Protons have become 4% smaller! Is our reality shifting?

Inconsistencies in Proton Size have Scientists Puzzled

The size of a proton, while previously thought to be properly understood, is now a mystery to mankind all over again, according to new research by physicists.

Speaking at the American Physical Society on April 13th, scientists say they need to conduct further research to figure out why recent calculations of proton size aren't matching old ones.

Randolf Pohl, a researcher at Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics says, "The discrepancy is rather severe." The main query Pohl and his co-workers are wondering about is whether the explanation for this discrepancy is as simple as someone messing up the measurements - or whether this mismatch will lead to new theories in physics.

The proton is shrinking

Protons are positively charged particles located in the nucleus of an atom. They are understood to be the foundation of everything from inanimate objects in nature to life in general. Years of research and calculations resulted in giving the proton a static size of 0.8768 femtometers (millionth of a billionth of a meter) in radius.

That number changed in 2009 when scientists used a new method and found that the measurement reduced to 0.84087, which is approximately a difference in radius of 4 percent.

The previous research had used electrons, which are essentially negatively charged particles that orbit the nucleus, to determine the radius of a proton. Making measurements with electrons can enable researchers to pick one of two options. Either they can fire a bunch of electrons at a bunch of protons to see how the electrons get deflected. This scattering method provides an in-depth look into the size of the proton.

The alternative is to move the electron. Electrons fly around the nucleus of an atom at different levels. These levels are known as orbitals. Protons also reside in this general area. An electron can jump from one orbital to the next by decreasing or increasing it's energy, which is done through gaining or losing a photon, a basic particle of light. The exact amount of energy used to move an electron between orbitals tells scientists how much power the proton has, thus resulting in a method to figure out the proton's size.

However, Pohl and his fellow researchers lead this experiment without using electrons at all. Instead, they used muons, which is another negatively charged particle. A muon is two hundred times heavier than electrons, and so they orbit protons two hundred times closer. This makes it much easy for scientists to figure out which general orbit a muon revolves around, making for a more sensitive and accurate measurement of proton size.

Pohl said, "The muon is closer to the proton and it has a better view."

Possible explanations

These sensitive measurements using muons is the reason the scientists stumbled across this totally unexpected discovery and got a smaller-than-expected number for the size of the proton. Physicists are now trying their best to figure out and explain the discrepancy.

The possibility that the measurements were simply wrong is most probable. Pohl calls this the "boring explanation," though not all scientists necessarily agree.

Jan Bernauer, a physicist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says "I would say it's not the experimental side."

If human error turns out to be the main cause of this inconsistency, issues with calculations need to be remedied because, as Bernauer explained, "we actually know everything that goes on but we are just not calculating it quite right."

Most exciting possibility in this discovery is that it could quite possibly reveal some new theories in the laws of physics previously unexplained by the general physics theory, which is the Standard Model. Quite possibly, there is something we don't know about how electrons and muons interact with particles.

Another possibility might involve other unknown particles we don't know about that pull and carry force with other particles, which could be an explanation for the measurement discrepancies.

What's Next

Physicists are not scrambling to launch new sets of experiments across multiple labs to figure out what's going on. One major method of research involves testing the scattering of electrons as mentioned earlier just to make sure the results were recorded properly.

Another experiment involves repeating scatter experiments, but with firing muons at the proton instead of electrons. This project called the "Muon Scattering Experiment," is going to be conducted at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. The labs will allow researchers to simultaneously execute and measure muon and electron scattering all in one experiment.

Arrington said, "The hope is that on the electron-scattering side, we'll have double-checked all the things that are challenging in these measurements. If we still have this discrepancy, we'll be able to fill in this last box and look at the muon-scattering and see, independent of how you make the measurement, do electrons and muons give you something different?"

The plan is to start collecting data in that experiment in 2015 or 2016, Arrington said, meaning the size of the proton will remain in limbo for a little longer.

The plan to start experimenting and collecting data for this experiment begins in 2015 or 2016, which means the size of a proton will have to stay a mystery for a bit longer.

Arrington said, "It's not easy. We hope to do it in a little less than 10 years, but maybe we're being optimistic."

Super Massive Black Hole "Heard" Chewing Up Giant Stars

A black hole the farthest we have ever seen has consumed a star and the event has been detected by scientists through wobbles of energy produced in the black hole.

This is a regular occurrence. The discoverer of this phenomenon describes the wobbles as a form of sound. Rubens Reis, professor at University of Michigan says, ”We are able to metaphorically hear a star being devoured by a super massive black hole. 4.8mHz would be a very low D-sharp, slightly out of tune.”

These wobbles, which was originally only discovered in closer black holes previously, essentially allow the feeding process of the black holes to be linked across great distances, and this comparison gives us a great beacon to test out Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, which is the leading theory explaining the phenomenon of gravity on a cosmic level.

Because the black hole is a size you could only describe as super massive  this finding confirms that black holes chew up stars in much the same way. It doesn't matter if the black hole contains a mass of ten suns or even twenty million suns. Reis says, “For me that is a rather beautiful thing.”

Star Grinder

Swift J1644+57 is another super massive black hole which was spotted sometime late March 2012 when NASA’s Swift telescope was suddenly detecting countless gamma ray bursts in a part of the universe that was previously quiet. These gamma rays were a sign that a sleeping black hole was waking up from its slumber and wolfing down a star that wandered too close.

It looked so exciting that Reis and some of his associates went to the European Space Agency and followed up on their findings through the evermore potent XMM-Newton space telescope. The follow up observations helped the scientists’ 
spot slight wobbles in the energy released as the black hole grinds up the star.

Scientists have detected similar phenomenon like this before, but only in black holes with masses of just a few suns residing within our Milky Way. The difference here is that this one is super massive  which means it has the mass of twenty million suns, and resides 4.5 billion light years away. Through studying this wobble, scientists can figure out how close an object can orbit a super massive black hole like this one without getting sucked in. From these calculations, the mass of the black hole and it’s rotation speed can be figured out.

Cosmic evolution

The rotation speed of a black hole is believed to change over a course of time as the black hole eats up unsuspecting stars and becomes even more gigantic than it already is. Through finding more of these types of wobbles in gravitational disks around distant black holes – whose light finds us from a younger universe – scientists hope to gain more knowledge about how black holes change over the lifetime of our known universe.

Caleb Scharf, an astrophysicist from Columbia University, says, "It looks like this fortuitous observation not only confirms a long-predicted set of behaviors for the disruption and consumption of stars by black holes, but it might lead the way to more directly probing their spin and mass."

The mass and rotation of a black hole can be worked into Einstein’s equations for general relativity in order to describe the gravitational characteristics of a black hole. Some scientists are guessing that general relativity might fluctuate on a super massive scale and the properties of distant super massive black holes provide us a way to test this hypothesis.

But wait, it gets even better! Graphing out, or rather, “listening” to this wobbling of the super massive black holes could provide us with more information about the one at the center of our very own Milky Way, which isn't apparent in this way.

Wobbles can be perceived only during the time period when a black hole is ingesting on the corpse of a star or any other matter. Out Milky Way’s super massive black hole is currently not that particularly hungry.

Reis says, "We do not have much information on the immediate region a few million kilometers around our own super massive black hole.”

Science Fiction Aims to Fund Real Weapons

Sci-Fi Author Plans to Use Funds from Book Sales to Create Laser Weapons for Future War Against China

Is it possible to write a popular science fiction novel and invest the funds generated from it’s success towards a futuristic sci-fi laser weapon? While the idea has probably been thought of before, one physicist is actually planning on fully executing it using his book “Dragon Empire” which conceptualizes a weapon being used to defend against a Chinese invasion in the future.

The story talks about how lasers, satellite weapons, hypersonic missiles, and stealth aircrafts could possibly impact a massive future war between the United States, its allies and China in the year 2025. However, the real purpose of this book is to fund a startup called Lightning Gun Inc., a company that specializes in making a laser weapon with the capability of warding off guided missiles equipped with electronics disabling EMPs (electromagnetic pulses).

CEO and founder of Lightning Gun, Adam Weigold, says, “I never had a good idea for an entire fiction book until I started to realize that if directed energy weapons did nullify the effect of guided missile technology, then all of warfare would be changed — especially strategy and tactics."

Weigold is kicking off the project by trying to raise $20,000 through fundraising site “Kickstarter.” Through this, he hopes to give his book a professional finish and the marketing funds before its planned release in the month of November this year. The revenue earned by the book’s sales is planned to be funneled into the Lightning Gun and used for development of large-scale, across-the-board laser experiments. He is planning on raising $2,000,000 over the next couple of years.

Laser Weapons for Dummies

The idea of creating laser weapons, or rather, laser-powered electromagnetic pulses, has been comprehensively investigated in the past, primarily by the U.S. military. It is well known in developing circles that if you rip out electrons from air molecules, high-energy lasers have the power to manifest ionized plasma. This plasma can be easily created multiple times to the point where it generates an EMP pulse strong enough to defuse the guidance radar systems and electronic sensors of today’s missiles. Essentially, this means an air force fighter jet equipped with a kilowatt worth of lasers could hypothetically become invulnerable against a horde of laser guided missiles.

However, early experiments did not go as expected mainly because of the lack of focus and accuracy by the lasers over greater distances. These inaccuracies were the main obstacle against ensuring a certain EMP K.O. Factors such as clouds, weather conditions, smoky surroundings, and air pressure can easily misdirect the laser aiming by 100-170 feet (30-55 meters) over a distance of 1km (0.6 miles). On top of this, the EMP is only able to disable targets up to 8-16 ft (2-5 meters) within the laser’s range. [Video: Navy Fires Laser HEL On Target Vessel]

In an interview with TechNewsDaily, Weigold said, "Our patent-pending technology not only dramatically improves the focal accuracy of the laser plasma but helps to focus the EMP energy produced directly at the target.”

After raising $300-500,000 to get Lightning Gun properly set up, Weigold is planning to apply for funding by the U.S. Department of Defense through the organization’s research programs that have requirements for companies like having reputable teams and security clearances. Weigold, an Australian-born scientist, has already done the necessary and moved his company to the United States and recruited many respectable engineers and physicists.

Research like this does come with its uncertainties. Weigold has admitted that there is no guarantee that his company will be able to successfully develop its experiments up to the power levels needed to create a dependable and worthwhile weapon, but he is highly optimistic that his plan of funding and the process of successful tests can result in an effective weapon within the course of 3-4 years.

World War 3

Fortunately, donations to Kickstarter won’t have to concern themselves with likelihood of the project’s failure or success. They just have to like Weigold’s storytelling abilities enough to want to cough up ten bucks or more to process a preorder for a final copy of the book. You can read a sample of the book “Dragon Empire” on his website.

The story of “Dragon Empire” is primarily about a future in which Chinese tyrants battle for control versus more open-minded political figures. While he maintains his vision of a full-scale global war is more a “worst case scenario” than reality, he does believe there will be a possibility of more minor conflicts as the United States steadily enhances its cooperation with the country’s Pacific allies and China gets closer to facing major territorial disputes with Vietnam, Philippines, South Korea, and Japan.

Whatever the future holds, Adam Weigold predicts laser powered electromagnetic pulses and other such laser energy weapons such as this as major game-changers in the field of military technology. Remote weapons systems, like drones and laser guided missiles have become chief weapons with capabilities of causing death and destruction from far away, but laser weapons offer a great cost-effective and balancing measure against these drones and missiles of the future.

Weigold says, "I think as laser weapons (and LEMP) become smaller and cheaper, they have the real potential to offer defenders "remote shielding," which will be the first real challenge to the era of remote weapons.”

Largest Spiral Galaxy in the Known Universe Discovered. NGC 6872 is 5X the Size of our Milky Way

NGC 6872 is Officially the Largest Spiral Galaxy we Have Ever Seen, Spanning a Distance of 522,000 Light Years

Astronomers have discovered a spiral galaxy which they claim is the largest one they have ever seen. The galaxy is floating in a small corner of the universe and it's five times as big as our very own Milky Way.

The galaxy is called NGC 6872. It is a massive spiral in the constellation Pavo, in the southern side of our visible skies 212,000,000 light years away. The distance between the galaxy's two spiral arms is 522 thousand light years, as opposed to the 100 thousand light years distance for the Milky Way. NGC 6872 quickly went up the ranks as the largest known galaxies for many years. However, now it has officially been ranked number 1 after a close examination of scientific data that has been gathered by several instruments, one of them being NASA's "GALEX," which stands for "Galaxy Evolution Explorer spacecraft."

Rafael Eufrasio, a lead scientist of the Goddard Space Flight Center located in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement, "Without GALEX's ability to detect the ultraviolet light of the youngest, hottest stars, we would never have recognized the full extent of this intriguing system."

Eufrasio did a presentation in Long Beach, California talking about the results at this year's meeting of the American Astronomical Society. He did make it a point to remind the public that spiral galaxies that are larger than NGC 6872 are most probably out there and waiting to be discovered and examined closely.

NGC 6872 has a neighbor; a galaxy named IC 4970, and the two galaxies interact with each other on a gravitational basis. This interaction accounts for and is the main reason why NGC 6872 is so enormous in size. In fact, IC 4970 actually holds 20% of the other galaxy's mass.

Simulations carried out in computers make the point that IC 4970 approached NGC 6872 around 130,000,000 years back, which started a sudden burst of action in different sections of NGC 6872.

Duilia de Mello, a professor in Catholic University, said in a statement, "The northeastern arm of NGC 6872 is the most disturbed and is rippling with star formation, but at its far end, visible only in the ultraviolet, is an object that appears to be a tidal dwarf galaxy similar to those seen in other interacting systems." 

The bar of the galaxy that links NGC 6872's arms and it's core regions has also been measured as very massive. It's radius spans 26 thousand light years and it's double the size of the bars of neighboring galaxies. There is no evidence that shows any sort of recent star formation in the galaxy, which suggests that it was assembled certain billion years back or more.

The GALEX mission was a $150,000,000 project that was started in April 2003 with the sole purpose of studying the history of the formation of stars in the known universe. Unfortunately, NASA cut off funding for this mission in early 2011. However, in May 2012, the project was passed down to California Institute of Technology, which is managing to keep the mission alive through private funding.

Anonymous submits petition to U.S. Government to observe DDoS attacks as a form of legal protest

Anonymous claims DDoS attacks are just like the Occupy movement - except they're occupying a public digital space instead of a real physical one.

When we think of the group Anonymous, we think of a rogue, anarchic group of hero's standing up and fighting against the injustices caused by governmental entities around the world for the good of the people. With that being said, it is rather surprising to see the group petitioning to get some of its actions to be made legal under the eyes of US law, but this is precisely what Anonymous is trying to get done.

A petition to the President was submitted by the group this week asking that DDoS attacks (distributed denial-of-service attacks) be looked at as a form of legal protest.

The petition makes the case that DDoS attacks are in no way a form of illegal hacking. Instead, they say it is nothing more than a way for people to protest online. Just like the Occupy movement where people made tents in public areas, this petition claims that DDoS attacks also occupy a public area for the sole purpose of sending a message.

Anonymous has been responsible, or at least, claimed responsibility for several of these kinds of attacks of the years, most of which were politically motivated. A perfect example is in 2010, when they launched several DDoS attacks on organizations, governmental agencies, and corporations who they believed were "impairing" the efforts made by WikiLeaks in order to release information that was previously classified.

Currently, Anonymous is leading campaigns against the Syrian government for its participation in the shutdown of the Internet. Further more, they are currently conducting their "cyberwar" against the government of Israel protesting the recent attacks on Gaza.

The US government will probably find it hard to accept this petition, especially considering what happened two days ago when it was found out that the huge DDoS campaign that was targeting several major U.S. banks is probably being conducted by Iran. It would seem like an almost impossible task to get the US government to look at these attacks as just a form of legal protest.

Because of the group's lack of any structure or leader, it's hard to pinpoint exactly who submitted this petition, or whether the group even agrees with what is being asked of the government. Either way, the petition is starting to gain some traction. As of this writing, the petition has only 1,502 signatures out of the 25,000 needed just for a response by the government.

Whether this action becomes legal or not, it is pretty clear that the DDoS attacks will keep going on and keep getting stronger and stronger as time goes on. Just earlier this month, the group announced, "Expect us 2013" and made it very clear that they have absolutely no plans of stopping or slowing down in any way.