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Physicists Finally Nail the Proton’s Size, and Hope Dies
n 2010, physicists in Germany reported that they had made an exceptionally precise measurement of the size of the proton, the positively charged building block of atomic nuclei. The result was very puzzling.
Randolf Pohl of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and collaborators had measured the proton using special hydrogen atoms in which the electron that normally orbits the proton was replaced by a muon, a particle that’s identical to the electron but 207 times heavier. Pohl’s team found the muon-orbited protons to be 0.84 femtometers in radius — 4% smaller than those in regular hydrogen, according to the average of more than two dozen earlier measurements.
If the discrepancy was real, meaning protons really shrink in the presence of muons, this would imply unknown physical interactions between protons and muons — a fundamental discovery. Read about it here
A proton is made of a swarm of quarks and gluons, as imagined in this illustration.
n 2010, physicists in Germany reported that they had made an exceptionally precise measurement of the size of the proton, the positively charged building block of atomic nuclei. The result was very puzzling.
Randolf Pohl of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and collaborators had measured the proton using special hydrogen atoms in which the electron that normally orbits the proton was replaced by a muon, a particle that’s identical to the electron but 207 times heavier. Pohl’s team found the muon-orbited protons to be 0.84 femtometers in radius — 4% smaller than those in regular hydrogen, according to the average of more than two dozen earlier measurements.
If the discrepancy was real, meaning protons really shrink in the presence of muons, this would imply unknown physical interactions between protons and muons — a fundamental discovery. Read about it here
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Water Detected in Atmosphere of Rocky Habitable Zone Exoplanet For First Time
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Water Detected in Atmosphere of Rocky Habitable Zone Exoplanet For First Time
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Water Detected in Atmosphere of Rocky Habitable Zone Exoplanet For First Time
In the atmosphere of an exoplanet just 111 light-years away, astronomers have just made a highly exciting discovery: they've detected water.
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CRISPR-Edited Cells That Block HIV Last Over a Year Without Side Effects, Study Shows
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CRISPR-Edited Cells That Block HIV Last Over a Year Without Side Effects, Study Shows
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CRISPR-Edited Cells That Block HIV Last Over a Year Without Side Effects, Study Shows
Blood cells altered to block HIV have safely stuck around for more than a year and a half after they were transplanted into a volunteer, raising hopes of a more accessible cure.
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Hubble Just Captured a Breathtaking New Image of Saturn, And It Barely Looks Real
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Hubble Just Captured a Breathtaking New Image of Saturn, And It Barely Looks Real
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Hubble Just Captured a Breathtaking New Image of Saturn, And It Barely Looks Real
Hubble has captured a new image of Saturn that makes you wonder if it's even real. The image is so crisp it makes it look like Saturn is just floating in space. Which it is.
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Komodo Dragons Are So Badass They Have 'Chain Mail' Embedded in Their Skin
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Komodo Dragons Are So Badass They Have 'Chain Mail' Embedded in Their Skin
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Komodo Dragons Are So Badass They Have 'Chain Mail' Embedded in Their Skin
Komodo dragons - the biggest, fiercest, most impressive lizards on our planet - just got that much more amazing. A new discovery shows that under their scaly skin, these animals are completely covered in mail-like armour built out of tiny bones, fr
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Engineers Just Unveiled a New Blackest-Ever Material, Even Darker Than Vantablack
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Engineers Just Unveiled a New Blackest-Ever Material, Even Darker Than Vantablack
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Engineers Just Unveiled a New Blackest-Ever Material, Even Darker Than Vantablack
You might think you already know black – even super-black Vantablack, previously the blackest material known to science – but researchers just came up with a material that takes black to a new level of blackness.
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Our Galaxy's Black Hole Recently Flared Crazily Bright, And We Still Don't Know Why
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Our Galaxy's Black Hole Recently Flared Crazily Bright, And We Still Don't Know Why
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Our Galaxy's Black Hole Recently Flared Crazily Bright, And We Still Don't Know Why
The supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*, is usually relatively quiet. It's not an active nucleus, spewing light and heat into the space around it; most of the time, the black hole's activity is low key, with minima
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Without These Basic Math Skills, Study Finds You Can't Make Effective Life Decisions
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Without These Basic Math Skills, Study Finds You Can't Make Effective Life Decisions
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Without These Basic Math Skills, Study Finds You Can't Make Effective Life Decisions
Almost a third of American adults don't have the math skills necessary to make effective decisions about their health and finances.
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CO2 Makes Up Just 0.04% of Earth's Atmosphere. Here's Why Its Impact Is So Massive
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CO2 Makes Up Just 0.04% of Earth's Atmosphere. Here's Why Its Impact Is So Massive
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CO2 Makes Up Just 0.04% of Earth's Atmosphere. Here's Why Its Impact Is So Massive
Reader question: I heard that carbon dioxide makes up 0.04 percent of the world's atmosphere. Not 0.4 percent or 4 percent, but 0.04 percent! How can it be so important in global warming if it's such a small percentage?
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Astrophysicists Say One Space Elevator Concept Is Possible With Today's Technology
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Astrophysicists Say One Space Elevator Concept Is Possible With Today's Technology
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Astrophysicists Say One Space Elevator Concept Is Possible With Today's Technology
Getting spacecraft into orbit is incredibly costly and difficult, and so scientists keep returning to the idea of a space elevator that can lift people and equipment out of Earth's atmosphere more easily. Now researchers have come up with a twist o
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The Biggest Volcano on Io May Be About to Erupt, And Scientists Are Watching Closely
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The Biggest Volcano on Io May Be About to Erupt, And Scientists Are Watching Closely
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The Biggest Volcano on Io May Be About to Erupt, And Scientists Are Watching Closely
The biggest volcano on Jupiter's moon Io could be about to blow. Decades of observation have revealed a periodic cycle in the volcano's eruptions; according to past behaviour, it's due for the next one any day.
Artificial Intelligence Takes On Earthquake Prediction
After successfully predicting laboratory earthquakes, a team of geophysicists has applied a machine learning algorithm to quakes in the Pacific Northwest.
May of last year, after a 13-month slumber, the ground beneath Washington’s Puget Sound rumbled to life. The quake began more than 20 miles below the Olympic mountains and, over the course of a few weeks, drifted northwest, reaching Canada’s Vancouver Island. It then briefly reversed course, migrating back across the U.S. border before going silent again. All told, the monthlong earthquake likely released enough energy to register as a magnitude 6. By the time it was done, the southern tip of Vancouver Island had been thrust a centimeter or so closer to the Pacific Ocean.
Because the quake was so spread out in time and space, however, it’s likely that no one felt it. These kinds of phantom earthquakes, read about them here
After successfully predicting laboratory earthquakes, a team of geophysicists has applied a machine learning algorithm to quakes in the Pacific Northwest.
May of last year, after a 13-month slumber, the ground beneath Washington’s Puget Sound rumbled to life. The quake began more than 20 miles below the Olympic mountains and, over the course of a few weeks, drifted northwest, reaching Canada’s Vancouver Island. It then briefly reversed course, migrating back across the U.S. border before going silent again. All told, the monthlong earthquake likely released enough energy to register as a magnitude 6. By the time it was done, the southern tip of Vancouver Island had been thrust a centimeter or so closer to the Pacific Ocean.
Because the quake was so spread out in time and space, however, it’s likely that no one felt it. These kinds of phantom earthquakes, read about them here
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We Just Narrowed Down The Mass of Neutrinos, The 'Ghost Particles' That Baffle Physics
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We Just Narrowed Down The Mass of Neutrinos, The 'Ghost Particles' That Baffle Physics
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We Just Narrowed Down The Mass of Neutrinos, The 'Ghost Particles' That Baffle Physics
A huge experiment to pin down the mass of one of the Universe's most perplexing particles has put a cap on how big the neutrino might actually be.
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Breathtaking Photo Shows The Shadow of Io Passing Across Jupiter's Surface
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Breathtaking Photo Shows The Shadow of Io Passing Across Jupiter's Surface
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Breathtaking Photo Shows The Shadow of Io Passing Across Jupiter's Surface
The JunoCam onboard NASA's Juno spacecraft continues to provide we Earthbound humans with a steady stream of stunning images of Jupiter. We can't get enough of the gas giant's hypnotic, other-worldly beauty. This image of Io passing over Jupiter is
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Intense Drought Exposes 4,000-Year-Old 'Stonehenge' in Spain
For decades, an ancient circle of stones has lain just out of sight beneath the waters of Spain's Valdecañas Reservoir, its tallest pillars occasionally breaking the surface like the fingers of a drowning swimmer.
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Venus May Have Been Habitable Until a Mysterious Catastrophe Millions of Years Ago
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Venus May Have Been Habitable Until a Mysterious Catastrophe Millions of Years Ago
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Venus May Have Been Habitable Until a Mysterious Catastrophe Millions of Years Ago
Venus is not a nice place, by human standards. For a world named after a Roman goddess of love and beauty, it really is quite the toxic, super-heated hellscape. But it wasn't always this way.
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Report: There's a "Real Threat" of a Pandemic That Could Kill Up to 80 Million People
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Report: There's a "Real Threat" of a Pandemic That Could Kill Up to 80 Million People
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Report: There's a "Real Threat" of a Pandemic That Could Kill Up to 80 Million People
Are we ready for the next global pandemic? Maybe not.
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Here Are All The Valid Health Reasons Why So Many Countries Are Banning Vapes
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Here Are All The Valid Health Reasons Why So Many Countries Are Banning Vapes
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Here Are All The Valid Health Reasons Why So Many Countries Are Banning Vapes
The White House recently announced plans to ban flavoured e-cigarettes – except for tobacco-flavoured products – because of a rise in the number of middle and high school students using these products.
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UN Report on Earth's Oceans Confirms The Catastrophe Is Already Unfolding Around Us
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UN Report on Earth's Oceans Confirms The Catastrophe Is Already Unfolding Around Us
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UN Report on Earth's Oceans Confirms The Catastrophe Is Already Unfolding Around Us
Climate change is already having staggering effects on oceans and ice-filled regions that encompass 80 percent of the Earth, and future damage from rising seas and melting glaciers is now all but certain, according to a sobering new report from the
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A Mind-Blowing Study Just Confirmed Earth Had Living Organisms 3.5 Billion Years Ago
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A Mind-Blowing Study Just Confirmed Earth Had Living Organisms 3.5 Billion Years Ago
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A Mind-Blowing Study Just Confirmed Earth Had Living Organisms 3.5 Billion Years Ago
In the search for the earliest life on Earth, it can be hard to tell whether you're looking at an actual fossil, or crinkles in the rock itself. Such doubts have long shadowed the 1980s discovery of 3.5 billion-year-old fossils in the Australian de