Physics and Astronomy

Peeking at a Puzzling Supernova with Spectropolarimetry

By measuring polarized light from an unusual exploding star, an international team of astrophysicists and astronomers has worked out the first detailed picture of a Type Ia supernova and the distinctive star system in which it exploded.

Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, the researchers determined that supernova 2002ic exploded inside a flat, dense, clumpy disk of dust and gas

As Sex and the City’s Carrie finally wanders off our television screens, physicists at the Institute of Physics have devised a formula that high-heel fans can use to work out just how high they can go. Based on your shoe size, the formula tells you the maximum height of heel you can wear without toppling over or suffering agonies.

h = Q.(12+3s /8)

h is the maximum height of the heel (in cm)

Q is a sociological factor and has a value between 0 and 1 (see below to work this

Lava lakes could be Ionian versions of Earth’s mid-ocean ridges

Investigations into lava lakes on the surface of Io, the intensely volcanic moon that orbits Jupiter, may provide clues to what Earth looked like in its earliest phases, according to researchers at the University at Buffalo and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“When I look at the data, it becomes startlingly suggestive to me that this may be a window onto the primitive history of Earth,” said Tracy K. P. G

Debris from gobbled-up galaxy could be ’smoking gun’ for dark matter

WIMPs speeding at 670,000 mph on a “highway” in space may be raining onto Earth – a phenomenon that might prove the existence of “dark matter” that makes up most our galaxy and one-fourth of the universe, says a study co-authored by a University of Utah physicist.

Many researchers have long suspected that dark matter may be made of WIMPS or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, which are theorized subatomic

Research paves the way to next generation of ’atomic clocks’

Three of the world’s premier measurement laboratories – including the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – have lined up the “hash marks” from four of the world’s best optical frequency rulers and declared that they match. The experiments, reported in the March 19, 2004, issue of the journal Science, are a significant step toward next-generation “atomic clocks

The number of applications requiring random numbers increases continuously. They are used for example in cryptographic applications to guarantee the secrecy of electronic communications, in scientific calculations or in chance games and lotteries. In spite of this, their generation remains a difficult task. The Group of Applied Physics and the Computer Science Department of the University of Geneva team with the company id Quantique to launch the first website allowing to download random numbers from