miércoles, 13 de abril de 2011

¿Y si pudieras ver los gigantes chorros de radio de Centaurus A?

Averigua come se verían los espectaculares chorros de radio de CenA aqui.

Yuri

Se estreno una película con una simulacion de lo que Yuri Gagarin vivio. Es un documental interesante.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKs6ikmrLgg

martes, 12 de abril de 2011

Where are the neutrinos?

IceCube, which was completed in December 2010, is a kilometer-cubed array of photodetectors that have been drilled down into the Antarctic ice cap. Neutrinos typically fly through the array without leaving a trace, but occasionally one will collide with a nucleus and create a charged particle that emits light as it moves through the ice. The IceCube team compared 13 months of their data (collected when the array was half finished) to observations of 117 GRBs measured independently over the same time period. Contrary to expectations, no high-energy neutrinos were detected within a half-hour of each GRB. Theorists may need to rethink their models of GRBs, as well as look for other possible sources for the highest energy cosmic rays.

(full text article here)

lunes, 4 de abril de 2011


Domenico Pacini, uncredited pioneer of the discovery of cosmic rays



During a series of experiments performed between 1907 and 1911, Domenico Pacini (Marino 1878-Roma 1934), at that time researcher at the Central Bureau of Meteorology and Geodynamics in Roma, studied the origin of the radiation today called "cosmic rays", the nature of which was unknown at that time. In his conclusive measurements in June 1911 at the Naval Academy in Livorno, and confirmed in Bracciano a couple of months later, Pacini, proposing a novel experimental technique, observed the radiation strength to decrease when going from the surface to a few meters underwater (both in the sea and in the lake), thus demonstrating that such radiation could not come from the Earth's crust. Pacini's work was largely overlooked. Hess was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936, two years after the death of Pacini, who had become a full professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Bari.

Google Translate for Animals

(be sure to watch the video)

Translate for Animals is an application for Android phones that recognises and transcribes words and phrases that are common to a species, like cats for example. To develop Translate for Animals, we worked closely with many of the world's top language synthesis teams, and with leaders in the field of animal cognitive linguistics, including senior fellows at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

viernes, 1 de abril de 2011

Hadronic multiparticle production at ultrahigh energies and extensive air showers

Ralf Ulrich, Ralph Engel and Michael Unger

Phys. Rev. D 83, 054026 (2011) [21 pages]

Studies of the nature of cosmic ray particles at the highest energies are based on the measurement of extensive air showers. Most cosmic ray properties can therefore be obtained only from the interpretation of air shower data and are thus dependent on predictions of hadronic interaction models at ultrahigh energies. We discuss different scenarios of model extrapolations from accelerator data to air shower energies and investigate their impact on the corresponding air shower predictions. To explore the effect of different extrapolations by hadronic interaction models we developed an ad hoc model. This model is based on the modification of the output of standard hadronic interaction event generators within the air shower simulation process and allows us to study the impact of changing interaction features on the air shower development. In a systematic study we demonstrate the resulting changes of important air shower observables and also discuss them in terms of the predictions of the Heitler model of air shower cascades. It is found that the results of our ad hoc modifications are, to a large extent, independent of the choice of the underlying hadronic interaction model.