Theoretical dodechehedron nanoscale quasi-crystals. Source.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2011 to
Dan Shechtman
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel“for the discovery of quasicrystals”
From the Press Release:
In quasicrystals, we find the fascinating mosaics of the Arabic world reproduced at the level of atoms: regular patterns that never repeat themselves. However, the configuration found in quasicrystals was considered impossible, and Dan Shechtman had to fight a fierce battle against established science. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 has fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid matter.
More Info:
At Nobelprize.org page
Advanced Information at nobelprize.org (pdf)
Wikipedia entry: Quasicrystal
Entry at Cornell Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics
Tevatron shuttered after 27 years due to lack of funding
Formerly the world’s most powerful particle accelerator (before CERN, of course), the Tevatron at Fermilab in Chicago was responsible for discovering the top quark, among other contributions to particle physics. According to scientists at Tevatron, the group was closing in on the elusive Higgs boson, an undiscovered particle tying the Standard Model of particle physics together. Friday marked the last time the particle beams would be turned on at the facility, due to a decision by the federal government to cease funding the lab. The annual budget of the Tevatron? $35 million.
Just for reference, $35 million would fund the Afghanistan war for 144 minutes.
Today I was reading in the news from the blogs I follow in my feed reader, and there was this post talking about an italian blogger, B-Log (0), who wrote two articles about homeopathy, and then received a threat of lawsuit from a big corporation that claims that those articles were…
oh my goodness
I want these for my dorm room SO BADLY
seriously though, how bad ass are these?!
and my main men:
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The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists.
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(via scienceisbeauty) |
Mimiviruses } James L. Van Etten, American Scientist
Most giant viruses have only been discovered and characterized in the past few years. There are several reasons why these striking biological entities remained undetected for so long. Among the most consequential is that the classic tool for isolating virus particles is filtration through filters with pores of 200 nanometers. With viruses all but defined as replicating particles that occur in the filtrate of this treatment, giant viruses were undetected over generations of virology research. (Mimivirus disrupted this evasion tactic by being so large it was visible under a light microscope.)
Gut Bacteria Know Secrets About Your Future
(via Gut Bacteria Know Secrets About Your Future : Krulwich Wonders… : NPR)
