Brian Dodson

An invitation-only conference held back in 2011 on the topic "Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality" (QPNR) saw top physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers of science specializing in the meaning and interpretation of quantum mechanics wrangling over an array of fundamental issues. An interesting aspect of the gathering was that when informally polled on the main issues and open problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics, the results showed that the scientific community still has no clear consensus concerning the basic nature of quantum physics.  Read More

The American cliff swallow is best known for its yearly migration between North and South America, traditionally resulting in the annual return of the swallows to Mission San Juan Capistrano in Southern California on March 19. Now it seems they also provide a lesson in the workings of natural selection. A three-decade long study carried out by a husband and wife ornithological team in western Nebraska has, thanks to long years of carefully recording all available data, shown that roadkill has exerted a selective advantage on swallows with shorter wingspans.  Read More

Using the technique that created Dolly the sheep, researchers from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, have identified a way to produce healthy mouse clones that live a normal lifespan and can be sequentially cloned indefinitely. In an experiment that started in 2005, the team led by Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama has used a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SNCT) to produce 581 clones of one original "donor" mouse through 25 consecutive rounds of cloning.  Read More

In a day when we have examined astronomical objects shining forth from a time shortly after the Big Bang, one would think astronomers have a pretty good handle on what is in the immediate vicinity of the Solar System. That's why the recent report of a binary star lying only 6.5 light-years away came as rather a surprise to the astronomical community. The pair, called WISE J1049-5319 A and B, are brown dwarf stars and only two star systems – the triple star Alpha Centauri, and Barnard's Star – lie closer to our Sun.  Read More

In what might seem like an odd pairing, Birmingham City University and Westfield Sportscars have joined forces to develop the world’s first build at home electric race car kit. The iRACER is an all-electric vehicle designed to educate and excite, while also supporting the growing forces urging the sport of racing to go local-emissions-free.  Read More

Quantum entanglement, one of the odder aspects of quantum theory, links the properties of particles even when they are separated by large distances. When a property of one of a pair of entangled particles is measured, the other "immediately" settles down into a state compatible with that measurement. So how fast is "immediately"? According to research by Prof. Juan Yin and colleagues at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai, the lower limit to the speed associated with entanglement dynamics – or "spooky action at a distance" – is at least 10,000 times faster than light.  Read More

If you watch a handwriting expert authenticate a signature, they will talk about echoes of the process of signing one's name – darker or lighter lines reveal pressure variations, the shape of the loops reveals the shaking of the hand, and the flow of the ink shows if the signature was laid down without hesitation. These echoes of the act of writing make a signature far more revealing than a simple squiggle on paper. Now researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (IGD) have created a credit card that contains a thorough description of these signature traits, which can be used for instant authentication.  Read More

The phrase "engage the ion drive" still has the ring of a line from Star Wars, but these engines have been used in space missions for more than four decades and remain the subject of ongoing research. Ion engines have incredible fuel efficiency, but their low thrust requires very long operating times ... and therein lies the rub. To date, erosion within such an engine seriously limits its operational lifetime. Now a group of researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has developed a new design that largely eliminates this erosion, opening the gates for higher thrust and more efficient drives for manned and unmanned missions to the reaches of the Solar System.  Read More

The rotation of a supermassive black hole (SBH) has been definitively measured for the first time by combining x-ray data obtained by the x-ray space telescopes XMM-Newton (soft x-rays) and NuSTAR (hard x-rays). The SBH at the center of a galaxy called NGC 1365 was found to be spinning at 84 percent of the maximum speed allowed by general relativity – or roughly speaking, the edge of the black hole is rotating at 84 percent of the speed of light.  Read More