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Photograph of the torsion pendulum and the mounted source mass. Image credit: Westphal et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-03250-7.

Physicists Measure Smallest Gravitational Field Yet

Mar 11, 2021 by News Staff

A team of physicists in Austria has measured the gravitational force between two gold spheres of 1.07 millimeter radius. Photograph of the torsion pendulum...

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.

Physicists Suggest Existence of New Type of Dark Energy

Mar 3, 2021 by News Staff

Recent measurements of the expansion rate of the Universe have plunged the standard model of cosmology, the ΛCDM model, into a crisis. In a new paper...

Träger et al. experimentally demonstrated a driven space-time crystal at room temperature: (a) sketch of the sample with one magnonic permalloy (Py) stripe and a coplanar waveguide; (b) snapshot of a time-resolved scanning transmission X-ray microscopy movie; the gray scale represents the mz component; (c) phase and amplitude map at fcw after FFT in time through each pixel of the scanning transmission X-ray microscopy movie; the color code shows the amplitude and phase information. Image credit: Träger et al., doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.057201.

Physicists Directly Image Space-Time Crystal

Mar 1, 2021 by News Staff

Space-time crystals are time-periodic self-organized structures postulated by the Nobel laureate in physics Frank Wilczek in 2012. In new research, physicists...

$Illustration showing the relationship between ice VI and XIX unit cells viewed down their c-axes, and the differences in their diffraction patterns, with color coding red for ice XIX and blue for ice VI. Image credit: University of Innsbruck.$

Scientists Create New Crystalline Form of Ice

Feb 18, 2021 by News Staff

Ice XIX is the second hydrogen-partially-ordered phase of ice VI, a previously known form of ice that exists at pressures around 1 GPa and temperatures...

Swirlons demonstrate a surprising behavior: in response to an external load they move with a constant velocity proportional to the applied force, just as objects in viscous media; they attract each other and coalesce forming a larger, joint swirlon. Image credit: Oleg Gamulinskiy.

Physicists Discover New State of Active Matter

Feb 12, 2021 by News Staff

Named a swirlonic state, the newly-discovered state of active matter is comprised of swirlons, formed by groups of active quasiparticles orbiting their...

Higgs boson candidates decaying to a dilepton pair and a photon. Image credit: ATLAS Collaboration / CERN.

CERN Physicists Find Evidence for Rare Decay of Higgs Boson

Feb 10, 2021 by News Staff

Physicists from the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have found first evidence of the Higgs boson...

The magnetic structure of FePS3. Image credit: Cavendish Laboratory.

Physicists Identify New Form of Magnetism in ‘Magnetic Graphene’

Feb 10, 2021 by News Staff

The high-pressure magnetic phase observed in iron trithiohypophosphate, a 2D material that transitions from an insulator to a metal when compressed, likely...

An optical image of plastic scintillator during irradiation of 73.9-MeV/c positive muons. Image credit: Yamamoto et al., doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-76652-8.

Physicists Capture First Optical Images of Muon Beams

Feb 3, 2021 by News Staff

Physicists at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) have irradiated positive muons to water or a plastic scintillator block and imaged...

Lab experiment using water tank simulation to demonstrate backreaction in an analogue black hole. Image credit: University of Nottingham.

Physicists Observe Backreaction in Analogue Black Hole Experiment

Feb 2, 2021 by News Staff

Physicists from the University of Nottingham and the University of Cambridge have for the first time demonstrated that the evolution of black holes resulting...

The trace of an α particle obtained by the nuclear physicist Wolfhart Willimczik with his spark chamber specially made for α particles.

Physicists Precisely Measure Charge Radius of Alpha Particle

Jan 28, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using a method called atomic spectroscopy, an international team of physicists has produced a new value for the charge radius of the α particle, the nucleus...

This image was produced by a simulation showing the evolution of dark matter in the Universe. Image credit: Milennium-II Simulation.

Physicists Narrow Range of Potential Masses for Dark Matter Candidate Particles

Jan 27, 2021 by News Staff

In a paper to be published in the journal Physics Letters B, a duo of theoretical physicists from the University of Sussex shows that quantum gravity leads...

Siraj & Loeb explore the possibility that accretion flares resulting from the tidal disruption of small Oort Cloud bodies by a putative primordial black hole could power an observable optical signal that could be searched for with the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Image credit: Sci-News.com / Zdeněk Bardon / ESO.

Extreme Black Holes Have Gravitational Hair that Can Be Measured, Physicists Say

Jan 27, 2021 by News Staff

Gravitational-wave detectors can be used to measure gravitational-field hair of extreme black holes, according to a paper published in the journal Physical...

An artist’s impression of a neutron star. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Astrophysicists May Have Found Evidence of Long-Sought Axions

Jan 19, 2021 by News Staff

First theorized in the 1970s, axions are hypothetical particles that were proposed to preserve a time-reversal symmetry of the nuclear force. These particles...

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

Physicists Propose New Way to Extract Energy from Black Holes

Jan 19, 2021 by News Staff

Spinning black holes store rotational energy that can be extracted; when a black hole is immersed in an externally supplied magnetic field, reconnection...

Cartoon illustration of the device design, where a thin hBN layer (blue) with selectively etched areas is used to avoid contact of the Pd electrodes (yellow) with the edges of the monolayer WTe2. The stack of graphite (gray)/hBN (blue)/monolayer WTe2 (red), shown in the cross-sectional view, is further stacked onto the bottom part with the electrodes, as indicated by the arrow. Inset: an image of device 1; the dashed red line highlights the monolayer edges and the white squares denote the contact regions. Image credit: Wang et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-03084-9.

Physicists Observe Unexpected Quantum Phenomenon in Two-Dimensional Insulator

Jan 12, 2021 by News Staff

A team of physicists from the United States and Japan has experimentally observed a phenomenon called quantum oscillation in a two-dimensional topological...

Chen et al. established the world’s first integrated quantum communication network, combining over 700 optical fibers on the ground with two ground-to-satellite links to achieve quantum key distribution over a total distance of 4,600 km for users across China. Image credit: University of Science and Technology of China.

Chinese Scientists Create Integrated Quantum Communication Network

Jan 7, 2021 by News Staff

A team of researchers in China has demonstrated an integrated space-to-ground quantum communication network that combines a large-scale fiber network of...

Scanning electron microscope image of the ellipsoidal colloids. Inset shows a confocal microscopy image, highlighting the core-shell structure. Scale bar - 5 μm. Image credit: Roller et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2018072118.

Researchers Discover New State of Matter: Liquid Glass

Jan 6, 2021 by News Staff

Using a technique called confocal microscopy, a team of scientists from Germany and the Netherlands has found that suspensions of ellipsoidal colloids...

Ilzhöfer et al. discovered a soft form of a supersolid. Image credit: Harald Ritsch / IQOQI Innsbruck.

Physicists Create ‘Soft’ Supersolid

Jan 5, 2021 by News Staff

An international team of experimental and theoretical physicists from Austria and Switzerland has investigated what happens when a dipolar supersolid is...

The first artist’s illustration shows a key part of the process that created this new black hole, as the two neutron stars spin around each other while merging. The purple material depicts debris from the merger. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M.Weiss.

Gravitational Waves May Help Find Universe’s Missing Components

Dec 31, 2020 by News Staff

Whenever two compact objects (black holes or neutron stars) collide elsewhere in the Universe, they create gravitational waves that travel across space,...