m. c. de marco

Via GeekPress: LiveScience explains the bizarre properties of glass that make its traffic jam of atoms neither a liquid nor a solid.

In the 1950s, Sir Charles Frank in the Physics Department at Bristol suggested that the arrangement of the “jam” should form what is known as an icosahedron, but at the time he was unable to prove it.

Via a mailing list: The Santa Fe New Mexican’s obituary for Robert Bussard (father of the Bussard Ramjet), who passed away this October, focuses on his work with the Tokamak and Polywell:

Bussard’s idea is to convert hydrogen and boron, a widely available material, directly into electricity, producing helium as the only waste product.

Two years ago, just as his federal funding was running out, Bussard believed he had achieved a “breakthrough.”

I had heard about the physicist raising money for time-travel experiments, but it wasn’t until I saw this article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that I realized the fundraising physicist was in fact John Cramer, frequent Analog contributor and author of the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics. See the end of the Seattle PI article for how to contribute research funds.

Via GeekPress: LiveScience reports that Despite Rumors, Black Hole Factory Will Not Destroy Earth.

Scientists could generate a black hole as often as every second when the world’s most powerful particle accelerator comes online in 2007.

This potential “black hole factory” has raised fears that a stray black hole could devour our planet whole. The Lifeboat Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to safeguarding humanity from what it considers threats to our existence, has stated that artificial black holes could “threaten all life on Earth” and so it proposes to set up “self-sustaining colonies elsewhere.”