Proton size still perplexes despite a new measurement 3 Collaborative Acrylic Paintings That Aim

208 Pages·2017·6.47 MB·English

by  Horacio Cárdenas Zardoni

Proton size still perplexes despite a new measurement 3
Collaborative Acrylic Paintings That Aim to Visually Map the Perceptual Experiences of Synesthesia 5
Paul Goodman on the Nine Kinds of Silence 15
A Complicated Second Life for a Brutalist Icon 17
This Resin and Fiberglass Table by Harow Replicates the Surface of the Moon 23
World's Most Precise Clock Powered by Supercold Strontium Atoms 27
The Rise of the Rich Renter 30
The psychology behind spending big 32
Using nuclear bombs to build highways 39
Study Illuminates Genetics of Skin Color 41
Snow Covered Vending Machines Illuminate a Frozen Hokkaido 42
Sunscreens, health and environment: a dangerous cocktail? 49
Six grand ideas to fight the end of antibiotics 52
If Heaven Ain’t a Lot Like Disney 59
LIGO and Virgo make first detection of gravitational waves produced by colliding neutron stars 63
Satellites spy Antarctic 'upside-down ice canyon' 69
The great writers forgotten by history 74
Blade Runner’s Immaterial Girls 81
Voles and the chemistry of love 88
Uncovering Indonesia’s Act of Killing 91
A potential drug found in a sea creature can now be made efficiently in the lab 95
The tiny island the British traded for Manhattan 98
Leave Novelists Out of Fiction 104
Metrologists are poised to change how scientists measure the Universe. 109
The Crystalline Busts of Massimiliano Pelletti 119
Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila

Perfectly preserved fossil salamander even has last meal in gut 127
Doubling up on ‘junk DNA’ helps make us human 129
Swagger & Pomp: Jamaica’s Dancehall Style 131
Breakdown of the free electron gas concept for electronic stopping 138
Is there an upside to having no social life? 141
The brain and sugar 148
Dialogue With God 150
An 80-Foot Steel Kraken Will Create an Artificial Coral Reef Near the British Virgin Islands 157
How do flowers release their perfume? 163
Monumentally Detailed Pen Drawings That Combine Real and Imagined Landscapes by Olivia Kemp 166
The Declaration of Independence 174
Everyday Scenes Imbued With Surreal Mystery by Photographer Brooke DiDonato 177
The Cultural Axis 183
At the British Museum 190
Meet Cipe Pineles 195

2
Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 423 december 2017
Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila

Proton size still perplexes despite a new measurement
Latest experiment sides with subatomic particle having a smaller girth, but discrepancy remains unexplained
BY
EMILY CONOVER

SHRIMPIER STILL A new measurement supports the idea that the proton is even smaller than its already-
teeny textbook value. To measure the proton’s radius, scientists used lasers (apparatus shown) to jolt
hydrogen atoms into higher energy levels, the spacing of which depends on the proton’s size.
AXEL BEYER/LASER SPECTROSCOPY DIVISION/MPQ
Nonconformists could take a page from the proton’s playbook: The subatomic particle is once again resisting
scientists’ attempts to size it up.
Everyone agrees the proton is tiny: Its radius is less than a femtometer, or a trillionth of a millimeter. But
scientists still don’t agree on exactly how small it is. A new measurement supports the case for a smaller
proton, physicist Lothar Maisenbacher and colleagues report in the Oct. 6 Science. But “in some sense, it
deepens the puzzle,” says Maisenbacher, of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching,
Germany.

3
Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 423 december 2017
Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila

The researchers peg the proton’s radius at 0.83 femtometers, whereas the textbook value is 0.88 femtometers.
That might not seem like a huge difference, but the few-percent discrepancy is stymieing scientists’ attempts
to test quantum electrodynamics, the theory of how electrically charged particles behave.
In the past, scientists gauged the proton’s girth in two ways: by firing electrons at protons and measuring how
the electrons ricocheted, or by zapping hydrogen atoms with lasers, to study the atoms’ energy levels, which
depend on the proton’s size. Those measurements were all in agreement.
But in 2010, a team of scientists figured out a way to make proton radius measurements much more precise.
The researchers studied energy levels of muonic hydrogen — hydrogen atoms in which the electron is
swapped out for a heavier relative called a muon. Such measurements found that the proton was about 4
percent smaller than previous estimates, or about 0.84 femtometers (SN: 7/31/10, p. 7).
Physicists struggled to explain the discrepancy. Some suspected that the mismatch could be hinting at
undiscovered physics, such as a new particle that interacts with muons but not electrons (SN: 4/29/17, p. 22).
Now, by making an improved measurement of energy levels in regular hydrogen, Maisenbacher and
colleagues find a small proton, in close agreement with the muonic hydrogen measurements. That suggests
that a difference between electrons and muons is probably not the culprit.
Still, the researchers still can’t explain why other techniques get different results. Electron scattering
experiments, for example, point to a larger proton.
“It’s a great result, but unfortunately, I would say it made it even harder to see what’s happening,” says
physicist Jan Bernauer of MIT, who was not involved with the new study. It remains unclear whether the
larger or smaller size is correct, Bernauer says. The proton puzzle persists.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/proton-size-still-perplexes-despite-new-measurement

4
Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 423 december 2017
Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila

Collaborative Acrylic Paintings That Aim to Visually Map the Perceptual Experiences of Synesthesia
OCTOBER 9, 2017
KATE SIERZPUTOWSKI

American artist and filmmaker Lucy Engelman has a far different experience of the world than most.
Engelman has a phenomenon called Synesthesia, which crosses her perceptual pathways to allow her to taste
colors, smell sounds, and even experience verbal data as a spectrum of vibrant colors. Engelman’s husband,
Scottish painter Daniel Mullen, decided to translate her complex sensory world in a way that might be easier

5
Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 423 december 2017
Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila

to understand for those of us who don’t see days and numbers as pockets of color.

The collaboration exists as a set of paintings titled A Different Kind of Time: Sequencing Spatial Temporal
Synesthesia. The works each contain a sequence of flat rectangular shapes arranged in a variety of arches and
lines. The angle of the shapes is switched in each work, some aligned with only one side facing the audience,
while others seem to project right through the canvas or retreat back into the painting’s rotated plane.
Engelman explains the works are the closest visual approximation to what she experiences, especially in
relation to her mind’s translation of letters, numbers, and time.
You can view more of the paintings based on Engelman’s unique view of the world on Daniel
Mullen’s website. (via Colossal Submissions)

6
Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 423 december 2017
Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila

7
Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 423 december 2017
Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila

8
Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 423 december 2017
Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila

9
Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 423 december 2017
Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila

10
Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 423 december 2017