Dmitry Podolsky has got his PhD from Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics. He currently works as postdoc at Case Western Reserve University. He is also one of the editors of NEQNET.

378. Sounds of Jupiter: video (or better say – audio?) of the day

Damn if it does not sound like Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: Space odyssey” Did he actually know? Although these particular sounds were recorded in 1988, I bet people have heard them back in 1950s-60s, and Clarke should have told Kubrick about them.

376. A GRB detected at z=8.3

… which makes it, as it seems, the most distant object in the Universe observed so far – see the Swift page (that’s the spacecraft that originally detected the GRB on Apr 23) on the NASA site for technical details or this article on New Scientist site for general discussion. That’s the guy. Do you [...]

375. Inertial confinement: concluding part on lasers

The previous parts on interaction between laser emission and material of fuel capsule are “Inertial confinement – using lasers for compression” and “Inertial confinement: more on interaction of laser emission with matter“. I hope to finish with discussion of laser-target interaction today and proceed to instabilities (the most interesting part of the physics of inertial [...]

374. How big is the Universe: video of the day

Well, if you recall that it takes more than 3 years for a photon emitted by the Sun to reach the nearest star… the size of the causal patch, 14 billion light years, should impress you If words did not really impress you, then maybe this nice video will – Update: Daniel also liked this [...]

373. Some musings about Unruh effect

Good new long work week, science geeks! I’ve just finished reading a recent paper by Ugo Moschella and Richard Schaeffer “Quantum fields on curved space times and a new look at the Unruh effect” and wanted to share some of my thoughts with you… 1. Unruh effect. Gravitation and thermodynamics The subject of the paper [...]

372. On science (in Russia)

As I believe, in the long run the most painful hit that Russia got in final rounds of Cold War wasn’t a decrease of its military might or loss of political influence. It should be rather clear that those who suffer in war the most are the ones who cannot really defend themselves. The most [...]

371. Saturday’s photoguess

Kindly take a look at photos below and try to guess what are these nice guys building and where exactly does it happen Hint: Photo 3 has all information you need to guess correctly what it is. Answer: This is the launch pad for Soyuz rocket being built in Korou, French Guyana. Kudos to Gabriel

370. The future of science blogs

I’ve just finished a reading rather interesting article by Mark Penn on WSJ called “America’s newest profession: bloggers for hire“. Penn presents rather interesting stats there (based on analysis by Technorati): The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and [...]

369. Stephen Hawking’s “Black holes and beyond”: video of the day

Black holes, wormholes, initial singularity in cosmology… as explained by Stephen Hawking. Rumor says he is in Addenbrooke’s hospital now fighting with chest infection. I wish you quick and full recovery, Prof. Hawking.

368. Inertial confinement: more on interaction of laser emission with matter

Yeah… so, where did we stop last time? I’ve just said another triviality – that laser emission strongly interacts with material of the fuel capsule. There are several mechanisms of this interaction: deflection (ablator and fuel are almost transparent but not quite), absorption and scattering. Wired Science visits LLNL and National Ignition Facility As for [...]