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Researchers claim to have produced sought-after quantum effect - (Read Full Story)

A team of physicists is claiming to have coaxed sparks from the vacuum of empty space1. If verified, the finding would be one of the most unusual experimental proofs of quantum mechanics in recent years and "a significant milestone", says John Pendry, a theoretical physicist at Imperial College London who was not involved in the study.

The researchers, based at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, will present their findings early next week at a workshop in Padua, Italy. They have already posted a paper on the popular pre-print server arXiv.org, but have declined to talk to reporters because the work has not yet been peer-reviewed. High-profile journals, including Nature, discourage researchers from talking to the press until their findings are ready for publication.

Nevertheless, scientists not directly connected with the group say that the result is impressive. "It is a major development," says Federico Capasso, an experimental physicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who has worked on similar quantum effects.

At the heart of the experiment is one of the weirdest, and most important, tenets of quantum mechanics: the principle that empty space is anything but. Quantum theory predicts that a vacuum is actually a writhing foam of particles flitting in and out of existence.

Quantum Leap: Bits of Light Teleported to Another Place - (Full Story)

Our world is getting closer to "Star Trek" every day, it seems. Scientists announced today (April 14) they've been able to teleport special bits of light from one place to another, a la "Beam me up, Scotty."

While the advance doesn't necessarily mean we'll ever be able to teleport people, it does represent some pretty nifty, mind-bending physics.

Teleportation requires taking advantage of a quirk of quantum physics called entanglement. Two particles can be bonded so that even when separated by large distances, they communicate instantly, and what happens to one affects the other. (It's a situation so bizarre Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance.")

To teleport light, researchers led by Noriyuki Lee of the University of Tokyo had to destroy it in one place, and re-create it in another. This mirrors the teleportation process on "Star Trek," where transporters scan a person, atom by atom, and dismantle him, only to rebuild the person by configuring a different set of atoms in exactly the same pattern in another place.

Lee and his team accomplished this by linking a packet of light to one half of a pair of entangled particles. They then destroyed the light and the particle it was linked to, leaving only the lone particle of the entangled pair. The remaining particle retains the link with its entangled partner, though, including information about the light, which enabled the researchers to rebuild the light in the exact configuration at the other location.

Earth's magnetic pole shift unleashing poisonous space clouds linked to mysterious bird deaths

Following the unexplained deaths of several thousand birds over the last two weeks, events are now emerging that may offer a physics-based explanation for the mysterious deaths. It all begins on a runway in Tampa, where airport officials recently closed that runway in order to change the numeric designators painted there. Why are those numeric designators being changed? Because the Earth's magnetic poles are shifting and the numbers previously painted on the runway no longer match up with the magnetic measurements of sensitive airplane instruments (http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01...).

As Physorg.com explains:

The primary runway at the airport is designated 18R/36L, which means the runway is aligned along 180 degrees from north (that is, due south) when approached from the north and 360 degrees from north when approached from the south. Now the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has requested the designation be changed to 19R/1L to account for the movement of the magnetic north pole.