Enceladus has got Organics

Not life itself but some of the materials that contribute to the making of life: organic molecules.  NASA released this information today along with news that fissures seen in by the southern pole of the Saturn satellite appear to be much warmer than previously thought.  NASA gathered this information after the Cassini Space Probe flew through a geyser plume from Enceladus’ surface on March 12th.  I just have to say that this is cool shit.  This is a big step at understanding more about our solar system, our planet, and possibility of life existing beyond Earth.

Quantum Electrodynamics

I was reading an article at lunch, from Scientific American, that talked some about something called Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) or Quantum Relativity.  I wish I could link the article here but I could not find it online (I was reading the old fashion way from a physical magazine).  What I managed to gather is that Quantum Electrodynamics is a different way of looking at quantum particle movement as opposed to Newtonian Physics or normal Quantum Mechanics.   Admittedly I know very little about either Newtonian Physics or Quantum Mechanics but what I was able to gather from my reading is that QED considers the possibility of particles like electrons surpassing electronic barriers 100% of the time where as in the other two physical models very specific conditions must first be met to even achieve a probability of barrier surpassing.  Why is this potentially important?  Probably because of the implications to it has on the transfer of information by quantum means.  This could potentially have profound effects on computing in the future and as such it seems like it is an area of some interest to scientists.