Friday, 18 September 2009

Isn't technology wonderful?

I saw this story on Reddit of all places, as you do, and was immediately fascinated: someone claims to have imaged the s- and p-electron orbitals in a single carbon atom. Then I saw the comments below the story: shurely shome mishtake seemed to be the order of the day: why are they not sp- hybrids? Anyway, the paper has only just been accepted by Physical Review B so it may be a while before we see the details. However, sp- or no sp-, it still seems incredibly exciting. We shall see.

Also, I see that the folks at the European Space Agency have basically given NASA a resounding "meh" following the latest Hubble images (see previous posts), and gone and released some of the images their own Planck telescope has started to capture.

Lest we forget, Planck is the coldest object in the sky, chilled to -273 deg C (can't do the ascii), designed to answer some of the most complicated questions posed by astronomers. One idea is that a model of the initial expansion of the universe may be accurately determined. So, from the very small to the very large; how splendid. Have a good weekend!

No comments:

Post a Comment