Bacteria collected from rocks taken from the cliffs at the tiny English fishing village of Beer in Devon, have survived on the outside surface of the International Space Station for 553 days. The bacteria, known as OU-20, resemble cyanobacteria called Gloeocapsa.

“Solar storms can disrupt satellite service and damage telecommunications networks, cause power grid blackouts and even endanger high-altitude aircraft,” Brian J. Anderson, principal investigator at Johns Hopkins, said in a statement. “The next wave of solar storms will occur over the next three to five years and recent solar activity is just the beginning of a long, stormy space weather season.” Solar storms are likely to increase in the coming months. The announcement of AMPERE’s launch is a timely one. The sun is swinging into an extended period of greater activity, as witnessed by the recent spate of coronal mass ejections that spit plasma directly at Earth.

Microwaves are an essential part of modern communication technology. Mobile phones and laptops, for example, are equipped with integrated microwave circuits for wireless communication. Sophisticated techniques for measurement and characterization of microwave fields are an essential tool for the development of such circuits. A novel technique developed by a group of scientists allows for the direct and complete imaging of microwave magnetic fields with high spatial resolution.

In the new paper, the scientists explore a particular version of CTCs based on combining quantum teleportation with post-selection, resulting in a theory of post-selected CTCs. In quantum teleportation, quantum states are entangled so that one state can be transmitted to the other in a different location. The scientists then applied the concept of post-selection, which is the ability to make a computation automatically accept only certain results and disregard others. In this way, post-selection could ensure that only a certain type of state can be teleported. The states that “qualify” to be teleported are those that have been post-selected to be self-consistent prior to being teleported. Only after it has been identified and approved can the state be teleported, so that, in effect, the state is traveling back in time. Under these conditions, time travel could only occur in a self-consistent, non-paradoxical way.

A more powerful magnetic material may have emerged to topple previous record-holder iron cobalt, until now the most magnetic material on Earth. There also appears to be a “new physics” at work in the substance, but physicists at other labs must replicate the experiment and verify the work.

It took 16 years and $10 billion dollars, but just after 1 p.m. local time beneath the French-Swiss border, CERN scientists smashed two proton beams moving at 99 percent of the speed of light together at total energies of 7 trillion electron volts.

Every few decades, the sun experiences a particularly large storm that can release as much energy as 1 billion hydrogen bombs. Officials from Europe and the U.S. say an event like that could leave millions on Earth without electricity, running water and phone service.

Researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute can speed up photons (particles of light) to seemingly faster-than-light speeds through a stack of materials by adding a single, strategically placed layer.

Are we approaching free energy? Are we reaching the edge of current known physics? Read more in this exciting experiment. Warning: Only for the Geeky.

European space agencies are developing a new re-entry heat shield that will use superconductor magnets to generate a magnetic field strong enough to deflect the superhot plasma formed during re-entry of returning spacecraft.