Physics News | Sci.News

This artist’s impression shows how ULAS J1120+0641, a very distant quasar powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun, may have looked. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

New Measurements of Fine-Structure Constant Suggest Laws of Nature Not as Constant as Previously Thought

Apr 29, 2020 by News Staff

The fine-structure constant is a measure of electromagnetism — one of the four fundamental forces in nature; the others are gravity, weak nuclear...

Metasurface laser produces super-chiral light with orbital angular momentum up to 100. Image credit: University of the Witwatersrand.

Newly-Developed Metasurface-Enhanced Laser Emits Super-Chiral Light

Apr 28, 2020 by News Staff

A team of scientists from the University of the Witwatersrand, Harvard University and the National University of Singapore has come up with a new metasurface-enhanced...

Majorana quasiparticles on the surface of uranium ditelluride. Image credit: E. Edwards, Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center.

New Measurements Show Evidence for Presence of Majorana Quasiparticles in Uranium Ditelluride

Apr 7, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of physicists has used high-resolution microscopy tools to peer at the inner-workings of the recently-discovered heavy-fermion superconductor,...

The new flat lens could drastically reduce the weight, complexity and cost of cameras and other imaging systems, while increasing their functionality. Image credit: Rajesh Menon, University of Utah.

Scientists Develop Focus-Free Camera with Flat Lens

Mar 18, 2020 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and Oblate Optics, Inc. has created a camera that does not require focusing. The new...

A simulation of the large-scale structure of the Universe with filaments of dark matter in blue and places of galaxy formation in yellow. Image credit: Zarija Lukic / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

New Candidate Particle for Dark Matter: D-Star Hexaquark

Mar 4, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Dark matter is the mysterious substance that makes up roughly a quarter of the Universe. There is strong indirect evidence for its existence from measurements...

Abel et al present the result of an experiment to measure the electric dipole moment of the neutron at the Paul Scherrer Institute using Ramsey’s method of separated oscillating magnetic fields with ultracold neutrons. Image credit: Gerd Altmann.

Physicists Precisely Measure Electric Dipole Moment of Neutron

Mar 2, 2020 by News Staff

In a paper in the journal Physical Review Letters, an international team of physicists reports the most precise measurement ever made of the electric dipole...

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

CERN Physicists Measure Quantum Effects in Energy Structure of Antihydrogen

Feb 28, 2020 by News Staff

In 1947, American physicist Willis Lamb and his colleagues observed an incredibly small shift in the energy levels of the hydrogen atom as the atom’s...

Physicists Probe Core of Strong Nuclear Interaction between Protons and Neutrons

Feb 27, 2020 by News Staff

The strong force is one of the four fundamental forces of nature, which also include gravity, electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force. The strong force...

Laser-cooled atom cloud viewed through microscope camera. Image credit: University of Otago.

Physicists Observe Three-Atom Collisions in Ground-Breaking Experiments

Feb 24, 2020 by News Staff

A team of physicists in New Zealand has held individual atoms of rubidium in place and observed previously unseen interactions. Laser-cooled atom cloud...

Electrons travel in cars with increasing numbers, giving rise to a conductance series that shows up in Pascal’s triangle. Image credit: Yun-Yi Pai.

Scientists Discover New Electronic State of Matter

Feb 19, 2020 by News Staff

A team of U.S. physicists and materials scientists has observed a new state of matter at the interface between two oxide materials: lanthanum aluminate...

An artist’s impression of the dissolving of the electronic ‘traffic jam:’ the red atoms are different in their quantum nature and allow transport of electrons in their surroundings. Image credit: Berend Zwartsenberg.

Physicists Pioneer New Way to Turn Metal into Insulator

Feb 14, 2020 by News Staff

A team of physicists led by the University of British Columbia has demonstrated a novel way to precisely control electrical currents by leveraging the...

Two electrons and two holes, created by light quanta, held together by a chessboard-like background. Image credit: TU Wien

Physicists Discover New Quasiparticle

Feb 5, 2020 by News Staff

Named π-ton (pi-ton), the newly-discovered quasiparticle consists of two electrons and two holes. Two electrons and two holes, created by light quanta,...

An artist’s depiction of a rapidly spinning neutron star and a white dwarf dragging the fabric of spacetime around its orbit. Image credit: Mark Myers, OzGrav ARC Centre of Excellence.

Exotic Binary System Confirms Relativistic Frame-Dragging

Jan 31, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has found exciting new evidence for Lense-Thirring precession — an effect of relativistic frame-dragging —...

The interior of the Borexino detector. Image credit: Borexino Collaboration.

Borexino Detector Spots 53 Geoneutrinos

Jan 23, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

An underground particle detector called the Borexino detector has detected 53 antielectron neutrinos emanating from the Earth, so-called geoneutrinos. The...

In this illustration, one photon (purple) carries a million times the energy of another (yellow). Image credit: NASA / Sonoma State University / Aurore Simonnet.

Physicists Observe ‘Billions of Billions’ of Entangled Electrons

Jan 17, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of physicists says they have observed quantum entanglement among ‘billions of billions’ of flowing electrons in thin films of...

A 3D view of the Au20 cluster. Image credit: Li et al, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aay4289.

Gold Atoms Take on Pyramidal Shape

Jan 8, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

An international team of researchers has presented strong evidence that individual clusters of twenty gold atoms (Au20) take on a pyramidal shape. A 3D...

Left: a tiny bead struck by a laser produces optical modes that circulate around the interior of the bead. Right: a simulation of how the optical field inside a 5-micron bead is distributed. Image credit: Berkeley Lab.

Researchers Create Nanoparticle-Based Microlasers

Jan 3, 2020 by News Staff

Researchers from the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found a way to convert nanoparticle-coated microscopic plastic beads...

Electrons move between two arms of a metallic nanoantenna driven by a single-cycle light wave. Image credit: University of Konstanz.

Scientists Use Light to Transport Electrons at Ultrafast Speeds

Dec 27, 2019 by News Staff

A research team led by University of Konstanz scientists has demonstrated that light waves can be used to transport electrons at sub-femtosecond speeds...

Llewellyn et al realize an array of microring resonators (MRRs) to generate multiple high-quality single photons, which are monolithically integrated with linear-optic circuits that process multiple qubits with high fidelity and low noise. Image credit: Llewellyn et al, doi: 10.1038/s41567-019-0727-x.

Researchers Demonstrate Chip-to-Chip Quantum Teleportation

Dec 25, 2019 by News Staff

A research team led by University of Bristol scientists has successfully demonstrated quantum teleportation of information between two programmable micrometer-scale...