MPs pass flagship academies bill
The government’s flagship academies bill was rushed through parliament, though six Liberal Democrat MPs voted for an amendment calling for more consultation with parents
Guardian
Times
BBC
Sarkozy shares his enlightenment vision with high-energy physicists
French President Nicolas Sarkozy delivered an impressive endorsement of fundamental science at the International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) yesterday
Guardian
China considers big rocket power
Chinese engineers are considering a new super-powerful engine for the next generation of space rockets, say officials
BBC
The science fiction that turned into science fact
Jetpacks and flying cars, teleportation and time travel: movie inventions that are now part of life
Telegraph
Education Quangos: Who will monitor the curriculum now?
The war on quangos has already claimed three education bodies – with the prospect of a fourth in the near future.
Independent
Ageing spacecraft makes best-ever map of Mars
The images come from NASA’s Odyssey spacecraft, which is set to smash the longevity record for a Martian probe
New Scientist
Today’s physics news: Tuesday, 27 July 2010
Posted in Daily news Tagged academies bill, China rocket, education quangos, jetpacks, NASA Odyssey, Sarkozy, time travel Leave a comment
Today’s physics news: Monday, 26 July 2010
Academies will leave pupils ‘unprepared for modern life’, say critics
The Campaign for Science and Engineering argues the coalition’s education reforms will lead to inadequate teaching of English, maths and science
Guardian
Dark matter hunt eyes deeper home
Scientists are looking to relocate an underground experiment searching for dark matter to an even deeper site.
BBC
LHC closes in on massive particle
Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have seen several candidates for the heaviest elementary particle known to science
BBC
Cern scientists plan new atom collider
Scientists from CERN – the European Organisation for Nuclear Research – will spell out their ambitions at a conference in Paris today.
Independent
Daily Mail
Posted in Daily news Tagged academies, Campaign for science and engineering, CERN, dark matter, LHC Leave a comment
Today’s physics news: Friday, 23 July 2010
Science exam too easy, says regulator
GCSE science exam sat last summer did not test students adequately, Ofqual reports
Guardian
Telegraph
Web-crawling computers will soon be calling the shots in science
Within a decade, computers will be able to plough through scientific data looking for patterns and connections – then tell scientists what they should do next
Guardian
Stars reveal carbon ‘spaceballs’
Scientists have detected the largest molecules ever seen in space, in a cloud of cosmic dust surrounding a distant star.
BBC
US lab eyes more time to hunt Higgs boson particle
The Tevatron accelerator could remain operational until 2014, as physicists there now think the Higgs boson is within their reach.
BBC
Quantum time machine ‘allows paradox-free time travel’
Quantum physicists at MIT believe it is possible to create a time machine which could affect the past without creating a “grandfather paradox”.
Telegraph
Quantum mechanics flummoxes physicists again
Triple slit experiment fails to crack quantum gravity
Physics World
Nature
Posted in Daily news Tagged Daily news, Higgs boson, Ofqual, physics, quantum physics, science GCSE, spaceballs, Tevatron, time machine Leave a comment
Today’s physics news: Thursday, 22 July 2010
Biggest star on record found in neighbouring galaxy
Astronomers say colossal star known as R136a1 is more than 265 times more massive than the sun
Guardian
Astronomer royal Martin Reese
Times
Telegraph
Independent
Graduate tax proposal ‘rejected’
The coalition government will reject the idea of a graduate tax to pay for university fees in England, suggests a senior Conservative source.
BBC
Independent
Scientists find even more evidence of water on the moon
Analysis of moon rock suggests that a chemically altered form of water is bound up within a volcanic lunar mineral.
Daily Mail
Physicists defend coffers from a raid by engineers
Particle physicists have hit back at the Royal Academy of Engineering’s claim that some of the funding that goes to pure sciences should be redirected to engineering to boost the UK’s economic recovery
THE
Physics buskers bring science tricks to the National Eisteddfod
Visitors to the National Eisteddfod of Wales on the outskirts of Ebbw Vale will be looking forward to ‘ymryson’, poets, competitions, choirs and dance performances, so what will they make of the loud lollies and tornado tubes awaiting them?
The Institute of Physics (IOP) in Wales is sending its Physics in the Field team of physics buskers to the event on Tuesday, 3 August to challenge visitors’ perceptions of physics. They will be busking outside the Science and Technology Pavilion of which the Institute of Physics in Wales is a sponsor.
Physics tricks are hand-held demonstrations using things that can be found at home. Some are messy, some are noisy, but all of them are crowd pleasing and help illustrate different areas of physics.
Visitors and the artists from Cerbyd, a project that links artists with specialist community groups across Wales, will be encouraged to find out how to do the tricks themselves and give on-the-spot performances to their friends and families.
At a Physics in the Field event last year, one visitor revealed, “I saw things that you wouldn’t normally see and it was cool”. Another commented, “We have seen amazing wonders. Balloons that don’t pop! Storms in bottles!”
Angharad Thomas, IOP National Officer for Wales, said: “I love doing Physics in the Field because people are really interested in what we are doing and want to find out more.”
“What is really satisfying is when you show someone a trick, and they relate it to something they have come across in everyday life – but just hadn’t thought of it as physics before.”
“We know that once people of all ages have a go at the tricks, they’re hooked and go on to tell their friends about them. This really helps us in our aim of taking physics to people who wouldn’t actively seek it out.”
And for those visitors who can’t get enough, all the tricks performed by the team, including loud lollies, tornado tubes or turning pints of water upside down over a friend’s head without drenching them, are available on www.physics.org with full explanations.