Equations reveal the rebellious rhythms at the heart of nature

Equations reveal the rebellious rhythms at the heart of nature: Physicists Dmytro Iatsenko , Professor Peter McClintock, and Professor Aneta Stefanovska, have reported a far more general solution of the Kuramoto equations than anyone has achieved previously, with some quite unexpected results.

One surprise is that the oscillators can form "glassy" states, where they adjust the tempos of their rhythms but otherwise remain uncoordinated with each other, thus giving birth to some kind of "synchronous disorder" rather like the disordered molecular structure of window glass. Furthermore and even more astonishingly, under certain circumstances the oscillators can behave in a totally independent manner despite being tightly coupled together, the phenomenon the authors call "super-relaxation".

Solid or Liquid? Physicists Redefine States of Matter

Solid or Liquid? Physicists Redefine States of Matter: ...the main difference between liquids and solids is the way they respond to shear, or twisting forces. Liquids barely resist shear and can easily be sloshed, whereas solids — regardless of whether they are crystals, quasicrystals or glass — resist attempts to change their shape.

The liquid-solid phase transition, Radin and Aristoff reason, should therefore be marked by the “shear response” of a material jumping from zero to a positive value...

How to Measure Quantum Foam With a Tabletop Experiment

How to Measure Quantum Foam With a Tabletop Experiment: Bekenstein's goal is to move the block by a distance that is about equal to the Planck length. His method is simple: zap the block with a single photon.

The photon carries a small amount of moment and consequently pushes the block as it enters the glass, giving it some momentum.  As the photon leaves the block, the block comes to rest.

So the result of the photon's passage is that it moves the block a small distance.

Bekenstein's idea is that if this distance is smaller than the Planck length, then the block cannot move and the photon cannot pass through it.

So the experiment involves measuring the number of photons that pass through the block. If the number is fewer than predicted by classical optics, then that proves the existence of quantum foam.

A New Theory Of The Mysterious Origins Of Ball Lightning

A New Theory Of The Mysterious Origins Of Ball Lightning: ...the researchers propose that ball lightning isn’t the result of microwave radiation, antimatter, or slowly burning particles of silicon leftover form lightning strikes (all of which have been theorized as the source of the phenomenon), but of leftover ions that accumulating and interacting with electric fields, often across some kind of dividing plane like a pane of glass (explaining why eyewitness accounts have sometimes described these glowing orbs as passing through glass.
Essentially, the paper theorizes that streams of ions--electrically charged particles--leftover from normal lightning strikes or some other source like aircraft radars (which also explains why the phenomenon has been associated with flying aircraft) accumulate on some thin planar surface like a glass window, creating an electric field on the other side. This field excites air molecules around it an in extreme cases cause a ball discharge--which can dissipate harmlessly or burst with some (terrifying) force.

ScienceShot: Two-Dimensional Glass - ScienceNOW

ScienceShot: Two-Dimensional Glass - ScienceNOW: The glass, made of silicon and oxygen, formed accidentally when the scientists were making graphene, an atom-thick sheet of carbon, on copper-covered quartz. They believe an air leak caused the copper to react with the quartz, which is also made of silicon and oxygen, producing a glass layer with the graphene. The glass is a mere three atoms thick—the minimum thickness of silica glass—which makes it two-dimensional