http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/04/21/guest-post-juan-collar-on-dark-matter-detection/ Summary – it’s good, but is it real? Could be many other things.
Category Archives: physics
Dark matter detected?
Dark matter is that weird stuff that is supposed to make up about 80% of all matter in the universe. It is invisible, and pretty much non-interacting (you can’t see it, and you can’t detect it (easily) by other means). One way you might detect it is to take a very pure crystal and look …
Sixty today
On on Dec. 16, 1947 – sixty years ago today – the world’s first transistor was constructed and tested at Bell Labs, New Jersey, USA. Those responsible for the device were William Shockley, the theorist and John Bardeen and Walter Brattain who actually constructed the first one. What started life as a heap of precariously …
High-voltage coincidence
I’m in need of a high-voltage, low current DC power supply temporarily for an experiment in the lab, prices for these from the usual suppliers run into the hundreds of pounds. Given that all (all but the very best ones anyway) they consist of is a string of diodes and capacitors in a Cockcroft-Walton configuration, …
Easier said than done
I spent most of this afternoon attempting to attach two pieces of 0.25 micron Teflon tape to some larger Teflon blocks while wearing low-friction gloves. It wasn’t easy.