In late September we reported the "faster than the speed of light" claim from CERN researchers working on the OPERA project.

An international team of scientists from the CERN particle research center have recorded sub-atomic particles traveling faster than the speed of light. Since Albert Einstein first proposed the speed of light is a "cosmic constant", and that nothing in the universe can travel faster, in his theory of special relativity - it has become the standard model of physics.

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have for the first time linked the quantum properties of two separated ions (electrically charged atoms) by manipulating them with microwaves instead of the usual laser beams, suggesting it may be possible to replace an exotic room-sized quantum computing "laser park" with miniaturized, commercial microwave technology similar

When one cloud of gas meets another, they normally pass right through each other. But now, MIT physicists have created clouds of ultracold gases that bounce off each other like bowling balls, even though they are a million times thinner than air — the first time that such impenetrable gases have been observed.

On Saturday, December 18, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory sank the last of 86 strings of sensitive photodetectors to a depth of almost two and a half kilometers in the ice at the South Pole. Then on December 20th the final Digital Optical Module was deployed (see video below, with Star Wars and Star Trek cliches included), marking completion of the huge neutrino telescope IceCube project.

Graphene holds such promise for exciting new technologies that it is constantly being observed, tested, and strained by researchers like Chris Marianetti, Assistant Professor in Columbia Universities Engineering Department of applied physics. In a recently accepted paper published in the journal of Physical Review Letters, Marianetti demonstrates that when Graphene is subjected to equal strain in all directions it becomes mechanically unstable.

Marianetti says this failure mechanism is a novel soft-mode phonon instability. A phonon is a collective vibrational mode of atoms within a crystal, similar to a wave in a liquid. The fact that a phonon becomes "soft" under tensile strain means that the system can lower its energy by distorting the atoms along the vibrational mode and transitioning to a new crystalline arrangement. Under sufficient strain, graphene develops a particular soft-mode that causes the honeycomb arrangement of carbon atoms to be driven towards isolated hexagonal rings. This new crystal is structurally weaker, resulting in the mechanical failure of the graphene sheet.

The magnetic equivalent of electricity referred to as "Magnetricity" is "an interesting curiosity" as Professor Steve Bramwell states in this video. In September of 2009, physicists directed neutrons at spin ices made of titanium-containing compounds chilled close to absolute zero. The behavior of the neutrons suggested that monopoles, like those shown here were present, in the material.

The next step was to measure the amount of magnetic "charge" on the monopoles and to measure magnetic analogues to electric current for the first time. The motion and interaction of monopoles is what creates "magnetricity".

Professor Bramwell explains in the video "It's a bit like having individual north and south poles about the size of an atom that can sort of flow around within the material, and when you put a magnetic field on, they all set off and migrate to one end of the sample."

Dr. Edward Moses spells out the energy demands for a growing population with growing energy needs and then explains how his work with fusion energy at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) can address this problem. The video below is just a highlight of this very interesting 90 minute lecture.

That quote comes from the CERN twitter feed, (http://twitter.com/cern) - and captures the excitement of the morning.

This is a new video released in February that discusses, new results announced from two separate groups of scientists at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.

First scientists worked to measure the temperature in the first instants of the formation of a quark-gluon plasma “soup.” They found that at that instant, the temperature is four trillion degrees if you can image that.

From International Science Grid This Week: "To put things in perspective, the temperature at the sun’s core is a mere 15 million degrees Kelvin, while the temperature at the core of a collapsed Type II supernova is only 100 billion degrees.