magnets

A bird dropping a baguette temporarily shut down the $5 billion Large Hadron Collider earlier this month. But scientists have a good feeling about the restart, which is slated for Friday, the The Guardian reports.

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This is my boom stick. Well, not mine, but General Atomics'. Known primarily for manufacturing the Predator drone, General Atomics has also moved into the weapons business, as demonstrated by this first ever successful test of their "Blitzer" rail gun. This involved the cannon firing a number of rounds down the range at the US Army's Dugway Proving Grounds.

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In 1931, physicist Paul Dirac hypothesized that on the quantum level, magnetic charge must exist in discrete packets, or quanta, in the same way that electric energy exists in a photon. This implies the existence of magnetic monopoles: particles that have a single magnetic charge, or polar identity -- north or south.

For 78 years, Dirac's speculation interested only hardcore theorists, because the conjecture failed to find any expression in observed phenomena. All magnets had two poles, one north and one south, inextricably attached to each other.

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Ferrofluids are made up of tiny magnetic fragments of iron suspended in oil (often kerosene) with a surfactant to prevent clumping (usually oleic acid). The fluid is relatively easy to make at home yet extremely expensive to buy on-line. How does $165 a liter sound? Pretty bad, right? Read on to learn how to make ferrofluids on the cheap.

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A long-hypothesized particle, stuff of tantalizing detection attempts and thrilling sci-fi novels, may have finally been sighted.

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Car designer Harsha Vardhan has a different vision of tomorrow. While his vehicle calls for an electric engine, just like we see in cars now like the Prius or Volt, that engine drives magnetic fields, not wheels.

(The magnetic fields, of course, do eventually drive the wheels forward when the energy is transferred from over superconducting fluid that touches the rims.)

The result is, theoretically, a very smooth and quiet ride with a low environmental impact. We just like the design for its neat, rear-entry cockpit and all of the potential we see in jousting of the future.

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News flash! Scientists prove that swallowing magnets is bad for you. Stop the presses! Smoking hurts wealth as well as health. Eureka! Faraway objects can be hard to see.

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