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An artist’s depiction of loop quantum gravity effects in a black hole. The bottom half of the image depicts the black hole which, according to general relativity, traps everything including light. Loop quantum gravity overcomes this tremendous pull and liberates everything shown in the top half of image, thus solving the fundamental problem of black hole singularity. Image credit: A. Corichi & J.P. Ruiz.

Loop Quantum Gravity Theory Could Answer Fundamental Questions about Black Holes

Dec 26, 2018 by News Staff

Loop quantum gravity is a theory that uses quantum mechanics to extend gravitational physics beyond Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Previous...

Visualization of an expanding drop of quark-gluon plasma. Image credit: Javier Orjuela Koop, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Physicists Create Quark-Gluon Plasma Droplets

Dec 12, 2018 by News Staff

Physicists from the PHENIX Collaboration have created droplets of a liquid-like state of matter called quark-gluon plasma, forming three distinct shapes...

The current, widely recognized model of the Universe, called LambdaCDM, tells us nothing about what dark matter and dark energy are like physically. We only know about them because of the gravitational effects they have on other, observable matter. Dr. Farnes’ model offers a new explanation. Image credit: NASA / ESA / M. Livio / Hubble 20th Anniversary Team, STScI.

Negative-Mass Dark Fluid: Astonishing New Theory Could Explain Universe’s Missing 95%

Dec 5, 2018 by News Staff

The standard cosmological model known as LambdaCDM can only explain 5% of the observable Universe. The remaining 95% is famously made up almost entirely...

The collision of two black holes is seen in this still from a computer simulation. Image credit: SXS.

Physicists Detect Four New Gravitational Waves

Dec 4, 2018 by News Staff

The twin LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, and the Virgo...

Left: average of known decay properties assigned to 288Mc and its daughters. Right: details of decay chains detected at the FIONA focal plane. Unobserved decays within each decay chain are indicated as ‘unobserved’ and are assumed to have been emitted out of the open end of the detector array. The x position of decays observed in the focal-plane detector is also given. Image credit: Gates et al, doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.222501.

Physicists Measure Mass Numbers of Nihonium and Moscovium

Dec 3, 2018 by News Staff

Physicists using the FIONA (For the Identification Of Nuclide A) device at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s 88-inch...

A replica of the prototype of the kilogram at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris, France. Image credit: Japs / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Scientists Redefine Four Basic Metric Units: Kilogram, Ampere, Kelvin and Mole

Nov 20, 2018 by News Staff

After decades of groundbreaking laboratory work, the world’s scientific and technical community came together on November 16, 2018, to redefine kilogram...

Using electron tomography, Pellenq et al probed a sample of kerogen to determine its internal structure. At left, the sample as seen from the outside, and at right, the detailed 3D image of its internal pore structure. Image credit: Pellenq et al, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1808402115.

Researchers Finally Decode Internal Structure of Kerogen

Nov 14, 2018 by News Staff

Kerogen is a waxy, insoluble organic substance dispersed in sedimentary rocks and is the precursor of oil and gas. In a new study, published in the Proceedings...

Turnbull et al synthesized a single crystal of ι–N2 in a diamond anvil cell from ε–N2 at 65 GPa and 477 degrees Celsius. Image credit: Turnbull et al, doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-07074-4.

Physicists Solve Structure of Unusually Complex Form of Nitrogen

Nov 13, 2018 by Enrico de Lazaro

An international team of experimental physicists has for the first time determined the structure of ι-N2, a crystallized version of nitrogen. Turnbull...

Atomic chamber in which tractor beams were created. Image credit: Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing.

Physicists Create Tractor Beam for Atoms

Nov 2, 2018 by News Staff

Rather than sucking space ships into a space-station, a tractor beam created by University of Adelaide researcher Ashby Hilton and his colleagues pulls...

Electrons Are Perfectly Spherical, New Measurements Confirm

Oct 18, 2018 by News Staff

Physicists from the Advanced Cold Molecule Electron Electric Dipole Moment (ACME) Collaboration have examined the shape of an electron’s charge with...

An event from the first xenon-xenon collision at the Large Hadron Collider at 5.44 TeV registered by ALICE; a colored track (blue) corresponds to the trajectory of a charged particle produced in a single collision. Image credit: ALICE Collaboration.

Universe’s Beginning was Fluid, Physicists Say

Oct 17, 2018 by News Staff

Physicists from the ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) Collaboration at CERN have gained new insights into the properties of the quark-gluon plasma,...

CERN Physicists Discover Two New Particles

Oct 1, 2018 by News Staff

Physicists from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment have found two never-before-seen particles, as well as hints of another new particle,...

$Neutron stars are the smallest, densest stars in the Universe. True to their name, neutron stars are composed almost entirely of neutrons. Duer et al suggest that some properties of neutron stars may be influenced not only by their multitude of densely packed neutrons, but also by a substantially smaller fraction of protons -- positively charged particles that make up just 5% of a neutron star. This is an illustration of a neutron star. Image credit: Casey Reed, Penn State University.$