Today’s physics news: LHC primordial matter is hottest stuff ever made, and more…

Today’s physics news: LHC primordial matter is hottest stuff ever made, and more…

LHC primordial matter is hottest stuff ever made

A team at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which smashes lead ions together, have made a plasma almost 40 per cent hotter than the existing record. At the Quark Matter 2012 conference in Washington DC on 13 August, they reported that their quark-gluon plasma had reached over 5 trillion °C, the hottest temperature ever created in an experiment.

New Scientist

Best-ever quality printing inspired by stained glass

A new way of printing colours at the highest resolution permitted by the laws of physics could be used to create secure watermarks or high-density data storage. In this new method, developed by researchers at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore, each “pixel” in the image is actually made up of four nanoscale cylinders coated in silver and gold. The colour they produce depends on both the diameter and spacing of the cylinders, allowing the researchers to “print” a full-colour image just by carving out cylinders at the right scale.

New Scientist

Hypersonic jet Waverider eyes Mach 6

The US military has conducted a test flight of its hypersonic jet Waverider, aiming to reach Mach 6 (4,300mph; 6,900km/h) above the Pacific Ocean. At that speed it could travel from London to New York in about an hour. Results from the test flight are expected later on Wednesday. The Pentagon and Nasa hope to use the project to develop faster missiles.

BBC

Academic rigour is liberating not limiting

In this article, Education Secretary Michael Gove says that for most of the past 20 years politicians have failed to ensure that the exam system works in the interests of all students. He states that we must end this arid debate once and for all by modernising our exams to make them competitive with those of the best-performing nations.

The Times