Today (if you are reading this in my tomorrow) or tomorrow (if you are reading this today) or at some point in the past (if you are reading this after tomorrow) Scratch that – start again. August 1st, 2008. Solar Eclipse. Moon passing in front of the sun, sky darkening, a bit like August 1999, …
Category Archives: physics
Another view of the dark matter possible-detection
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.
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, …