Saturday, October 21, 2006

Penning Trap

Penning traps are devices for the storage of charged particles using a constant magnetic field and a constant electric field. This kind of trap is particularly well suited for precision measurements of properties of ions and stable subatomic particles which have electric charge. Recently this trap has been used in the physical realization of quantum computation and quantum information processing as well. Currently Penning traps are used at CERN to store antiprotons. The invention of the Penning trap is attributed to Hans Georg Dehmelt who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989 for this work.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Theodicy

Argument for the justification of God, concerned with reconciling God's goodness and justice with the observable facts of evil and suffering in the world. Most such arguments are a necessary component of theism. Under polytheism, the problem is solved by attributing evil to a conflict of wills between deities. The solution is less simple in monotheism, and it can take several forms. In some approaches, the perfect world created by God was spoiled by human disobedience or sin. In others, God withdrew after creating the world, which then fell into decay.