Physics News | Sci.News

Nitrogen is most-commonly bonded with itself in diatomic N2 molecules; a new study confirms that it becomes a metallic fluid when subjected to the extreme pressure and temperature conditions found deep inside the Earth and other planets. Image credit: Alexander Goncharov.

Extreme Pressures and Temperatures Turn Nitrogen Metallic

Jul 10, 2018 by News Staff

New research indicates that nitrogen, one of the most-common elements in the Universe and the dominant gas in the atmosphere of Earth, becomes a metallic...

$Excitation spectra of the Higgs-like state: (a) excitation spectra of the Higgs-like state for different interaction strengths, 1/(kFa); the different levels of background condensate fraction are due to the different 1/(kFa); the solid lines shows the Gaussian fit to the high-frequency side of the spectra; the error bars show the standard deviation of approximately four measurements; (b) time-of-flight image of the condensate with the thermal background subtracted at 1/(kFa)=−0.43; rings indicate momentum intervals of 0.02kF; (c) momentum-resolved analysis of the Higgs excitation inside the condensate by averaging the optical density in the color-coded rings in (b) for different modulation frequencies; the resonance occurs at the same modulation frequency for all momenta. Image credit: Behrle et al, doi: 10.1038/s41567-018-0128-6.$

Experiment Provides Further Insights into Higgs Boson Physics

Jun 29, 2018 by News Staff

A new experiment by physicists at the University of Bonn, Germany, has achieved a Higgs-like state in a system composed of ultracold atoms. Excitation...

Illustration of part of the periodic table of elements with four new elements in period 7, with oganesson specifically highlighted. Image credit: Erin O’Donnell, National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory / Andy Sproles, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Researchers Explore Limits of the Periodic Table of Elements

Jun 20, 2018 by News Staff

At 150 years old, the periodic table of chemical elements is still growing. In 2016, four new elements with atomic numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118 were added...

Visualization of a data event from the tt¯H(γγ) Had BDT bin with the largest signal over background ratio; the event contains two photon candidates, with a diphoton mass of 125.4 GeV; in addition, six jets are reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm and R = 0.4, including one jet that is b-tagged using a 77% efficiency working point; the photons correspond to the green towers in the electromagnetic calorimeter, while the jets (b-jets) are shown as yellow (blue) cones. Image credit: ATLAS Collaboration.

Physicists Observe Simultaneous Production of Higgs Boson with Top Quark-Antiquark Pair

Jun 8, 2018 by News Staff

In July 2012, ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) and CMS (Compact-Muon-Solenoid) experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider jointly announced the discovery...

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.

Recent Gravitational-Wave Event Likely Created Low-Mass Black Hole

Jun 5, 2018 by News Staff

A new study using X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory indicates that the neutron star merger that became the gravitational wave source,...

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.

Does Small Fraction of Dark Matter Particles Carry Electric Mini-Charge?

Jun 4, 2018 by News Staff

A duo of astrophysicists is proposing a new model for the invisible material that makes up most of the Universe: it’s possible that a small fraction...

Ruthenium. Image credit: Metalle-W / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Researchers Discover 4th Room-Temperature Ferromagnetic Element: Ruthenium

May 29, 2018 by News Staff

A platinum-group chemical element called ruthenium (Ru) is the fourth single element to have unique ferromagnetic properties at room temperature. Ruthenium....

di-Omega dibaryon. Image credit: Keiko Murano.

Physicists Predict Existence of ‘Most Strange’ Dibaryon Particle

May 25, 2018 by News Staff

Physicists from the HAL QCD Collaboration predict the existence of a new type of dibaryon, a particle that contains six quarks instead of the usual three....

The first measurement of a subatomic particle’s mechanical property reveals the distribution of pressure inside the proton. Image credit: Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility.

Physicists Measure Pressure Distribution inside Proton

May 18, 2018 by News Staff

The proton, one of the components of atomic nuclei, is composed of fundamental particles called quarks and gluons. A team of physicists at the Department...

This picture shows the setup of the experiment. Image credit: Jian-Wei Pan’s Group.

Global Experiment Challenges Einstein’s Principle of Local Realism: BIG Bell Test

May 11, 2018 by News Staff

A Bell test, named for the Northern Irish physicist John Stewart Bell, is a randomized trial that compares observations against the philosophical worldview...

Professor Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory on Origin of Universe

May 3, 2018 by News Staff

Professor Stephen Hawking’s theory about the Big Bang, which he worked on in collaboration with Katholieke Universiteit Leuven’s Professor Thomas Hertog,...

Rovny et al looked for a signature of a discrete time crystal in a crystal of monoammonium phosphate. Image credit: Michael Marsland, Yale University.

Researchers Find Signs of ‘Time Crystal’ in Ammonium Dihydrogen Phosphate

May 2, 2018 by News Staff

A team of physicists at Yale University has observed a signature of a discrete time crystal (DTC) in an unexpected place: a crystal of ammonium dihydrogen...

Physicists Entangle Two Macroscopic-Scale Objects

Apr 30, 2018 by News Staff

Entanglement — an intriguing phenomenon in which two distant objects can manifest correlations, even if they are far away from each other —...

A cloud of atoms is held above a chip by electromagnetic fields; the EPR paradox was observed between the spatially separated regions A and B. Image credit: Department of Physics, University of Basel.

Physicists Observe Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox in Bose-Einstein Condensate

Apr 30, 2018 by News Staff

A team of researchers in Switzerland has observed the quantum mechanical Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox in a system of interacting ultracold atoms. Their...

$A visualization of the polarization of the CMB, as detected by Planck. The CMB is a snapshot of the oldest light in our Universe, imprinted on the sky when the Universe was just 380,000 years old. It shows tiny temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities, representing the seeds of all future structure: the stars and galaxies of today. A small fraction of the CMB is polarized – it vibrates in a preferred direction. This is a result of the last encounter of this light with electrons, just before starting its cosmic journey. For this reason, the polarization of the CMB retains information about the distribution of matter in the early Universe, and its pattern on the sky follows that of the tiny fluctuations observed in the temperature of the CMB. In these images, the color scale represents temperature differences in the CMB, while the texture indicates the direction of the polarized light. The patterns seen in the texture are characteristic of E-mode polarization, which is the dominant type for the CMB. The large oval shows the CMB polarization as seen by Planck on the entire sky. For the sake of illustration, both data sets have been filtered to show mostly the signal detected on scales around 5° on the sky. However, fluctuations in both the CMB temperature and polarization are present and were observed by Planck also on larger as well as smaller angular scales. To provide a taste of the fine structure of the measurement obtained by Planck, a zoomed-in view on a smaller patch of the sky, measuring 20° across, is also provided on the left. This is first shown with the same filtering as the all-sky image (upper frame), then with a different filter that shows mostly the signal detected on angles on the sky of about 20 arcminutes (lower frame). Image credit: ESA / Planck Collaboration.$