Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

(PhysOrg.com) -- Jasper Kirkby, a physicist at CERN and colleagues have built an experimental climate chamber to measure the impact of cosmic rays on aerosol creation to mimic the creation of clouds in Earth's atmosphere. So far, as the team describes in their paper published in Nature, there appears to be some evidence of aerosol creation, but not enough to account for cloud formation, and thus there’s no evidence yet to show that cosmic rays have an impact on global temperatures.

Now panels can be made lightweight, cheaply, and cleanly.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physics researchers working at the National Research Council in Canada have succeeded in developing a way to directly measure the wavefunction of a photon. The technique, as described in their paper published in Nature, combines both strong and weak measurements, and offers researchers a new tool for use in understanding the intricacies of quantum mechanics

E-books realize their unbound potential faster than expected as pixels push past paper in Amazon sales. Oh, and, hey, look! Kindles for sale! Since April the first, for every 100 print-and-paper books Amazon has sold, it's also sold 105 e-books, according to a fresh Amazon announcement . Kindle e-readers arrived, along with a small but fast-growing digital bookstore, in November 2007--by July 2010, Amazon notes, Kindle book sales had surpassed hardcover book sales, and then six months later beat the paperback books sales rate

This past December Jim Weatherall and I wrote " A Geometric Theory of Everything " for Scientific American , describing progress on unified geometric theories of gravitation and the Standard Model of particle physics. My personal contribution to this progress, a developing model called E8 Theory, was introduced three years ago in a paper titled " An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything ." Almost immediately after this paper appeared, physicists and the interested public began a lengthy process of considering and discussing this new theory's merits and faults. Not surprisingly, the initial response was largely critical, with most commenters encountering some unfamiliar mathematical structures in the paper and responding with appropriate skepticism

(PhysOrg.com) -- Satoshi Kawata, Miyu Ozaki and their team of photonics physicists at Osaka University in Japan, have figured out a way to capture the original colors of an object in a still 3-D hologram by using plasmons (quantums of plasma oscillation) that are created when a silver sheathed material is bathed in simple white light. The discovery marks a new milestone in the development of true 3-D full color holograms. In their paper, published in Science magazine, the researchers show a rendered apple in all its natural red and green hues.

The New York Times often covers Shell Oil's misdeeds and questionable choices, which in past years have included drilling in the arctic and denying human rights abuses in Nigeria . The oil industry is undeniably contentious and filled with scandals and coverups--all the more reason for the Times to write about it. But how can the Times remain objective when it is partnering with Shell Oil on an energy conference

The long-awaited New York Times digital subscriptions paywall has been revealed and, at first glance, it seems to be exactly how Apple would like it to be. Print purists will be pleased it's more expensive than the paper edition.