The Blob

Now that we have a firm understanding of the energy scales of relevance to the pairing glue problem in the cuprate high temperature superconductors, we can proceed to the literature without the hassle and embarrassment of … ahem … excess baggage. One is immediately led to the PhD thesis of a one David Shai Ellis of the University of Toronto in Canada.

Electronic Excitations in Lanthanum Cuprates Measured by Resonant Inelastic X-ray
Scattering, Phd Thesis of David Shai Ellis of the University of Toronto.

https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/24344/6/Ellis_David_S_201003_PhD_thesis.pdf

Also published as an Arxiv paper :

http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.3044

Electronic Structure of Doped Lanthanum Cuprates Studied with Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering, D. S. Ellis, Jungho Kim, Harry Zhang, J. P. Hill, Genda Gu, Seiki Komiya, Yoichi Ando, D. Casa, T. Gog and Young-June Kim

And don’t forget those crazy Chinese! Never missing an opportunity to demonstrate their clear technical and intellectual superiority, they’re already on it!

http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.0342

Visualizing the atomic scale electronic structure of the Ca₂CuO₂Cl₂ Mott insulator, Cun Ye, Peng Cai, Runze Yu, Xiaodong Zhou, Wei Ruan, Qingqing Liu, Changqing Jin and Yayu Wang

And a group in France has already explored a simple model of such a scenario.

Real-Space Pairing through Charge Transfer Excitons in High-Tc Cuprates, Michel Pouchard, Jean-Pierre Doumerc and Antoine Villesuzanne, Inorg. Chem., 2008, 47 (24), pp 11958–11964

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ic801266q

Solid state chemistry for connecting the pieces of the high-Tc superconducting puzzle?, Michel Pouchard, Jean-Pierre Doumerc NS Antoine Villesuzanne, Solid State Sciences, Volume 12, Issue 5, May 2010, Pages 691-698, International Symposium on Structure-Property Relationships in Solid-State Materials

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1293255809002246

Dr. Lizardo

This is Hugh Mann, Internet Physicist, reporting on what has to be the most unreported physics breakthrough of 2011, the worldwide meltdown of the condensed matter physics community upon the recent announcement on the condensed matter physics Arxiv of the unambiguous experimental identification of the pairing glue in the copper oxide (cuprate) superconductors to be the multi electron volt optical charge transfer excitation (exciton) of the parent insulating compound. Physicists worldwide have suddenly been struck dumb and speechless upon the sudden realization that their pants and legs are filled and covered with their own shit, with the instantaneous recognition that the unretarded, high energy, local pairing of electronically mediated strongly coupled bosons (bipolarons) is, in fact, a reality, and that twenty years of hard work on their own theories must be flushed down the toilet. This is truly a sad day for physics, people. It’s no wonder nobody besides Hugh Mann is publicly commenting on this result.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.0737

Direct observation of real-time oscillations of the Cooper-pairs condensate in a high-Tc superconductor, B. Mansart, J. Lorenzana, M. Scarongella, M. Chergui and F. Carbone

http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.3028

Scaling of Tc max with the charge-transfer energy in hole-doped cuprates, Cédric Weber, Chuck-Hou Yee, Kristjan Haule and Gabriel Kotliar

http://meeting.aps.org/Meeting/MAR12/Event/159625

Pluto - The Tenth Planet

Big Black Doofus Astronomer Wannabe Picks Fight With Purple Dwarf. Dwarf Wins.

It’s not very smart to piss off a dwarf. They’ve got little friends.

Pluto – Planet of the Year, Decade and Century.

Inner Solar System Diagram

This paper has been out for a couple of days, but finally the press has picked up on it.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3781

The Population of Natural Earth Satellites, Mikael Granvik, Jeremie Vaubaillon and Robert Jedicke, Accepted for Publication in Icarus.

We have for the first time calculated the population characteristics of the Earth’s irregular natural satellites (NES) that are temporarily captured from the near-Earth-object (NEO) population. The steady-state NES size frequency and residence time distributions were determined under the dynamical influence of all the massive bodies in the solar system (but mainly the Sun, Earth, and Moon) for NEOs of negligible mass. To this end, we compute the NES capture probability from the NEO population as a function of the latter’s heliocentric orbital elements and combine those results with the current best estimates for the NEO size-frequency and orbital distribution. At any given time there should be at least one NES of 1 meter diameter orbiting the Earth. The average temporarily-captured orbiter (TCO) an object that makes at least one revolution around the Earth in a co-rotating coordinate system) completes (2.88 ± 0.82) rev around the Earth during a capture event that lasts (286 ± 18) d. We find a small preference for capture events starting in either January or July. Our results are consistent with the single known natural TCO, 2006 RH₁₂₀ , a few meter diameter object that was captured for about a year starting in June 2006. We estimate that about 0.1% of all meteors impacting the Earth were TCOs.

See also:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.2427

Search Strategies for Trojan Asteroids in the Inner Solar System, M. Todd, D. M. Coward and M. G. Zadnik, Accepted for Publication in Planetary and Space Science.

Trojan asteroids are minor planets that share the orbit of a planet about the Sun and librate around the L4 or L5 Lagrangian points of stability. They are important because they carry information on early Solar System formation, when collisions between bodies were more frequent. Discovery and study of terrestrial planet Trojans will help constrain models for the distribution of bodies and interactions in the inner Solar System. We present models that constrain optimal search areas, and strategies for survey telescopes to maximize the probability of detecting inner planet Trojans. We also consider implications for detection with respect to the Gaia satellite, and limitations of Gaia’s observing geometry.

America – A Horse With No Name – Warner Brothers – 1972

Or is that America – A Nation With No Hugh Mann …

Microbial Community Living In Gypsum Crust

http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/2765/making-sense-of-mars-methane

http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2011AM/finalprogram/abstract_194524.htm

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1151/

A massive gas cloud gets sucked into a black hole. And right in our back yard!

How can you beat that? No, wait, Andromeda is going to eat the Milky Way!

Check out the newspaper headlining of this story. Some funny stuff in there.

And Hugh Mann is not The Man.

Stratolaunch Launch Vehicle - Carrier Aircraft - Booster

Stratolaunch Systems – A Paul G. Allen Project

http://stratolaunch.com/

Six jumbo jet engines on a fixed structural wing built by Scaled Composites, with all of the fuel in the outboard pontoons, and a 500,000 lb. Falcon 5 booster with outboard corner and center engines installed – held by a specialized horizontal mating and integration adapter.

One also has to wonder whether they are going to try and cross feed the main rocket engines off the fuel in the pylons for roughly double the added extra thrust on liftoff, shortening up the runway length as well. That should open it up to a few more airstrips.

That’s two aluminum carbon fiber composite gooses for the price of one!

Beat that Howard Hughes!

The Coexistence of Superconductivity and Topological Order in the Bi₂Se₃ Thin Films, Mei-Xiao Wang, Canhua Liu, Jin-Peng Xu, Fang Yang, Lin Miao, Meng-Yu Yao, C. L. Gao, Chenyi Shen, Xucun Ma, X. Chen, Zhu-An Xu, Ying Liu, Shou-Cheng Zhang, Dong Qian, Jin-Feng Jia and Qi-Kun Xue

http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.1772

Three-dimensional topological insulators (TIs) are characterized by their nontrivial surface states in which electrons have their spin locked at a right angle to their momentum under the protection of time reversal symmetry. The interplay between topological order and symmetry breaking such as superconductivity can lead to new quantum phenomena and devices. However, the existence of the superconducting states (Cooper pairs) in TI’s surface has not been obtained to date experimentally. Here, we report for the first time the realization of a superconducting TI/Superconductor (SC) heterostructure characterized with Cooper pairs tunneling into TI through superconducting proximity effect, by successful growing Bi₂Se₃ thin films on superconductor NbSe₂ substrate. Using scanning tunneling microscopy and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we unambiguously observed the Cooper pairs at Bi₂Se₃ surface (Bi₂Se₃/NbSe₂ interface) where topological surface states form. This observation lays the groundwork for experimentally realizing Majorana Fermions in condensed matter physics.

I look forward to novel quantum phenomena and devices in this year’s Christmas toys.

UPDATE : This paper has been withdrawn by its authors because of a ‘journal requirement’. Probably it’s one of the reviewers or editors of the journal complaining because they don’t actually show that various quasiparticles are interacting, they just present their substrate.

Humanity

The Beatles

You’re already on my shitlist, humanity, don’t make it worse.

Make it better.

US Iranian Spy Drone ITAR Violation

It doesn’t get much more negligent, incompetent and criminal than this.

Heckava job, Murka, just a heckava job.

Wanna buy a cheap satellite?

How bout a Mars probe?

http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.0737

Direct observation of real-time oscillations of the Cooper-pairs condensate in a high-Tc superconductor, B. Mansart, J. Lorenzana, M. Scarongella, M. Chergui, F. Carbone

Here, we show that when the condensate is perturbed by a femtosecond light pulse, a coherent charge fluctuation involving only paired electrons can be induced and detected.

We observe that the amplitude of these oscillations peaks around an energy threshold corresponding to the charge transfer excitation in the insulating parent compound implying a substantial contribution of non-retarded interactions to the pairing.

The superconducting fluctuations clearly resonate at an energy of 2.6 eV, corresponding to the Cu-O charge transfer energy of the parent compound. Remarkably, even though there is substantial absorption below the charge transfer band in our samples, the superconducting quasiparticles appear to be decoupled from those in the measured range. This is fully consistent with our understanding above that the B_2g fluctuations have a sine waveform.

Our results are consistent with a substantial coupling of the superconducting quasiparticles with excitations at 2.6 eV and a negligibly coupling in the rest of the measured energy window up to 1.6 eV.

The presented results form a benchmark for time-resolved experiments in cuprates and a fundamental breakthrough towards the solution of the glue problem.

So there you have it. Are you a believer now? Oh oh … here it comes.

Diamond Quantum Enganglement

Whew! That was a hard one to blurt out.

Quantum Correlation Between Distant Diamonds

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6060/1213.short

Entangling Macroscopic Diamonds at Room Temperature, K. C. Lee, M. R. Sprague, B. J. Sussman, J. Nunn, N. K. Langford, X.-M. Jin, T. Champion, P. Michelberger, K. F. Reim, D. England, D. Jaksch, and I. A. Walmsley, Science, December 2, 2011, 1253-1256.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6060/1253.abstract

Kepler 22b Planetary System Diagram

22 C average surface temperature as well. What a coincidence. There must be a god.