According to Einstein's theory of relativity, it is not possible for matter to travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. The speed of light (186,282 miles per second) has long been considered a cosmic speed limit, and much of modern physics is based on Einstein's work. Now there is a possibility that Einstein was wrong -- and physics may have to rethink the concept of matter and energy.
The science world was surprised when workers at CERN, the world's largest physics lab, recently announced that they had recorded subatomic particles travelling faster than the speed of light. If their findings are proven to be correct, they would overturn one of the pillars of the Standard Model of physics, which attempts to explain the way the universe and everything within it works.
A rare, powerful 5.8-magnitude earthquake shook the East Coast United States on August 23. Damage was light, but millions of people were surprised and unnerved by the event. The earthquake occurred near Mineral, Virginia, about 100 miles southwest of Washington, DC. It was a shallow earthquake, and shaking was recorded all along the Appalachians, from Georgia to New England. There have been several aftershocks and more are expected.
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth'scrustthat creates seismic waves. It is estimated that around 500,000 earthquakes occur each year, detectable with current instrumentation. About 100,000 of these can be felt. Earthquakes are caused mostly by rupture of geological faults, but also by other events such as volcanic activity, landslides, mine blasts, and nuclear tests.
At the youngest ages, children are intrigued by Mentos in a Diet Coke. Figuring out what nature is trying to tell us, which is otherwise known as doing science, can be exciting. But, too often, young people become disabused of that excitement when they experience the drudgery of reading dry texts while confined in a stuffy cubicle or a study carrel. Now we are taking a step to help change that perspective. We are displacing text with video, and we are making it easy to find and learn science wherever you happen to be.
It is an unfortunate circumstance that fun is too often taken out of science. We should want students of all ages to be happy, as happy people invest themselves more into what they are doing. We should want science to remain an avocation even as it becomes a vocation for some students and others move on to different interests.
WorldWideScience.org recently released a new mobile version (http://m.worldwidescience.org). Scientists and researchers throughout DOE and the entire U.S. now have access to over 80 scientific and technical databases from preeminent libraries and information centers around the world, all via their “smart phones” or tablets.
Operating in the same fashion as the computer-based version of WorldWideScience.org, the user simply enters a single query into the search box on the phone. Using federated search technology, the query is distributed to each of the approximately 80 databases and the search results are combined and re-ranked according to relevance.
On May 25, 2011, I made an invited presentation in Geneva, Switzerland at the 14th session of the United Nations’ Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD). I want to share with you the reception WorldWideScience.org received at this conference.
Palace of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland
CSTD and OSTI share similar goals. CSTD supports universal access for all to scientific knowledge. OSTI seeks to share DOE R&D results with as many people as possible and we partner with other organizations to create integrated products designed to attract users.
Recently, I had the opportunity to explore OSTI's web traffic statistics with Walt Warnick and Karen Spence. I am quite happy with what was revealed about our traffic growth and the value of our various collaborations in making scientific and technical information more accessible. So I wanted to share it with you here at the OSTI Blog.
Much has been written in this blog about WorldWideScience.org. As regular readers well know, it is a global gateway to scientific and technical databases conceived, developed, and operated by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information.
The Department of Energy’sOffice of Scientific and Technical Information(OSTI) will be at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s 2011 Annual Meeting. The theme of this year’s meeting is “Science without Borders.”
OSTI will have a booth (#201 floor plan) at the meeting. Our central theme is “Ensuring Global Science Access.”
We have integrated about ten OSTI products dealing with technical reports, e-prints, patents, conference proceedings, project summaries, etc., so that they are all searchable via s single query. The integrated product allows users to search without first having to decide which OSTI product is likely to have the content he/she seeks. This product is ScienceAccelerator.gov.
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