[QUOTE=rogue;435744][URL="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/05/160508-rocket-girls-women-moon-mars-nathalia-holt-space-ngbooktalk/"]The Secret History of the Women Who Got Us Beyond the Moon[/URL][/QUOTE]

I haven't even read the article yet, but always nice to see a reference to one of my favorite 50s B-SciFi shlock-flicks, [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052104/quotes]Queen of Outer Space[/url], starring a still-young-ish Zsa Zsa Gabor and her horde of busty 20-something miniskirted fascist Venusian hotties. Make sure to enjoy the many memorable [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052104/quotes]quotes[/url], but note the compiler of these left out the best one: "You're too smart for me, baby -- I like 'em stupid."

There are now only 9 days remaining for the Kickstarter project to fund further [URL="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/608159144/the-most-mysterious-star-in-the-galaxy"]observations of Tabby's star[/URL], perhaps the most mysterious object identified by the Kepler mission. All "natural" explanations for the star's behaviour have been shot down; the "unnatural" explanation of orbiting technological artifacts is profoundly unsettling to virtually all professional astronomers.

I've just pledged USD 100.

Paul

I was just reading: [URL="http://bigthink.com/robby-berman/two-new-particles-have-sent-physicists-scrambling-for-theories"]Two New Particles Have Sent Physicists Scrambling for Theories[/URL], which is about a possible particle twelve times heavier than the Higgs boson and another particle that may act as an intermediary in the case of less than expected quantities of lithium.

Although interesting in and of itself, with regards to the first particle they said:
[QUOTE]As more data is now being collected by the teams, 300 papers proposing explanations for the phenomenon have been written and are awaiting review at arXiv.org, and four newly published papers distill the most popular theories about what’s going on.[/QUOTE]
I just read this immediately after having read another article that compares arXiv paper coverage versus corresponding papers in various disciplines in journals indexed by the Web of Science. ([URL="https://svpow.com/2016/06/09/we-dont-need-oa-in-our-field-everything-is-on-arxiv-nope/"]“We don’t need OA in our field, everything is on arXiv”. Nope.[/URL]) This article's point is that arXiv's coverage is in no way enough to be a surrogate for open access efforts. The breakdown is of interest with mathematics receiving the most coverage, physics second, and earth and science third with no other primary field getting much arXiv coverage at all.

With regards to mathematics though, in a comment to the article, Tim Gowers says that the quality of papers of interest to him in his subfield on arXiv is so high that he probably won't look at a paper that isn't on arXiv.

[QUOTE=only_human;435935]With regards to mathematics though, in a comment to the article, Tim Gowers says that the quality of papers of interest to him in his subfield on arXiv is so high that he probably won't look at a paper that isn't on arXiv.[/QUOTE]
Moreover, he has founded an arXiv overlay journal:
[URL]http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/[/URL]

[url]http://fox40.com/2016/06/11/one-third-of-the-world-cannot-see-the-milky-way-why-that-matters/[/url]

[URL="mit-graphene-breakthrough-could-make-chips-one-million-times-faster"]mit-graphene-breakthrough-could-make-chips-one-million-times-faster[/URL]
[QUOTE]
US Army-funded researchers at MIT believe an optical equivalent of a "sonic boom" created using graphene could make chips a million times faster than they are today.

Researchers at MIT and several other universities have discovered that graphene can be used to slow light down below the speed of electrons to create an intense beam of light.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=science_man_88;436172][URL="http://mit-graphene-breakthrough-could-make-chips-one-million-times-faster"]mit-graphene-breakthrough-could-make-chips-one-million-times-faster[/URL][/QUOTE]

Try this link [url]http://www.zdnet.com/article/mit-graphene-breakthrough-could-make-chips-one-million-times-faster/[/url] :)

Another article on the possible new particle(s) discovered at CERN, along with a snip I found rather revealing:

[url=blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/is-particle-physics-about-to-crack-wide-open/]Is Particle Physics About to Crack Wide Open?[/url] - Scientific American Blog Network
[quote]None of the more fundamental models that currently exist as possible replacements for the SM can explain the bump. If the SM has fallen it is likely not for any reason we expected.[/quote]
A hint to the string theory crowd and other lovers-of-theorizing-without-data there?

I think this sentence is a bit strong, however:
[quote]This could mean nothing less than the fall of the Standard Model of particle physics (SM), which has passed every experimental test thrown at it since it was first put together over four decades ago.[/quote]
"Fall" would be in a similar sense to the "fall" of Newtonian gravitational theory when Herr Einstein came along with general relativity - a revolution in insight, sure, but the "fallen" theory may remain perfectly viable for phenomena at energies lower than those achieved by the latest experiments. And as the piece goes on to note, what we may be seeing here is precisely the sort of thing envisioned by the great synthesizers behind the standard model, except for the "quickly" part:
[quote]Originally theorists thought that the SM would be an approximation of a more fundamental theory that would be quickly discovered. This is what has always happened in the past. Newton’s theory of gravity, for example, doesn’t apply to bodies that are extremely massive, or which are moving close to the speed of light. It is accurate enough that engineers could use it to send the New Horizons space probe toward Pluto and have it arrive in just the right place nine years later. Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, however, is more fundamental, and applies in those extreme where Newton’s theory breaks down.[/quote]

[QUOTE=xilman;435798]There are now only 9 days remaining for the Kickstarter project to fund further [URL="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/608159144/the-most-mysterious-star-in-the-galaxy"]observations of Tabby's star[/URL], perhaps the most mysterious object identified by the Kepler mission. All "natural" explanations for the star's behaviour have been shot down; the "unnatural" explanation of orbiting technological artifacts is profoundly unsettling to virtually all professional astronomers.

I've just pledged USD 100.

Paul[/QUOTE]Looks like my credit card is going to be charged --- made $106K with three hours still to go.

[QUOTE=xilman;436400]Looks like my credit card is going to be charged --- made $106K with three hours still to go.[/QUOTE]

Neat- Congratulations to the project and all the supporters. This will be fascinating to follow.

Norm

[QUOTE=only_human;409177][URL="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/why-the-world-is-running-out-of-helium-2059357.html"]Why the world is running out of helium[/URL][/QUOTE][url]http://www.forbes.com/sites/bridaineparnell/2016/06/28/scientists-find-helium-gas/[/url]