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Schematic illustration of the quasi-elastic reaction investigated by Duer et al. Top: quasi-elastic scattering of the helium-4 (4He) core from a helium-8 (8He) projectile off a proton target in the laboratory frame. The length of the arrows represents the momentum per nucleon (the velocity) of the incoming and outgoing particles. Zbeam is the beam axis. Bottom: the equivalent p-4He elastic scattering in their center-of-mass frame, where we consider reactions at backward angles close to 180°. In this frame, the momentum of the proton balances that of 4He, Pp=−P4He, that is, the proton is four times faster than 4He. Image credit: Duer et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-04827-6.

Physicists Observe Elusive Four-Neutron System: Tetraneutron

Jun 23, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Physicists using the Superconducting Analyzer for Multi-particles from Radio Isotope Beams (SAMURAI) in Japan have experimentally observed a resonance-like...

Scientists Synthesize Crystalline Gamma-Graphyne

May 23, 2022 by News Staff

Graphynes are two-dimensional carbon allotropes similar to the wonder material graphene that is optically transparent and mechanically flexible, and yet...

A charm quark (c) in a parton shower loses energy by emitting radiation in the form of gluons (g). The shower displays a dead cone of suppressed radiation around the quark for angles smaller than the ratio of the quark’s mass (m) and energy (E). The energy decreases at each stage of the shower. Image credit: Daniel Dominguez / CERN.

CERN Physicists Directly Observe Fundamental Phenomenon in Quantum Chromodynamics

May 19, 2022 by News Staff

In particle collider experiments, elementary particle interactions with large momentum transfer produce quarks and gluons (known as partons) whose evolution...

Han et al. developed an ultra-thin loudspeaker that can turn any rigid surface into a high-quality, active audio source. Image credit: Felice Frankel.

Ultra-Thin, Lightweight Loudspeaker Created

Apr 27, 2022 by News Staff

The flexible, thin-film loudspeaker, developed by MIT researchers, weighs only 2 g, is 120 microns thick, and can generate high-quality sound no matter...

Shoshany et al. define and analyze a new model of time travel paradoxes, which is fully compatible with all known physics; the model consists of a wormhole time machine in 3+1 spacetime dimensions, which can be either permanent (existing eternally) or temporary (activated only for a short time). Image credit: Genty.

Time Travel Necessarily Implies Existence of Multiple Histories, Physicists Say

Apr 27, 2022 by The Conversation

As often portrayed in science fiction, with a time machine, nothing is permanent anymore — you can always go back and change it. But is time travel...

This artist’s impression shows the evolution of the Universe beginning with the Big Bang on the left followed by the appearance of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The formation of the first stars ends the cosmic dark ages, followed by the formation of galaxies. Image credit: M. Weiss / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Time Might Not Actually Exist, Researchers Say

Apr 22, 2022 by The Conversation

In a new book published by the Oxford University Press, Australian Catholic University’s Dr. Sam Baron and his colleagues provide the first systematic...

The classical signature of a top-quark pair produced in LHC collisions is four jets (yellow cones), one muon (red line, also detected by the CMS muon detectors as red boxes), and missing energy from a neutrino (pink arrow). Image credit: CERN.

CERN Physicists Measure Mass of Top Quark

Apr 20, 2022 by News Staff

Physicists from the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have substantially improved the precision with which...

Hwang et al. studied the capillary-induced coalescence of swelling pasta; they observed that, as pasta is cooked (hence, swollen and softened), capillary action more easily deforms the noodle, and two pasta noodles can coalesce with the shorter stick length: (a) picture of spaghetti aglio e olio; capillary adhesion between the noodles is induced by olive oil seasoned with garlic and pepper; (b) pasta radial and axial growth over time at 100 degrees Celsius cooking due to hygroscopic swelling; radial strain grows up to 70% of its original and axial strain up to 40% of its original after 30 min of cooking (at 100 degrees Celsius); pasta cross section shows color-gradient before it is sufficiently cooked. Image credit: Hwang et al., doi: 10.1063/5.0083696.

New Math Model Describes Swelling, Elasticity and Adhesion of Pasta as It Cooks

Apr 15, 2022 by News Staff

In new research, a team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has documented how pasta — composed of starch granules —...

A thermophotovoltaic cell (size 1 x 1 cm) mounted on a heat sink designed to measure the TPV cell efficiency. Image credit: Felice Frankel.

Researchers Develop Highly Efficient Heat Engine

Apr 14, 2022 by News Staff

The newly-developed heat engine is a thermophotovoltaic cell that captures high-energy photons from a white-hot heat source and converts them into electricity...

An illustration of the idea that a neutrino (v) and an electron (e) interact with a nuclei in comparable ways. Image credit: Jefferson Lab.

New Measurements Shed Light on How Neutrinos Change Their Flavor

Apr 13, 2022 by News Staff

Physicists from the MicroBooNE Collaboration at Fermilab have performed a first-of-its-kind measurement: a comprehensive set of the energy-dependent neutrino-argon...

Yin et al realized the satellite-based distribution of entangled photon pairs over 747 miles. Image credit: U.S. Army.

Quantum Teleportation Can Be Used to Avoid Loss in Communication Channels, Researchers Say

Apr 12, 2022 by News Staff

Scientists from Griffith University, the University of Queensland, the University of New South Wales and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology...

Physicists Precisely Measure Mass of W Boson

Apr 11, 2022 by News Staff

Physicists from the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) Collaboration have determined the mass of the W boson, a mediator of the weak force between elementary...

Quantum scrambling is one suggestion for how information can fall into a black hole and come out as random-looking radiation. Perhaps, the argument goes, it is not random at all, and black holes are just excellent scramblers. Image credit: E. Edwards / Joint Quantum Institute.

Hairy Black Holes Explain Hawking’s Paradox, Physicists Claim

Mar 22, 2022 by News Staff

The signature feature of black holes is that they are black — objects which fall into the hole can no longer be seen and can no longer influence...

The mass-energy-information equivalence principle proposed in 2019 and the information content of the observable matter in the Universe estimated in 2021 represent two important conjectures, called the information conjectures. Combining information theory and physical principles of thermodynamics, these theoretical proposals made specific predictions about the mass of information as well as the most probable information content per elementary particle. Dr. Vopson proposes an experimental protocol that allows for empirical verification of the information conjectures by confirming the predicted information content of elementary particles. Image credit: Pete Linforth.

Newly Proposed Experiment Could Confirm that Information is Fifth State of Matter

Mar 21, 2022 by News Staff

Dr. Melvin Vopson, a physicist with the School of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Portsmouth, has already published research suggesting that...

Phase diagram of ice: dark blue-, green-, and red-shaded regions denote ice VII, VIIt and X, respectively, and projected phase boundaries separating high-pressure ice phases from our work are shown as solid black lines; ice X phase boundaries connect the measured transition at 30.9 GPa and 300 K to the inflection point in the melt curve, which have been associated with the transition from molecular to ionic fluid; dashed lines show measured melting curves; superionic boundary is highlighted. Image credit: Grande et al., doi: 10.1103/PhysRevB.105.104109.

New Form of Ice Discovered: Ice VIIt

Mar 21, 2022 by News Staff

Physicists have observed the transition from a previously known cubic phase, ice VII, to the newly-discovered intermediate, and tetragonal, phase, ice...

Blázquez-Salcedo et al. constructed a specific example of a class of traversable wormholes in four space-time dimensions. Image credit: NASA / G. Bacon, STScI.

New Theoretical Study Sheds Light on How Information Escapes from Evaporating Black Hole

Mar 11, 2022 by News Staff

An international team of physicists from RIKEN, Cornell University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, has used a new spacetime geometry with...

A ‘domain wall’ in this image is the lighter line between two groups of atoms. Image credit: Kai-Xuan Yao.

New Kind of Quantum Object Created

Feb 17, 2022 by News Staff

Physicists at the University of Chicago have demonstrated formation of a new kind of quantum object — dubbed a ‘domain wall’ — in a Bose-Einstein...

Illustration of the 70-m-long KATRIN beamline: the transport of β-electrons and magnetic adiabatic collimation of their momenta p are illustrated; (a-f) view into the tritium source depicts three systematic effects: molecular excitations during β-decay (a), scattering of electrons off the gas molecules (b) and spatial distribution of the electric potential in the source Usrc(r, z) (c); the view into the spectrometer illustrates the main background processes arising from radon decays inside the volume of the spectrometer (d), highly excited Rydberg atoms sputtered off from the structural material via α-decays of 210Po (e) and positive ions created in a Penning trap between the two spectrometers (f); low-energy electrons, created in the volume as a consequence of radon decays or Rydberg-atom ionizations, can be accelerated by qUana towards the focal-plane detector, making them indistinguishable from signal electrons. Image credit: KATRIN Collaboration, doi: 10.1038/s41567-021-01463-1.

KATRIN Experiment Sets New Limit on Neutrino Mass

Feb 15, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Since the discovery of neutrino oscillations, physicists know that neutrinos have non-zero mass. However, the absolute neutrino-mass scale remains unknown....

Frequency-time spectrum of (a) a 65Ni resonance, (b) the temporal ion-bunch structure, and (c) the laser-spectroscopic resonance spectrum; (d) a resonance of 70Ni. Image credit: Malbrunot-Ettenauer et al., doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.022502.

CERN Physicists Measure Charge Radii of ‘Magic’ Nickel Nuclei

Jan 26, 2022 by News Staff

A unique combination of experimental data from CERN’s Isotope mass Separator On-Line (ISOLDE) facility and state-of-the-art models has resulted in an...