How Big is the Universe?

This easy to understand video clip explains.

Faster Than Light?

CERN researchers claim they've found subatomic particles - neutrinos - that moves faster than the speed of light.

Plants Kind to Relatives

Research shows that plants know if they're next to a relative and will grow to allow the relative more access to light.

Previous research showed that plants can recognize relative's root systems from the same mother plant and will give them a fairer share of nutrients. The new study found when impatiens plants shared a pot with seeds from the same parent plant, they grew taller with more branches and fewer leaves. When planted with other non-sibling impatiens, they grew more and larger leaves that crowded out non-relatives. Roots alert plants to the relationship of nearby plants because when impatiens were planted near siblings but in separate pots, they didn’t recognize their relatives.

Tweezers of Light

MIT researchers use light beams to stabilize or pull molecules, thereby measuring the strength of protein chemical bonds. The science had previously been used to move cells on a microchip.

Travelling Light

Because photons impart momentum, physicists demonstrated that light can move insect's wings.

A wing experiences different pressures on its top and bottom side to stay in flight. But aside from air, light can also create pressure. When photons pass through or reflect off of something, they induce momentum in that object. Researchers zapped a tiny wing-shaped rod with a laser beam causing the wing to move.

Freezing Light

Einstein said that the special theory of relativity shows "that mass and energy are different manifestations of the same thing.” Accordingly, researchers have frozen and unfrozen light in an entirely different place.

Researchers sent a light pulse into a sodium cloud of -460 degrees (theoretical point were matter stops). While frozen, the light actually changed state - like frozen water. It also split into two forms of matter. One was frozen while the other moved at 200 meters/hour. The second form - a matter wave - contains the exact information of the original light wave which was converted back into light.

Since fiber-optic communications use light, it means we may one day stop, store and turn messages back on, just like a light switch.

Tidbits on Light

Discover Magazine has a primer on 20 things you didn't know about light. Some cool facts:

1) It took 500,000 years after the Big Bang for the universe took to expand enough to allow photons (light particles) to travel freely ... i.e. light didn't exist for nearly half a billion years.

2) Like all living things, humans demonstrate bio­luminescence: We glow. Humans are brightest during the afternoon, around our lips and cheeks. The cause may be chemical reactions involving molecular fragments known as free radicals.

3) Light has no mass, but it does have momentum

4) Visible light is less than one ten-billionth of the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves to gamma rays).

5) Goldfish can see infrared radiation; Bees, birds, and lizards can see ultraviolet.