Mystery saboteur breaches UK power station

"No new coal" was the the calling card of the mystery saboteur the Guardian describes as a 'green Banksy', who broke into a power station to protest about coal-fired electricity generation.

The £12m defences of the most heavily guarded power station in Britain were breached by a single person who, under the eyes of CCTV cameras, climbed two three-metre (10ft) razor-wired, electrified security fences, walked into the station and crashed a giant 500MW turbine before leaving a calling card reading "no new coal". He walked out the same way and hopped back over the fence.

The Guardian controversially claimed the activist's actions "reduced UK climate change emissions by 2%", something virulently debated by readers and scientists.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/11/kingsnorth-green-banksy-saboteur

Scientists Make First Paper-Based Transistor

A team in Portugal have produced the world's first field-effect transistor based on paper. The paper layer acts as an "interstrate", with the actual FET components being fabricated onto both sides: so the paper holds the transistor together and acts as an insulator. 

In tests the paper transistor performed better than amorphous silicon transistors and even approaches the performance of state-of-the-art oxide thin-film transistors.

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news135927474.html

Cosmology: Top 10 articles from 2008

Here, for your entertainment, are the New Scientist's top picks of good cosmology reads from 2008, including:

Why Einstein was wrong about relativity
The void: Imprint of another universe?
The hunt for the Un-universe
Does time travel start here?
Is the dark matter mystery about to be solved?
Dark energy may just be a cosmic illusion
Black holes may lurk in unexpected places
Inflation deflated

Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16231-cosmology-top-10-articles-from-2008.html

Forces from the future stop the LHC?

More wild speculation regarding the LHC this week, as Harvard physicist, Kevin Black, is speculating that the failure of the Large Hadron Collider soon after it was switched on in September was caused by intervention from the future to stop the experiment happening.

He writes:

"I came across a bizarre paper recently suggesting that the LHC might be shut down. Not because of the funding cuts that have been threatening particle physics projects around the world, nor because of law suits accusing the LHC of threatening life on Earth.

No, the paper suggested that future effects caused by the production of particles, such as the Higgs, could ripple backwards in time and prevent the LHC from ever operating. If it hadn't been written by two very well respected and accomplished theoretical physicists, I would have stopped reading at the title alone: Test of Effect from Future in Large Hadron Collider; A Proposal."

Source: http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/230

Radio Astronomy performances

Sincronie is a festival which takes place in Milan each year. In 2008 the festival focuses on astronomy. On Saturday 15 November 2008, a concert dedicated to the science of radio astronomy will take place .

It includes a performance by r a d i o q u a l i a, who will premiere the new work "SKR", and Italian musician, TeZ, who will perform a newly adapted version of his piece, "reSUNance", which premiered at Ars Electronica 2008.

The artists will also present a collaborative performance using sonified signals from astronomical sources.

Source: http://www.mail-archive.com/spectre@mikrolisten.de/msg04317.html

Earth: at the heart of a giant cosmic void?

We assume that there is nothing particularly special about our cosmic neighbourhood, but abandoning that assumption might solve one of cosmology's most pressing problems. Here's a good article summarising a new generation of experiments which may challenge or prove to prevailing notions about the the modern-day Copernican principle.

Source: http://www.newscientist.com

Special edition of New York Times

One of the most inspiring art actions I've seen in a long time, we'll see if this special edition of the New York Times becomes prophetic. Among my favourite headlines are:

"Lawrence Lessig is head of the new Network Communications Bureau" ...

"Congress has voted to place ExxonMobil and other major oil companies under public stewardship, with the bulk of the companies’ profits put in a public trust administered by the United Nations"

Source: http://www.nytimes-se.com/

Tevatron sees new particle?

Not only is Fermilab not going silently into the night, in the face of competition from the LHC, it may have actually produced a new particle, as yet unknown to physics. Experiments colliding up quarks and anti-up quarks in the Tevatron have produced anomalous muons, which Fermilab can't explain.

Source: http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.5357

Magnetic Portals Connect Sun and Earth

A stunning article from NASA was published today.

"During the time it takes you to read this article, something will happen high overhead that until recently many scientists didn't believe in. A magnetic portal will open, linking Earth to the sun 93 million miles away. Tons of high-energy particles may flow through the opening before it closes again, around the time you reach the end of the page.

"It's called a flux transfer event or 'FTE,'" says space physicist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Ten years ago I was pretty sure they didn't exist, but now the evidence is incontrovertible."

Source: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/30oct_ftes.htm

Pair of Gravitationally Interacting Galaxies

Here, Hubble snaps something very special - the chance alignment of two galaxies ...

"Just a couple of days after the orbiting observatory was brought back online, Hubble aimed its prime working camera [...] at a particularly intriguing target, a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081030102614.htm