Read the article

Puzzling results from Cern, home of the Large Hadron Collider, have confounded physicists - because it appears subatomic particles have exceeded the speed of light.

Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early.

The result - which threatens to upend a century of physics - will be put online for scrutiny by other scientists.

In the meantime, the group says it is being very cautious about its claims.

“We tried to find all possible explanations for this,” said report author Antonio Ereditato of the Opera collaboration.

“We wanted to find a mistake - trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects - and we didn’t,” he told BBC News.

“When you don’t find anything, then you say ‘Well, now I’m forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinise this.’”

Earth’s Siblings: Inside The Planets

Click each for a neat and informative view of the neighboring planets in our Solar System.

via SPACE

Who needs an invisibility cloak when you can be transparent? Researchers in Japan recently developed a chemical reagent that turns biological tissue transparent, opening doors to optical imaging techniques and avenues of research that scientists have long only dreamed of. And speaking of dreaming — if you’re going to start turning body parts transparent, where better to start than the brain?

A list of all NASA´s current missions

It´s quite easy to get lost in the middle of the data NASA releases to the world on a daily basis. There are more than 50 missions right now under the agency´s supervision, all of them producing a myriad of amazing images and information about many different subjects such as sunspots, Earth´s atmosphere, Saturn´s moons, the birth of stars at distant galaxies and faraway asteroids.

To help us follow all that, NASA has listed all current missions on alphabetical order in a way that clicking on each one of them takes you to a specific page about the mission with all the data you need to understand all those probes, satellites, robots, telescopes and on.

Check it out!