Certain stories hit home more than others. “God Does Not Play Dice” — an amazing experiment calls for extremely fast, unpredictable decisions about how to measure electron orientations; initial approval for use of radar to verify that Queen Nefertiti’s crypt may be hidden behind King Tut’s 3,300-year-old tomb; coming closer than ever to finding Earth twins in a habitable zone; code from the movie Interstellar leading to new spinning black hole discoveries; and breaking key fiber optic power and distance barriers — these are the news stories that you, our readers, visited the most.
Key Fiber Optic Power and Distance Barriers Broken
Researchers have broken key barriers that limit the distance information can travel in fiber optic cables and still be accurately deciphered by a receiver, increasing the maximum power — and therefore distance — at which optical signals can be sent through optical fibers. This advance has the potential to increase data transmission rates for fiber optic cables that serve as the backbone of the Internet, wireless and landline networks…
Code from Interstellar Movie Leads to new Spinning Black Hole Discoveries
The team responsible for the Oscar-nominated visual effects at the center of Christopher Nolan’s epic, Interstellar, have turned science fiction into science fact by providing new insights into the powerful effects of black holes. The team describes innovative computer code used to generate the film’s iconic images of the wormhole, black hole and various celestial objects, and explains how the code has led them to new science discoveries.
We’re Closer than Ever to Finding Earth Twins in a Habitable Zone
How many stars like our sun host planets like our Earth? NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope continuously monitored more than 150,000 stars beyond our solar system and, to date, has offered scientists an assortment of more than 4,000 candidate planets for further study — the 1,000th of which was recently verified.
Egypt approves Radar for Nefertiti Tomb Quest
An Egyptian official says the Antiquities Ministry has given initial approval for the use of non-invasive radar to verify a theory that Queen Nefertiti’s crypt may be hidden behind King Tutankhamun’s 3,300-year-old tomb in the famous Valley of the Kings. Mouchira Moussa, media consultant to the antiquities minister, said September 22, 2015, that final security clearance will probably be obtained within a month.
God Does Not Play Dice: Testing Einstein’s Principle of Local Realism
Random number generators have played a critical role in an historic experiment that gives the strongest refutation to date of Albert Einstein’s principle of “local realism,” which says that the universe obeys laws, not chance, and that there is no communication faster than light. An experiment first “entangled” two electrons trapped inside two different diamond crystals, and then measured the electrons’ orientations.
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