ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 551
February 27, 2016
Flowers That Are Too Iridescent Might Confuse Bees
Photo credit:
Bee on non-iridescent flower. Edwige Moyroud
Flower petals with that shiny, color-shifting effect are easier for bees to find, but if they’re perfectly iridescent, flowers risk confusing the bees. Researchers studying this delicate balance reveal that flower petals produce the “just right” signal to attract their helpful pollinators. The findings are published in Current Biology this week.
New Tetraquark Particle Found At Fermilab
Photo credit:
Illustration of a Tetraquark. Fermilab
Scientists have found an incredible new particle that's part of the exotic family of tetraquarks. Tetraquarks are made of four quarks, which makes them quite unique. Most particles in nature are made by either three quarks (like protons and neutrons) or just two.
The particle, called X(5568), was discovered thanks to Fermilab’s Tevatron particle accelerator. It has a mass of almost six protons and it is the first tetraquark to be made by four different types of quarks. A paper with the results is available on arXiv.
Confused Male Sand Martin Birds Filmed Having Sex With Dead Male
Photo credit:
Shocking behavior – or is it? xpixel/Shutterstock
The animal kingdom is full of extremely weird mating behaviors. Some flatworms can reproduce by having sex with their own heads. The male honeybee's penis is pulled from its body during sex, disemboweling it. Now, several male sand martin birds have been filmed having sex with another male.
How Long Do We Have Left Before The Universe Is Destroyed?
Photo credit:
Good news, everyone. Johan Swanepoel/Shutterstock
Well, thank goodness for that. A new study has concluded that the end of the universe according to one theory isn’t due for 2.8 billion years – and it could last up to, well, infinity.
The EU To Crack Down On The International Trade In Wildlife
Photo credit:
The EU is a destination, source, and transit region for global wildlife trafficking. USFWS Mountain-Prairie/Flickr CC BY 2.0
The European Commission, the organization responsible for proposing, implementing, and upholding legislations within the European Union, has just toughened the EU's laws on wildlife crime and trafficking.
Earth’s Core May Not Just Be Made Of Iron
Photo credit:
Earth's core has more light elements than previously thought. Vadim Sadovski/Shutterstock
Studying earthquakes allows us to gauge what the interior of our planet looks likes. As our measurements improve, so does our understanding of what lies underneath our feet. Now, a new study has suggested that the composition of the core might be more complex than previously thought.
February 26, 2016
Can You Solve Elon Musk’s Favorite Interview Riddle?
Photo credit:
Falcon 9 Launch, SpaceX
Have you ever been asked a really, really silly question in an interview? One that felt completely irrelevant to the job and the company. Such riddles are becoming more and more popular in interviews, particularly in the tech sector. Hiring managers use them to tell if you're able to think critically and on your feet.
Elon Musk has such a question that he loves to ask in interviews. Can you solve it?
“You’re standing on the surface of the Earth. You walk one mile south, one mile west, and one mile north. You end up exactly where you started. Where are you?”
Watch Physicist Brian Greene Explain Gravitational Waves To Stephen Colbert
Photo credit:
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert / YouTube
Theoretical physicist Brian Greene makes an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where the two banter about the historic discovery of gravitational waves on September 14, 2015. Turns out, Greene only needs eight minutes to give a crash course lesson on gravitational waves and Albert Einstein's 100-year-old theory, all in layman’s terms.
Physicists May Have Discovered a New “Tetraquark” Particle
Evidence for a never-before-seen particle containing four types of quark has shown up in data from the Tevatron collider at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois. The new particle, a class of “tetraquark,” is made of a bottom quark, a strange quark, an up quark and a down quark. The discovery could help elucidate the complex rules that govern quarks—the tiny fundamental particles that make up the protons and neutrons inside all the atoms in the universe.
Protons and neutrons each contain three quarks, which is by far the most stable grouping. Pairs of quarks, called mesons, also commonly appear, but larger conglomerations of quarks are extremely rare. Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland last year saw the first signs of a pentaquark—a grouping of five quarks—which had long been predicted but never seen. The first tetraquark was found in 2003 at the Belle experiment in Japan, and since then physicists have encountered a half dozen different arrangements. But the new one, if confirmed, would be special. “What’s unique in this case is that we basically have four quarks, which are all different—bottom, up, strange and down,” says Dmitri Denisov, co-spokesperson for the DZero experiment. “In all previous configurations usually two quarks are the same. Is this telling us something? I hope yes.”
The unusual arrangement, dubbed X(5568) in a paper submitted to Physical Review Letters, could reflect some deeper rule about how the different types, or “flavors,” of quarks bind together—a process enabled by the strongest force in nature, called, appropriately, the strong force. Physicists have a theory—called quantum chromodynamics—that describes how the strong force works, but it is incredibly unwieldy and difficult to make predictions with. “While we understand many features of the strong force, we don’t understand everything, especially how the strong force acts on large distances,” Denisov says. “And on a fundamental level we still don’t have a very good model of how quarks interact when there are quite a few of them joined together.”
One open question is: How many quarks can stick together to form a particle? So far scientists have not seen groupings of more than five, but theoretically there is no limit. Physicists would also like to discover different configurations of four and five quarks than the handful that have been seen. “Finding tetraquarks has proven difficult to do, but it is likely that there are many more to find,” says Fermilab physicist Don Lincoln, a member of the DZero team.
The Tevatron collider shut down in 2011, but the DZero team found signs of the new tetraquark in the archive of data from the tens of billions of particle collisions it achieved during its 28 years of operation. Other experiments such the LHC’s LHCb (“b” stands for beauty) project are now looking through their own data to see if they also have evidence of the particle. “If it is real, it would be very interesting,” says LHCb physicist Sheldon Stone of Syracuse University. “Discussions among LHCb collaborators have raised several issues of concern with the DZero result that LHCb can check expeditiously. Until the check is done and the DZero result is confirmed, we are not sure exactly what they are seeing.”
Either way, scientists expect current particle accelerators—especially the LHC, which restarted last year at higher energy levels than ever before—to discover more new particle configurations in the coming years, making it an exciting time for quark physics and for clearing up the intricate mechanics of the strong force. “I would compare it with something like a puzzle—it’s not finished yet but we’ve added one more piece to what was already known,” Denisov says. “Hopefully there will eventually be a theory that explains these observations to gain a better understanding of these quarks and the forces acting between them.”
Hacking The Terror Suspect’s iPhone: What The FBI Can Do Now Apple Says “No”
Photo credit:
Wachiwit/Shutterstock
Tech giant Apple is standing firm behind its decision to refuse a US court order to help the FBI gain access to the iPhone used by one of the shooters in last year’s mass killing in California.
ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog
- ريتشارد دوكنز's profile
- 106 followers
