A Carbon Signature Revealed

Imagine diving into the placid surface of a painting by Vermeer, parsing apart Klimt's bejeweled surfaces, or untangling Jackson Pollock's knots of paint. Art historians, collectors, and restoration scholars have long sought to uncover the methods of great painters.

Over the past decade, scientists have peered with light beneath the varnished surface of paintings to discover the chemistry of pigments, to identify the authors of unsigned works, or probe the crack depths from damage or age.

Now, researchers at the University of Barcelona in Spain have used light at terahertz frequencies to uncover the hidden carbon signature of a painting previously thought to be unsigned. Though unsigned, the painting has been studied by art historians and confirmed to be painted by the Spanish artist Goya in 1771. Such secondary validation made the piece an apropos choice by the researchers, who published their findings May 14, 2013 on the arXiv. 

"Sacrifice to Vesta" at three different levels of imaging at visible and THz frequencies.
Image Credit: http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.3101

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Mosh Pit Mechanics, Chattering Gazelles, and Bouncing Baby Shampoo

Physics Phun in the Phorthcoming Physical Review

What do gabby gazelles, mosh pits and jumping shampoo jets have in common? They're all covered in upcoming Physical Review papers. (This image is a mash up of pictures from Wikimedia Commons. Details and rights info are here, here and here.)

Week after week, the American Physical Society journals are chock full of some of the most important physics papers published anywhere. Importance, of course, doesn't necessarily make something interesting to anyone outside the field. Every once in a while, though, we get a handful of papers that are significant enough to get into the Physical Review journals, including the flagship Physical Review Letters, as well as appealing to people who don't necessarily spend their days hunkered down in a lab or scribbling away on an equation-covered blackboard.

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PODCAST: Red Rover

Basic Books

This week on the Physics Central podcast we're talking about an awesome new book called Red Rover: Robotic Space Exploration from Genesis to the Mars Rover. The book's author Roger Wiens talks with us about his career working on robots that are sent to explore space.


Wiens worked on the Genesis space mission, which launched back in 2001, and he is the principle investigator on the ChemCam instrument aboard the Curiosity Rover. In his new book he talks about the ups and downs and successes and failures that come with trying to design and build these instruments, not to mention navigating political hurdles and the curve balls that life throws at all of us. I love that Wiens isn't a dramatic kind of guy—he really loves the science—but a story like this one can't help but be full of drama.

But in case you're more one for the science, let me tell you a little about the projects Wiens has worked on.


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Physics of Bubbles: supercomputer needed.

It took one of the world's most powerful supercomputers five days to model a simple childhood past time: popping bubbles.

Image credit: Andreas Bastian

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and at the University of California Berkeley have mathematically described the evolution of a cluster of bubbles. The research was published May 10, 2013 in the journal Science.

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Dancing on the Ceiling

While choreographed dances are bound by the laws of physics, certain tricks can make the seemingly impossible a reality. In the video below, you can see two dancers walking on walls, dancing on ceilings, and adapting to changes in the direction of gravity. Or so it seems.

Choreographer and dancer Derek Hough performed those feats about a week ago on the popular Dancing with the Stars TV show. Although Derek added modern flair to this trick, the method to his dance has been used in performances for over half a century. Surprisingly, this seemingly physics-denying method has even been used to simulate real physics principles in iconic movies.


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Superhydrophobic Cicada Wings Are Self-Cleaning

Image credit:  Pmjacoby via Wikimedia Commons

Rights information: http://bit.ly/11sxp7s

As 17-year cicadas wriggle out of the ground all over the northeastern U.S. this spring, they'll be reemerging into a world that understands them a little better. Researchers now find the design of their wings can cause filth to jump right off of them with the aid of dew, findings that might help lead to better artificial self-cleaning materials.

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The Rocketman Triathlon Video: Racing Through the Kennedy Space Center

After the finish.  Bike, t-shirt, finisher's medal and TARDIS towel

This past Sunday, the day after Star Wars Day, I competed in the world's nerdiest triathlon, The Rocketman. Smooth Running teamed up with NASA to set up a race through the Kennedy Space Center. Of the 30 triathlons I've done this was the coolest. As is probably the case for many children of the '80s, my concept of "science and technology" was defined by the shuttle program. Instead of dreaming of being an astronaut, I was always in awe of the scientists that made it possible to launch the astronauts into space. So, when I heard there was a race that not only would bring me up close and personal with shuttle history, but would let me race in a special "rocket scientist" division, I had to sign up. These seemed like my kind of people. The race didn't disappoint. Thinking ahead, I wore a camera on my helmet during the ride through KSC. What follows is the geekiest race report ever with a biker's-eye video of Launch Complex 39.




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PODCAST: Listening to the Earth

On this week's podcast I talked to people who listen to the Earth. Scientists monitor seismic waves that bounce through the planet's crust, sound waves too low for the human ear to hear reverberating through the atmosphere and hydroacoustic waves moving through the oceans. These signals carry with them lots of information about the sources of the disturbances, like where they happened and whether they're from an earthquake, a volcano or a large explosion.

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Scientists at Play During Wartime

Ever wondered what life was like for scientists at a lab that didn't officially exist?

Physicist Robert Serber soaks up some rays at Los Alamos. (image: Harold Agnew) 

In 1943 the United States Army established a top secret research facility in Los Alamos New Mexico to build the world's first atomic bomb. It was the greatest assembly of the physicists the world had ever seen. Hundreds of the country's top scientists came together to win World War II by splitting the atom. Early morning on July 16, 1945, the Manhattan Project detonated Trinity, the world's first atomic bomb.


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Cracked Windshields Reveal Impact Physics

Many commuters can relate to the common plight of cracked windshields. The ride may be going smoothly until a pop signals a small crack in the corner of the windshield — a small crack that will soon radiate into a spider-like obstruction.

Recently, researchers from Aix-Marseille University in Marseille, France published research on this topic, and they revealed a relatively simple relationship between the velocity of an impacting object and the number of radial cracks in the glass. Nicolas Vandenberghe and his colleagues found that the number of cracks is proportional to the square root of the impact speed for small steel projectiles hitting samples of plexiglass.

For example, quadrupling the speed of a small rock would double the number of triangular cracks emanating from the impact site. While this may provide little solace for an angry motorist, the research may prove useful in ballistics testing, forensics, and even protecting spacecraft from the dangers of the cosmos.



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