Six on History: Geography and Science
panaritisp
Welcome back to Six on History (Summer Edition - coupla posts a week).
PS: If you like what you find on the "Six on History" blog, please share w/your contacts.
Click here for Detailed Search Help Thanks John Elfrank
.JPG?part=0.15&view=1)
Muons are electrically charged particles, so when they are placed in a magnetic field, they start to spin. Physicists can measure the frequency of that spin because of a phenomenon called precession, in which the spin axis of the particle wobbles slightly, allowing them to make what they call a wiggle plot.
The frequency at which a muon rotates when exposed to a magnetic field is determined by its interactions with other particles and forces, represented by a number called the g factor. Using the standard model of particle physics, researchers can predict what this number ought to be with extreme precision.
But in 2006, experimental results from Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York started to diverge from those theoretical predictions – the muons were spinning slightly faster than they ought to. The results weren’t statistically significant enough to prove that the standard model was wrong, but they were a cause for concern.
Now, a new set of experiments at Fermilab in Illinois has corroborated the concerns brought to light by those past results. “We could have made an error at Brookhaven, but then Fermilab, which has a much more sophisticated set-up, could have gotten a different answer – and they didn’t,” says William Morse at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Because these virtual pairs are random and come from space-time itself, they can be any type of particle. Some might be ones that we already know of – for instance, an electron and its antimatter partner, a positron – but some might be something more exotic. “It’s not just the known particles that pop in and out of existence, but also the ones that have yet to be discovered,” says Joe Price at the University of Liverpool, UK, part of the Fermilab team.
The models we use to predict the muon’s g factor only include the effects expected from known virtual particles, though – so if our experiments conflict with those models, it points to the possibility of other particles beyond the standard model, and strange forces to govern those particles as well.
The Fermilab results come on the heels of an announcement that physicists at the CERN particle physics laboratory’s Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, have found something strange going on with the way that muons decay. Price says the two may be related. “Maybe it’s the same physics from a different angle, or maybe it’s different physics.”
Like the CERN measurements, there isn’t quite enough data to prove that there must be new particles and forces beyond the standard model. However, the Fermilab researchers have only evaluated about one tenth of the data from their experiments so far and they continue to collect more, so Price says they should be able to tell soon if this anomaly is really caused by exotic particles or is just an artefact of statistical uncertainty. Those additional measurements may also help us narrow down what sorts of exotic particles could exist."
"Offshore Wind Energy Driving New Ways to Generate Electricity
Read the summary, watch the video featuring reporting by Ivette Feliciano and answer the discussion questions. To read the transcript of the video above, click here.
For decades, scientists have seen vast potential for offshore wind energy. Offshore wind energy is the use of wind farms constructed primarily in the ocean which collect wind energy to generate electricity. Despite this potential, offshore wind in the U.S. barely exists, as projects have faced local opposition and concern about how they would affect ocean habitats and fisheries. But with a new emphasis on renewable energy from the Biden Administration, that may soon change.
- In one of his first actions as president, President Joe Biden directed increased renewable energy generation on public lands, including offshore waters.
- Vineyard Wind is set to become the first large scale wind energy farm in the U.S. It will be constructed off the coast of Massachusetts and generate enough power for about 400,000 homes and is expected to generate thousands of jobs for nearby local economies.
- Still, there are local concerns about the impact of renewable energy projects such as Vineyard Wind. Some local fishermen worry about navigational hazards on the water and reduced fishing ranges."
“Reality is more banal,” Professor Rolfo said, adding that “hyenas like munching on bones” and probably opened a cavity in the skull to get to the brain.
It is unclear whether the Neanderthals were killed by the hyenas or the hyenas snacked on Neanderthals after they died from other causes.
“What it does mean is that there were many Neanderthals in the area,” Professor Rolfo said.
Neanderthals flourished in Europe for about 260,000 years, until roughly 40,000 years ago, though the dating is subject to much scholarly debate. Their bones have been found at sites across Europe and western Asia, from Spain to Siberia. But “finding so many in one site is very rare,” said Francesco Di Mario, the Culture Ministry archaeologist in charge of the excavation.
The recovery of new fossil remains, along with the 1939 findings, makes the cave “one of the most important Paleolithic sites in Europe and the world,” he said.
Italy’s culture minister, Dario Franceschini, called the finds an “extraordinary discovery” that enriches research on Neanderthals.
The site was particularly well preserved because a prehistoric landslide had closed the entrance to the cave. So when workers at the Guattari Hotel stumbled on it eight decades ago, “they found a situation that had been frozen in time, mummified to 50,000 years ago,” Professor Rolfo said. ... "
"Here are three new additions to The Best Sites For Learning About Historic Maps:
Historical Maps from Around the World is from Google Earth.
6 of the World’s Oldest Maps is from Discover.
Story Maps from the Library of Congress don’t exactly fit in with the other links on the “Best” list, but it’s close enough. Here’s how they describe it:
Story Maps at the Library of Congress are immersive web applications that tell the incredible stories of the Library’s collections through narrative, multimedia, and interactive maps."
