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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...

Physicists Detect Exotic Particles in Quark-Gluon Plasma

Jan 25, 2022 by News Staff

Physicists from the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have detected about 100 particles of a type known as X(3872)...

Hexagonal boron nitride-based deep-ultraviolet LED. Image credit: Pohang University of Science and Technology.

Researchers Create Deep-Ultraviolet Light-Emitting Diode

Jan 20, 2022 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the Pohang University of Science and Technology and the Korean Institute for Basic Science has demonstrated deep-ultraviolet...

Artistic impression of a Multiverse. Image credit: Jaime Salcido / EAGLE Collaboration.

New Multiverse Theory Explains Surprisingly Small Mass of Higgs Boson

Jan 18, 2022 by News Staff

Dr. Raffaele Tito D’Agnolo from the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission and Dr. Daniele Teresi from CERN have proposed a novel theory...

Scanning electron microscopy image of a nanopatterned YBa2Cu3O7−δ (YBCO) thin film. The 12-nm-thick nanopatterned YBCO thin film was fabricated by reactive ion etching through an anodic aluminium oxide (AAO) membrane directly placed atop the YBCO. By RIE, the anodized aluminium oxide pattern of a triangular array of holes with ~70-nm diameter and ~103-nm period was duplicated onto the YBCO film. Image credit: Yang et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-04239-y.

Physicists Discover New Type of ‘Strange Metal’

Jan 14, 2022 by News Staff

A team of physicists from the United States and China has detected the unexpected signatures of strange metallicity in a material in which electrical charge...

An artist’s conception of the cross section of a super-Earth with the National Ignition Facility target chamber superimposed over the mantle, looking into the core. Image credit: John Jett / Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Rocky Exoplanets with Four to Six Times Earth’s Mass Have Longest Dynamos, Study Suggests

Jan 13, 2022 by News Staff

The pressure and temperature conditions at which iron melts are important for rocky planets because they determine the size of the liquid metal core, an...

Artist’s impression of a cloud of trapped antihydrogen atoms. Image credit: Chukman So.

Antimatter Responds to Gravity in Same Way as Regular Matter, New Experiments Suggest

Jan 6, 2022 by News Staff

The Standard Model of particle physics is both incredibly successful and glaringly incomplete. Among the questions left open is the striking imbalance...

An artist’s rendition of a giant star in orbit around a low-mass black hole. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Black Holes are Giant Fuzzballs, Theoretical Physicists Say

Jan 5, 2022 by News Staff

In 1997, cosmologists Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne and John Preskill made a famous bet as to whether information that enters a black hole ceases to exist....

Visualization of the motion of particles expelled from the mouth of the mannequin with inclination angles of 60° (a) and (b) and 120° (c) and (d); panels (a) and (c) display the average intensity of particle fluorescence, and panels (b) and (d) show the instantaneous particle distribution at three times; the white arrows mark the ejection direction of the particles; the nondimensional time interval in these figures corresponds to a physical time interval of 0.1 s. Image credit: Wang et al., doi: 10.1063/5.0073880.

Study: Coughing Downward Can Reduce Spread of Cough-Generated Droplets

Jan 5, 2022 by News Staff

Dr. Hongping Wang and his colleagues from the State Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Mechanics at the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences...

Magnesium-18. Image credit: S.M. Wang / Fudan University & Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, Michigan State University.

Physicists Create New Isotope of Magnesium

Dec 24, 2021 by News Staff

Magnesium-18 (18Mg) is the lightest isotope of magnesium, which is element 12 on the periodic table. Magnesium-18. Image credit: S.M. Wang / Fudan University...

Parker Solar Probe has flown through the solar corona and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Parker Solar Probe Enters Magnetized Atmosphere of the Sun

Dec 15, 2021 by News Staff

The high temperatures and strong magnetic fields of the Sun’s upper atmosphere — the corona — form streams of the solar wind that expand...

A Higgs boson candidate transforming into four muons (red lines). Image credit: CERN.

Higgs Boson Has Tiny Lifespan, New Research Confirms

Dec 6, 2021 by News Staff

The Higgs boson is peculiar in many respects. Like most other elementary particles, it is unstable and lives only for an extremely short time, 1.6*10-22...

Dimer model in Rydberg atoms arrays: (A) fluorescence image of 219 atoms arranged on the links of a kagome lattice; Rydberg atoms are marked with red dimers on the bonds of the kagome lattice; (B) a state consistent with the Rydberg blockade at maximal filling can then be viewed as a dimer covering of the kagome lattice, where each vertex is touched by exactly one dimer; (C) the quantum spin liquid state corresponds to a coherent superposition of exponentially many dimer coverings. Image credit: Semeghini et al., doi: 10.1126/science.abi8794.

Physicists Observe Quantum Spin Liquid for First Time

Dec 3, 2021 by News Staff

First theorized in 1973 by physicist Philip W. Anderson, quantum spin liquids are exotic phases of matter with topological order. They feature long-range...

Photons emitted near rotating black holes encode quantum information that can be measured by actual quantum information technology. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Astrophysicists Search for Gravitational-Wave Signals from Ultralight Boson Clouds

Dec 1, 2021 by News Staff

Theories of beyond Standard Model physics allow for the production of ultralight bosons — hypothetical particles with masses less than a billionth...

FASERν event displays of two of the neutral vertices in the yz projection longitudinal to the beam direction (left) and in the view transverse to the beam direction (right). Image credit: FASER Collaboration.

CERN Physicists Detect Collider Neutrinos for First Time

Nov 26, 2021 by News Staff

Physicists from the Forward Search Experiment (FASER) Collaboration have observed six neutrino interactions during a pilot run of FASERν, a compact emulsion...

Graphical table of all gravitational wave events discovered from 2015 through the end of LIGO/Virgo’s third observing run. The table includes the gravitational event name, the type of binary component (black hole, neutron star, or uncertain), the masses of the primary and secondary, and the mass of the final merged object. Image credit: LIGO / Virgo / KAGRA / C. Knox / H. Middleton.

Astrophysicists Detect 35 New Gravitational-Wave Events

Nov 10, 2021 by News Staff

Astrophysicists from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration have detected a further 35 gravitational waves since the last catalog release in October 2020,...

An artist’s impression of the neutron and its internal structure. Image credit: Xiaorong Zhu / University for Science and Technology, China.

New Research Sheds More Light on Electromagnetic Structure of Neutron

Nov 9, 2021 by News Staff

The neutron is a bound system of three valence quarks and a neutral sea consisting of gluons and quark-antiquark pairs. Although the proton was discovered...