‘Unparticles’ May Hold The Key To Superconductivity, Say Physicists — The Physics arXiv Blog — Medium

‘Unparticles’ May Hold The Key To Superconductivity, Say Physicists — The Physics arXiv Blog — Medium: Georgi’s concept of unparticles comes about by conjecturing that some “stuff” may have mass, energy and momentum and yet also be scale invariant...

Physicists have long known that the behaviour of electrons in high-temperature superconductors is extremely complex...

What LeBlanc and Grushin show is that under certain conditions the interaction between these entities can become scale invariant and is therefore described by the physics of unparticles. In very simple terms, when that happens, material properties such as resistance no longer depend on the length scales involved. So if electrons move without resistance on a tiny scale, they should also move without resistance on much larger scales too. Hence the phenomenon of superconductivity.

Fire ants writhe to make unsinkable rafts - life - 26 November 2013 - New Scientist

Fire ants writhe to make unsinkable rafts - life - 26 November 2013 - New Scientist: A raft of live fire ants, on the other hand, resists and dissipates external forces equally well on all scales. The ants can act as tiny, resistive springs by flexing and extending their legs, and they break and reform connections with their neighbours to create a flow around external forces, like being prodded with sticks. Importantly, rafts of live ants are significantly more elastic than those made of flash-frozen dead ants.

Astronomers Discover Largest Structure in the Universe — The Physics arXiv Blog — Medium

Astronomers Discover Largest Structure in the Universe — The Physics arXiv Blog — Medium: But Horvath and co say they’ve found a significant irregularity. They say there are far more gamma ray bursts at a distance of about ten billion light years than would be expected if the distribution was uniform.

These gamma ray bursts form a structure that is some ten billion light years in size, significantly larger than even the Huge-LQG. So this thing, presumably another wall of even more distant galaxies, is the new largest structure in the universe.

Starling Flocks Behave Like Flying Magnets | Wired Science | Wired.com

Starling Flocks Behave Like Flying Magnets | Wired Science | Wired.com: Rather than affecting every other flock member, orientation changes caused only a bird’s seven closest neighbors to alter their flight. That number stayed consistent regardless of flock density, making the equations “topological” rather than critical in nature.

“The orientations are not at a critical point,” said Giardina. Even without criticality, however, changes rippled quickly through flocks — from one starling to seven neighbors, each of which affected seven more neighbors, and so on.

The closest statistical fit for this behavior comes from the physics of magnetism, and describes how the electron spins of particles align with their neighbors as metals become magnetized.

The Remarkable Pattern Of Neuronal Activity In The Brain - Technology Review

The Remarkable Pattern Of Neuronal Activity In The Brain - Technology Review: Ribeiro have carried out the first measurements of neuronal avalanche distribution in 14 rats carrying out certain tasks and throughout their full sleep-wake cycle.

Ribeiro say their results show clear evidence of criticality throughout this cycle (although the same rats show a different pattern when anaesthetised).