All posts tagged: fields

Why do particle physicists like spending time in fields?

Why do particle physicists like spending time in fields?

Published by skeptic

There is more than once kind of field Bennekom/Alamy When we were first preparing to launch my column for New Scientist, my editor asked me what I would like to call it. “Field notes from space-time,” I said. This title has a bit of a double entendre that might not be obvious, but was fun for me as a physicist. It is a reference to the scientific idea of taking notes while out in the field – a lab notebook of sorts. Simultaneously, it alludes to a specific concept that is very important in particle physics: the field itself. You might think that a field is a big open space you find on a farm, but in physics it is more abstract. Essentially, a field is a mathematical relation that assigns a number to each point in space and time. The intention is to characterise some physical phenomenon at that location. For example, when you feel the pull of a fridge magnet close to a refrigerator door, there is a magnetic force working between the …

Leopard moms hide babies in sugarcane fields to go hunting

Leopard moms hide babies in sugarcane fields to go hunting

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Leopards (Panthera pardus) in India are doing pretty well, all things considered. According to a report published in 2024, experts estimate their population in the country at a range of 12,616 to 15,132 individuals, which wildlife biologist Thomas Sharp calls “a healthy number.” Part of their success could be due to the fact that leopards are enduring in areas close to human settlements where their bigger feline relatives, like tigers or lions, simply can’t—partly thanks to their secretive nature and the fact that they subsist on smaller prey. “This is a good thing in many ways, with the way the world’s been changing and habitat degradation and everything else,” Sharp, who is the director of conservation and research at the organization Wildlife SOS tells Popular Science. “It’s a good thing that they can hang on in some of these areas. But there’s always a tradeoff, and the negative is they get involved in a lot of human-leopard conflict.” Unsurprisingly, …

Energy security vs climate crisis: Norway reopens three old gas fields

Energy security vs climate crisis: Norway reopens three old gas fields

Published by Sam Flores

Norway has announced it plans to reopen three old gas fields in the North Sea in order to boost Europe’s supply. Already the largest supplier for the EU, Oslo also proposed 70 new offshore locations for oil and gas exploration. Environmental activists accuse the government of using geopolitical tensions and conflicts like the wars in Ukraine and Iran as an excuse to continue drilling for fossil fuels despite the climate crisis. Keywords for this article Source link

Remarkably Bright Creatures Reviews: Critics Praise Sally Field’s Performance

Remarkably Bright Creatures Reviews: Critics Praise Sally Field’s Performance

Published by Sam Flores

Netflix has gone and done the seemingly impossible, and adapted Remarkably Bright Creatures for the screen. Shelby Van Pelt’s novel became a bestseller upon its release in 2022, telling the story of a lonely widow who befriends an octopus in the aquarium where she works. As the story unfolds, she and the octopus, named Marcellus, team up to solve the mystery of her son’s murder, with certain passages even told from the marine creature’s perspective. Because of its unique premise, bringing the story to life in film was always going to be a difficult task, but on Friday morning, Netflix unveiled its new movie version of the hit book, starring two-time Oscar winner Sally Field alongside Lewis Pullman and the voice of Alfred Molina as Marcellus. The question is… how did they do? Well, overall, critical reception has been pretty mixed, but one thing reviews can agree on is a stellar performance from Sally Field, as well as the fact that anyone looking for some cosy comfort viewing is onto a winner with this one. …

Time-varying magnetic fields can create exotic quantum matter

Time-varying magnetic fields can create exotic quantum matter

Published by Jenni Sidey

Quantum technology often gets pitched as a faster kind of computing. This research points in a different direction first: control. By changing a magnetic field on a schedule, rather than leaving it fixed, physicists found they could make matter settle into quantum states that do not exist in ordinary stationary materials. That is the idea behind new work from Cal Poly lecturer Ian Powell and student researcher Louis Buchalter, who examined what happens when magnetic flux on a lattice flips between different values over time. Their study, published in Physical Review B as “Flux-Switching Floquet Engineering,” looks at how time-dependent driving can reorganize quantum systems into unusual topological phases, including some with no static counterpart. “On a big-picture level, I would describe this as an advance in our understanding of how time-dependent control can create and organize new forms of quantum matter,” Powell said. “The central idea is that useful quantum properties can depend not just on what a material is, but on how it is driven in time. In our case, we show that …

Rockin’ farm fields suck up tons of CO2

Rockin’ farm fields suck up tons of CO2

Published by skeptic

The people of Sarekha Khurd have grown rice for longer than they can remember. A few hundred families live in this village in north-central India. Trees separate their little fields, which are slanty rectangles of land. As those fields turn gold each fall with ripened rice, a sweet smell perfumes the air. Harvest time is nearing. But these fields aren’t just growing grain: They’re also capturing carbon. Farmers here are part of a worldwide effort to combat climate change. Its goal is to pull billions of tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air. In Sarekha Khurd, this effort starts in May. That’s when trucks rumble down dirt roads, dumping out huge piles of crushed, volcanic rock. Each load brings several hundred tons of gray basalt. Farmers sprinkle the dust-sized particles onto their fields. Weeks later, when the monsoon rains arrive, they plant rice. The dust comes from rock usually used in road building. People mine this basalt from a nearby quarry. It doesn’t look like anything special. Explainer: CO2 and other greenhouse gases …

Scientists are rethinking how young galaxies formed their magnetic fields

Scientists are rethinking how young galaxies formed their magnetic fields

Published by Jenni Sidey

Magnetic fields that stretch across thousands of light-years should take a very long time to organize. Standard dynamo theory puts that timeline at roughly 5 to 10 billion years in galaxies. Yet astronomers have spotted coherent magnetic fields in galactic and protogalactic environments at high redshifts, including reports up to redshift 2.6 and even 5.6. That mismatch has been a stubborn problem. A new study in Physical Review Letters argues that part of the answer may lie in the chaos of galaxy formation itself. Instead of treating magnetic growth as something that unfolds in a settled system, the researchers looked at what happens while a galaxy is still assembling from a collapsing cloud of ionized gas. “However, dynamo theory has its limitations”, says Pallavi Bhat, an assistant professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences and an author of the study. “In particular, it struggles to explain observations of young galaxies with robust magnetic fields across thousands of light-years”. Collapsing plasma cloud with uniform magnetic field (red). Top Right: Compression alone amplifies the field. Bottom …

‘Yes to fields of wheat, no to fields of iron’: how the world’s greenest country soured on solar

‘Yes to fields of wheat, no to fields of iron’: how the world’s greenest country soured on solar

Published by Sam Flores

In one telling of the story, the golden fields of a proud farming nation are under attack. Besieged by an industrial sprawl of solar panels, they are being smothered at the behest of an urban elite. That narrative has failed to thrive in conservative heartlands such as Texas and Hungary, which have embraced solar power while lambasting green rules. But it is taking root in Denmark, the most climate-ambitious nation on Earth. “We say yes to fields of wheat,” said Inger Støjberg, the leader of the rightwing populist Denmark Democrats in a speech in 2024. “And we say no to fields of iron!” Jernmarker, or iron fields, was chosen as the Danish word of the year in December after the solar backlash swayed municipal elections and prompted some councils to pull projects. The spectre of barren metal landscapes has since returned to the campaign trail as Danes prepare to vote in national elections on Tuesday. “We need more common sense in the green transition,” Støjberg said in the first televised debate between party leaders last …

Communist Party fields nearly 93% of candidates as Vietnam holds parliament elections

Communist Party fields nearly 93% of candidates as Vietnam holds parliament elections

Published by Sam Flores

HANOI: Tens of millions of Vietnamese go to the polls on Sunday (Mar 15) to elect 500 members of the National Assembly from a list of candidates almost exclusively fielded by the ruling Communist Party. The five-yearly elections, in which nearly 73.5 million registered voters will also choose representatives for local councils, are one of the few nods to democratic practice in the tightly controlled one-party state, where the most powerful positions are decided by Communist senior officials ahead of the vote. Nearly 93 per cent of the 864 candidates running for the national parliament are Communist Party members, while 7.5 per cent are independents, according to the national election council, down from 8.5 per cent in 2021, leaving no doubt the party will maintain its overwhelming dominance in the assembly. In the current legislature, the Communist Party, which has ruled the country unopposed for decades, holds 97 per cent of the seats. The parliament has virtually no power to challenge the party’s key decisions, including on personnel, but it has occasionally amended proposed laws. …

Watch: China’s top diplomat Wang Yi fields questions on foreign policy

Watch: China’s top diplomat Wang Yi fields questions on foreign policy

Published by Sam Flores

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi held a press conference on Sunday (Mar 8) on the sidelines of the country’s biggest annual political gathering known as the Two Sessions. It comes at a time of heightened global tensions, with an escalating Iran war. Wang said US-China dialogue is vital to preventing globally damaging miscalculations.  “Failure to engage between the two nations would only lead to misunderstandings and misjudgements, escalating toward confrontation and harming the world,” China’s top diplomat said. With the US president focused on the war he and Israel launched against Iran, analysts are watching for signs that his meeting with President Xi Jinping this month will go ahead. China has not previously announced the summit, expected for the end of the month. “The agenda for high-level exchanges (with the US) is on the table,” Wang said. “What is required is for both sides to make thorough preparations to create a conducive environment to manage existing differences,” he added, without giving further details. Source link