A Spiral Star

Recently researchers using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii have found a star with spiral arms. What is that you may be wondering, well if you notice the picture above the star consits of a central star, much like our Sun or any other star, but this particular case has spiral arms!

The star is formally called SAO 206462 and is located in the constellation Lupus and only about four hundred light years away from Earth. This discover is a first for spiral stars. Prior to this researches knew of exotic looking stars, from dwarf stars, giant stars, dead stars, binary stars, and exploding stars, but never any spiral stars.

Granted the millions of stars already catalouged, it is surprising to find such an exotic case so close to Earth. This leads us to wonder what else is out there.

For full story check out the link from NASA

Brave Mars Explorers Return to Earth from Earth

Above is a depiction of the environment in which the ESA members lived for 520 days.

Link to Story

On Novermber 4th, 2011, six brave men emerged from a capsule in which they had been sealed for a year and a half in an effor to simulate a real Mars expedition. The goal of the program was to see how the human can physically and mentally survive the long journey to Mars.

The experiment was carried out by a crew of six European Space Agency members at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow, Russia.

The crew lived on for a full 520 days in a fully self sustained environment and even simulated putting on space suites and a landing on the surface of Mars.

Would you go through with such an experiment, locking yourself in a vault for a fill year and a half?

Chladni Plates

While on the topic of oscillations and cool wave behavior, check out the following vid of a Chladni Plate in action. Think you can come up with the wave function that describes this bad boy?

To make this, all you need is a somewhat think metal plate, some sand or salt (really any finely grained material will work) and finally a violin thingy (the tool you use to set the violin strings into oscillation)

The sand basically falls into the contours as the metal plate is deformed from the oscillations.

Coupled Oscillators and Pendulums

So guys, this video was shown to me during one of my labs. I found it uber cool! Watch the entire video it really makes you think about what exactly is happening here...

Dark Energy and the expansion of the Universe

For all who are still not sure what the Nobel Prize in Physics was granted for this year, here is a brief description on youtube!

 

Thanks Bill for letting me know about this!

The Universe is Expanding

Well, as you all probably know by now, the Nobel Prize in physics was given to Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, Adam G. Riess for showing that the universe is expanding!


Check it out here

The Ig Nobel Prizes

So everyone is talking about the Nobel Prizes lately, so I figured I bring up a ceremony just as important in my humble opinion, and that is the Ig Nobel Awards for Improbable Research!

Check it out here

Winners in physics:

2011

PHYSICS PRIZE: Philippe Perrin, Cyril Perrot, Dominique Deviterne and Bruno Ragaru (of FRANCE), and Herman Kingma (of THE NETHERLANDS), for determining why discus throwers become dizzy, and why hammer throwers don't.

REFERENCE: "Dizziness in Discus Throwers is Related to Motion Sickness Generated While Spinning," Philippe Perrin, Cyril Perrot, Dominique Deviterne, Bruno Ragaru and Herman Kingma, Acta Oto-laryngologica, vol. 120, no. 3, March 2000, pp. 390–5.

ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: The winners accepted via recorded video.

2010

PHYSICS PRIZE: Lianne Parkin, Sheila Williams, and Patricia Priest of the University of Otago, New Zealand, for demonstrating that, on icy footpaths in wintertime, people slip and fall less often if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes.

REFERENCE: "Preventing Winter Falls: A Randomised Controlled Trial of a Novel Intervention," Lianne Parkin, Sheila Williams, and Patricia Priest, New Zealand Medical Journal. vol. 122, no, 1298, July 3, 2009, pp. 31-8.

WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Lianne Parkin

2009

PHYSICS PRIZE: Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, USA, Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard University, USA, and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, USA, for analytically determining why pregnant women don't tip over.

REFERENCE: "Fetal Load and the Evolution of Lumbar Lordosis in Bipedal Hominins," Katherine K. Whitcome, Liza J. Shapiro & Daniel E. Lieberman, Nature, vol. 450, 1075-1078 (December 13, 2007). DOI:10.1038/nature06342.

WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Katherine Whitcome and Daniel Lieberman

And so forth...feel free to browse it!