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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.

Dark Matter May Have Existed before Big Bang, Theoretical Physicist Says

Aug 9, 2019 by News Staff

Dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up roughly a quarter of the Universe, may have its origin in pre-Big-Bang times, according to a new paper...

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

Scientists Find Way to Measure Quantum Entanglement in Chemical Reactions

Aug 7, 2019 by News Staff

A duo of researchers at Purdue University has modified a popular theorem — called Bell’s inequality — for identifying quantum entanglement...

A 3D representation of the spin-excitation continuum -- a possible hallmark of a quantum spin liquid -- observed in a single crystal sample of cerium zirconium pyrochlore. Image credit: Tong Chen / Rice University.

Researchers Find First Candidate for 3D Quantum Spin Liquid

Jul 25, 2019 by News Staff

A quantum spin liquid is a state of matter where unpaired electrons’ spins, although entangled, do not show magnetic order even at the zero temperature....

One of the first collisions of lead ions recorded by the ALICE detector. Image credit: ALICE Collaboration / CERN.

CERN Physicists Measure Elliptic Flow of Bottomonium Particles

Jul 22, 2019 by News Staff

Physicists in the ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) Collaboration at CERN have announced the first measurements of an elliptic-shaped flow of upsilons,...

The Castle Bravo nuclear weapon test on Bikini Atoll. Image credit: U.S. Department of Energy.

Northern Marshall Islands More Radioactive than Chernobyl and Fukushima, New Research Finds

Jul 18, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

From 1946 to 1958, the U.S. tested 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands, a remote constellation of atolls in the Pacific Ocean that was then a U.S....

Vibrational motions of N-methyl morpholine. Image credit: Brown University.

Scientists Observe Molecular Motions in Real Time

Jul 17, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of researchers led by Brown University has used ultra-high-speed X-ray pulses to image subtle motions of a molecule of N-methyl morpholine. Vibrational...

Full-frame single image of Bell entanglement. Scale bar - 1 mm. Image credit: Moreau et al, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw2563.

Physicists Unveil First-Ever Photo of Quantum Entanglement

Jul 15, 2019 by News Staff

A team of physicists from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Glasgow has captured an image of Bell entanglement, a strong form of...

This image shows 4D atomic motion is captured in an iron-platinum nanoparticle at three different annealing times. Image credit: Alexander Tokarev.

Physicists Capture Atomic Motion in 4D

Jul 8, 2019 by News Staff

A process called nucleation plays a critical role in many physical and biological phenomena that range from crystallization, melting and evaporation to...

The lattice structure of diamond contains a nitrogen-vacancy center with surrounding carbon nuclear spins; the carbon isotope 13C (green) is first entangled with an electron (blue) in the vacancy, which then wait for a photon (red) to absorb, resulting in quantum teleportation-based state transfer of the photon into the carbon memory. Image credit: Tsurumoto et al, doi: 10.1038/s42005-019-0158-0.

Physicists Teleport Quantum Information inside Diamond

Jul 4, 2019 by News Staff

A team of physicists at the Yokohama National University, Japan, has successfully demonstrated quantum teleportation — the remote exchange of quantum...

Single magnetic atoms are deposited on a surface of magnesium oxide; they are imaged by the magnetic tip of a scanning tunneling microscope which allows researchers to perform an MRI scan of the atom’s magnetic field. Image credit: Willke et al.

Physicists Use MRI to Scan Individual Atoms

Jul 3, 2019 by News Staff

A team of experimental physicists from the Institute for Basic Science, the Ewha Womans University and the IBM Almaden Research Center has performed the...

Self-Torque: Physicists Discover New Property of Light

Jul 1, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of physicists has theoretically predicted and experimentally generated light beams with a new property that they call the self-torque...

A new type quasiparticle discovered in graphene double-layer structure. This so-called composite fermion consists of one electron and two different types of magnetic flux, illustrated as blue and gold colored arrows in the figure. Composite fermions are capable of forming pairs, such unique interaction lead to experimental discovery of unexpected new quantum Hall phenomena. Image credit: Michelle Miller & Jia Li, Brown University.

Physicists Observe Exotic Quantum States in Double-Layer Graphene

Jun 26, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of physicists from the United States and Japan has demonstrated a series of fractional quantum Hall effect states that arise in double-layer...

Quantum gravity is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics. Image credit: Gerd Altmann.

Physicists Say Quantum Gravity ‘Has No Symmetry’

Jun 20, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of theoretical physicists has found that when gravity is combined with quantum mechanics, no global symmetries are possible. Quantum...

No one knows what dark matter is, but this invisible form of matter makes up roughly a quarter of the Universe. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Dark Monopoles: Theoretical Physicists Propose New Candidate for Dark Matter

Jun 13, 2019 by News Staff

Professor John Terning and Dr. Christopher Verhaaren from the University of California, Davis, have a new candidate for dark matter — a dark monopole...

The superconducting quantum refrigerator is similar to a conventional refrigerator, in that it moves a material between hot and cold reservoirs. However, instead of a refrigerant that changes from a liquid state to a gas, the electrons in a metal change from the paired superconducting state to an unpaired normal state. Image credit: Michael Osadciw, University of Rochester illustration.

Physicists Developing Superconducting Quantum Refrigerator

Jun 11, 2019 by News Staff

A research team led by University of Rochester physicists has conceived an idea for a superconducting quantum refrigerator, which would cool atoms to nearly...

Minev et al figured out how to catch and save Schrödinger’s famous cat, the symbol of quantum superposition and unpredictability. Image credit: Kat Stockton.

Physicists Find Way to ‘Catch and Save’ Schrödinger’s Cat

Jun 3, 2019 by News Staff

Schrödinger’s cat, a thought experiment envisioned by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, is a paradox that applies the concept of superposition...

A small disk of americium-241 under the microscope. Image credit: Bionerd / CC BY 3.0.

Researchers Generate Electricity from Americium

May 28, 2019 by News Staff

Researchers in the United Kingdom have extracted americium from a plutonium stockpile and used the heat generated from this radioactive element to generate...

An electron is trapped in a quantum dot, which is formed in a 2D gas in a semiconductor wafer. However, the electron moves within the space and, with different probabilities corresponding to a wave function, remains in certain locations within its confinement (red ellipses). Using the gold gates applied electric fields, the geometry of this wave function can be changed. Image credit: University of Basel.

Physicists Determine Geometry of Electrons in Quantum Dots

May 24, 2019 by News Staff

A team of physicists at the University of Basel has experimentally mapped out the shape and orientation of electrons trapped in quantum dots. An electron...

$Gravitational waves observed by Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) twin detectors were produced during the final fraction of a second of the merger of two black holes to produce a single, more massive spinning black hole. Image credit: T. Pyle / LIGO.$

Gravitational Waves Leave Observable Aftereffects in Universe

May 10, 2019 by News Staff

Gravitational waves are ‘ripples’ in space-time caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the Universe. Albert Einstein predicted...