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Proton is a subatomic particle found in the nucleus of every atom. This artist’s impression shows a proton and a neutron. Image credit: Joanna Griffin / Jefferson Lab / Penn State.

What’s Mass of Proton? Physicists Make Most Precise Measurement Yet

Jul 21, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of physicists from Germany and Japan has made the most precise measurement yet of the proton’s atomic mass. The result is a factor...

Scheme of a waveguide-integrated plasmonic nanoantenna for mode-selective polarization (de)multiplexing. The device couples light of orthogonal polarizations into different directions and modes of the underlying silicon waveguide. Image credit: Guo et al, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1700007.

Optical Nanoantenna Promises Ultra-Fast Graphics on Gaming Consoles, PCs

Jul 20, 2017 by News Staff

A group of researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) and elsewhere has designed a nanoantenna — a device which is 100 times thinner...

Peering deep into the core of the Crab Nebula, this Hubble image reveals the beating heart of one of the most historic and intensively studied remnants of a supernova, an exploding star. The neutron star at the very center of the nebula has about the same mass as the Sun but compressed into an incredibly dense sphere that is only a few miles across. Spinning 30 times a second, the neutron star shoots out detectable beams of energy that make it look like it’s pulsating. The Hubble snapshot is centered on the region around the neutron star (the rightmost of the two bright stars near the center of this image) and the expanding, tattered, filamentary debris surrounding it. Hubble’s sharp view captures the intricate details of glowing gas, shown in red, that forms a swirling medley of cavities and filaments. Inside this shell is a ghostly blue glow that is radiation given off by electrons spiraling at nearly the speed of light in the powerful magnetic field around the crushed stellar core. This neutron star is a showcase for extreme physical processes and unimaginable cosmic violence. Bright wisps are moving outward from the neutron star at half the speed of light to form an expanding ring. It is thought that these wisps originate from a shock wave that turns the high-speed wind from the neutron star into extremely energetic particles. Image credit: NASA / ESA / J. Hester, ASU / M. Weisskopf, NASA & MSFC.

Astrophysical Shock Waves Generated in the Lab

Jul 18, 2017 by News Staff

A Princeton-led team of researchers has discovered a revolutionary way to generate high-energy shock waves in the lab. Peering deep into the core of the...

The battery-free phone can sense speech, actuate the earphones, and switch between uplink and downlink communications, all in real time. It is powered by either ambient radio signals or light. Image credit: Mark Stone, University of Washington.

First Battery-Free Cellphone Harvests Power from Ambient Radio Signals, Light

Jul 14, 2017 by News Staff

A team of computer scientists and electrical engineers at the University of Washington has invented a cellphone that requires no batteries and harvests...

Experimental configuration of the X-ray Free Electron Laser probe and optical laser; the shock freezing behavior of water captured in a Debye-Scherrer geometry. Inset: schematic of target package as a cut away side view. Image credit: Gleason et al, doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.025701.

Researchers Observe Real-Time Growth of Exotic ‘Ice VII’

Jul 12, 2017 by News Staff

A Stanford-led research team has captured the freezing of water, molecule-by-molecule, into a super-dense, exotic form of ice called ice VII. The results...

The doubly charmed baryon Ξcc++ contains two charm quarks and one up quark. Image credit: Daniel Dominguez, CERN.

CERN Physicists Confirm Existence of Doubly Charmed Baryons

Jul 6, 2017 by News Staff

The LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland has reported the observation of a doubly charmed...

Sketch of the quantum Maxwell demon experiment: (A) after preparation (step 1) in a thermal or quantum state by a pulse at frequency fs, the system S (superconducting qubit) state is recorded (step 2) into the demon’s quantum memory D (microwave cavity); a pulse incoming toward port a at fD populates the cavity mode with a state ραin only if the qubit is in the ground state |g>s; this information is used to extract work W (step 3) which charges a battery B (a microwave pulse at frequency fs on port b) with one extra photon; importantly, the system emits this photon only when the demon’s cavity is empty; the work is determined by amplifying and measuring the average output power at fs on bout; the memory reset (step 4) is performed by cavity relaxation. (B) when the system starts in a quantum superposition of |g>s and |e>s, the demon and system are entangled after step 2. Image credit: Cottet et al, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1704827114.

Physicists See Maxwell’s Demon at Work

Jul 6, 2017 by News Staff

New research led by Paris Diderot University offers a view into the inner workings of the ‘mind’ of Maxwell’s demon, a famous thought experiment...

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

Signatures of Universe’s Extra Dimensions Could Be Hiding in Gravitational Waves

Jun 29, 2017 by News Staff

In a paper published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (arXiv.org preprint), German physicists investigate the effects due to Universe’s...

A rendering of how changes in an electron’s motion (bottom view) alter the scattering of light (top view), as measured in a new experiment that scattered more than 500 photons of light from a single electron. Image credit: Extreme Light Laboratory, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Ultra-High Intensity Laser Sparks New Behavior in Light

Jun 27, 2017 by News Staff

By focusing laser light to brightness one billion times greater than the surface of the Sun, a team of physicists from the United States and China has...

An artist’s impression of the two forms of ultra-viscous liquid water with different density; on the background is depicted the X-ray speckle pattern taken from actual data of high-density amorphous ice, which is produced by pressurizing water at very low temperatures. Image credit: Mattias Karlén.

Physicists Discover Two Low-Temperature Forms of Liquid Water

Jun 27, 2017 by News Staff

A Stockholm University-led team of physicists has discovered two low-temperature phases of liquid water with large differences in structure and density. An...

Yin et al realized the satellite-based distribution of entangled photon pairs over 747 miles. Image credit: U.S. Army.

World’s First Quantum-Enabled Satellite Sets Distance Record for Quantum Entanglement

Jun 16, 2017 by News Staff

Chinese researchers have successfully demonstrated satellite-based distribution of entangled photon pairs to two locations separated by 747.5 miles (1,203...

Schematic of the organic microcavity used to observe superfluid flow. Image credit: Polytechnique Montreal.

Superfluid Motion of Light Observed at Room Temperature

Jun 9, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of physicists has experimentally demonstrated that superfluid motion of light is possible under ambient conditions. Until now, this...

LIGO’s gravitational wave detections. Image credit: LIGO Scientific Collaboration / ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery.

Scientists Detect Gravitational Waves for Third Time

Jun 2, 2017 by News Staff

Scientists from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration have made a third detection of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric...

In this illustration, an ultra-intense X-ray laser pulse from SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source knocks so many electrons out of a molecule’s iodine atom (right) that the iodine starts pulling in electrons from the rest of the molecule (lower left), like an electromagnetic version of a black hole. Many of the stolen electrons are also knocked out by the laser pulse; then the molecule explodes. Image credit: DESY / Science Communication Lab.

Researchers Create Molecular Version of Black Hole

Jun 2, 2017 by News Staff

When a team of physicists focused the full intensity of SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) Coherent X-ray Imaging instrument — the world’s...

A simulated black hole of 10 solar masses as seen from a distance of 370 miles. Image credit: Ute Kraus, Universität Hildesheim / Axel Mellinger / CC BY-SA 2.5.

Naked Singularities Can Form in ‘Saddle-Shaped’ Universe, Physicists Say

May 23, 2017 by News Staff

A team of theoretical physicists at the University of Cambridge, UK, has used computer simulations to predict the existence of a so-called naked singularity,...

This is an artistic view of the decay of a quantum-mechanical monopole into a Dirac monopole. Image credit: Heikka Valja.

Physicists Experimentally Observe Decay of Quantum Monopole

May 18, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of physicists from Finland and the United States has made the first experimental observations of the dynamics of isolated monopoles...

Hubble view of the galaxy cluster Abell 1689. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA / J. Blakeslee, Dominion Astrophysical Observatory / H. Ford, JHU.

Space-Time is Constantly Moving, Physicists Say

May 15, 2017 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia, Canada, has tackled the question ‘what causes...

Quantitative measurements of the C═O***H–C bond: (A) schematic drawing of the hydrogen bonding measurement on trifluorantheno[3.3.3]propellane with a CO-functionalized tip; right shows the AFM image. Scale bar - 300 pm; (B) 2D frequency shift map; (C) calculated force and (D) potentials. Inset shows the same area with a wider contrast. The z origin was set at the position of the hydrogen atom. Measurement parameters: A = 60 pm and V = 0 mV. Image credit: Kawai et al, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1603258.

Physicists Directly Observe Hydrogen Bonds in Single Molecule

May 15, 2017 by News Staff

For the first time, physicists have succeeded in observing and studying in detail the hydrogen bonds in a single molecule. Quantitative measurements of...

Photo of the centimeter-sized silicon chip, which has two parallel superconducting oscillators and the quantum-circuit refrigerators connected to them. Image credit: Kuan Yen Tan / Aalto University.

Researchers Invent Nanoscale ‘Refrigerator’ for Quantum Computers

May 9, 2017 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the Department of Applied Physics at Aalto University in Finland has invented a quantum-circuit refrigerator, which can reduce...

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