Physics News

Lightning Strikes Produce Antimatter Particles in Earth’s Atmosphere

Enoto et al describe how gamma rays from lightning react with the air to produce radioisotopes and even positrons. Image credit: Teruaki Enoto, Kyoto University.
Nov 23, 2017 by News Staff

Scientists from Japan and Singapore report in the November 23 issue of the journal Nature that they observed positron (antimatter counterpart of the electron) and neutron signals after lightning. Enoto et al describe how gamma rays from lightning react with the air to produce radioisotopes and even positrons. Image credit: Teruaki Enoto, Kyoto University. “We already knew that thunderclouds and lightning emit gamma rays, and hypothesized that they...

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Chernobyl disaster aftermath: reactor 4 (center), turbine building (lower left) and reactor 3 (center right).

New Study Rewrites First Seconds of Chernobyl Accident

Nov 21, 2017 by News Staff

According to an analysis published in the journal Nuclear Technology, the first of the two major explosions reported by eyewitnesses of the Chernobyl disaster...

An artist’s impression of an accretion disk around a black hole. Image credit: XMM-Newton / ESA / NASA.

X-Rays from Accretion Disks around Rotating Black Holes Can Act as Carriers of Quantum Information

Nov 17, 2017 by News Staff

In a paper published in the journal New Astronomy, theoretical physicist Ovidiu Racorean suggests that X-ray photons emitted by accretion disks around...

Isinger et al documented the incredibly brief moment when two electrons in a neon atom are emitted. Image credit: Marcus Isinger.

Innovative Interferometric Method Reveals Time of Electron Photoemission from Atom

Nov 15, 2017 by News Staff

According to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, it’s impossible to know both the position and the speed of an electron at any one time. However, a...

Medical sensing technologies and solar energy storage could be dramatically improved after the team shows the validity of quantum theory first proposed in 1931. Image credit: Jose Manuel Suarez / CC BY 2.0.

Physicists Confirm Quantum Theory Proposed in the 1930s

Nov 13, 2017 by News Staff

Professor David McKenzie from the University of Sydney and his PhD student Enyi Guo have demonstrated quantum tunneling in water — a quantum phenomenon...

A metasurface uses circularly polarized light to generate and control new and complex states of light, such swirling vortices of light. Image credit: Second Bay Studio / Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Newly Developed Metasurface Generates Structured Light Beams

Nov 9, 2017 by News Staff

A team of researchers has developed a new tool that can produce complex states of light. The research appears in the journal Science. A metasurface uses...

Dr. Thomas Gaumnitz, a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Wörner’s group, with the setup that generates the shortest laser pulses in the world. Image credit: ETH Zurich.

Swiss Physicists Set Record for Shortest Laser Pulse

Nov 2, 2017 by News Staff

A team of physicists at ETH Zürich in Switzerland has produced the shortest-ever laser pulses: just 43 attoseconds (an attosecond is an incomprehensible...

Gallium indium forms fractal patterns with the application of low voltage. Image credit: North Carolina State University.

Voltage-Driven Liquid Metal Forms Snowflake-Like Fractals

Oct 31, 2017 by News Staff

A team of scientists at North Carolina State University has demonstrated that a gallium-based liquid metal alloy forms snowflake-like fractal patterns...

Artist’s concept of a colony on Mars. Image credit: NASA.

Plasma Technology Could Hold Key to Creating Oxygen Supply on Mars

Oct 19, 2017 by News Staff

A study published in the journal Plasma Sources Science and Technology argues that Mars, with its 96% carbon dioxide (CO2) atmosphere, has nearly ideal...

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

CERN’s BASE Experiment Reports 350-Fold Improved Measurement of Antiproton’s Magnetic Moment

Oct 19, 2017 by News Staff

In a paper published this week in the journal Nature, the BASE collaboration at CERN reports the most precise measurement ever made of the magnetic moment...

This is a graphic depicting formation of flux tube knots in the early Universe. Image credit: Keith Wood, Vanderbilt University.

New Theory Explains Why Our Universe is Three-Dimensional

Oct 18, 2017 by News Staff

According to a new theory proposed by University of Edinburgh Professor Arjun Berera and colleagues, shortly after the Universe came into existence it...

Tokuda et al apply electrical charges to morph liquid metal into 2D shapes. How the electric field creates deformation: (a) a liquid metal blob far from the electrodes and in absence of field is subject to no force; (b) deformation occurs when the blob is in contact with one of the electrodes and an electric voltage is applied across it; (c) deformation in this work as a 2D process. Image credit: INTERACT Lab, University of Sussex.

Programmable Liquid Matter: Researchers Find Way to Morph Liquid Metal into Physical Shapes

Oct 18, 2017 by News Staff

University of Sussex researcher Yutaka Tokuda and co-authors have applied electrical charges to manipulate liquid metal into 2D shapes such as letters...

Artist’s illustration of two merging neutron stars. Image credit: NSF / LIGO / Sonoma State University / A. Simonnet.

Scientists Detect Gravitational Waves from Colliding Neutron Stars

Oct 17, 2017 by News Staff

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, Virgo Collaboration, and their partners have directly detected gravitational waves — ripples in space and time...

Periodic table of the elements.

Periodic Table’s Heaviest Elements Alter Theory of Quantum Mechanics

Oct 4, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of chemists led by Florida State University researchers has found that the theory of quantum mechanics does not adequately explain...

Physicists Catch Fourth Gravitational Wave: GW170814

Sep 28, 2017 by News Staff

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration report the first joint detection of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space and...

Musician on stage playing an electric guitar. Image credit: Herb1979.

Revolutionary New Electric Guitar String Invented

Sep 24, 2017 by News Staff

An invention by University of St Andrews researcher Jonathan Kemp allows electric guitar strings to be balanced in sensitivity and feel in a way that has...

Researchers from the University of Michigan have uncovered that the cause of turbulence in non-equilibrium atmospheric pressure plasma is due to heat-induced sound waves from the instrument’s electrodes. Image credit: Texas A&M University.

Heat-Induced Sound Waves Drive Turbulence in Plasma Therapy, Study Says

Sep 12, 2017 by Zvi Cramer

Non-equilibrium atmospheric pressure plasma jets are a promising mode of treating a variety of afflictions. However, unpredictable turbulence in the plasma...

Schematic view of a large-scale quantum processor based upon phosphorus (31P) donors in silicon, operated and coupled through the use of an induced electric dipole. Idle qubits have electrons at the interface, leaving the 31P nucleus in the ultra-coherent ionized state. Electrons are partially shifted toward the donor for quantum operations. The sketch shows a possible architecture where a cluster of qubits is locally coupled via the electric dipole, and a subgroup thereof is further coupled to another cluster through interaction with a shared microwave cavity (aqua). Image credit: Guilherme Tosi, University of New South Wales.

Researchers Invent New Architecture for Quantum Computing

Sep 7, 2017 by News Staff

A new architecture, based on so-called ‘flip-flop’ qubits, allows for a silicon quantum processor that can be scaled up without the precise placement...

Zeolitic ice (left) and aeroice (right) are illustrated: their structure can be regarded as combinations of a couple of polyhedral building blocks. In molecular scale, each polygonal face of the polyhedra is made of water molecules (left bottom); yellow lines are hydrogen bonds. Image credit: Masakazu Matsumoto / CC BY 2.0.

Scientists Predict Existence of Ultralow-Density Ices: ‘Aeroices’

Sep 6, 2017 by News Staff

A research team at Okayama University in Japan has theoretically predicted a new class of ice phases, called aeroices, likely the most stable solid phases...

The TinyLev system is composed of the driver board and the single-axis levitator with 72 transducers (arranged as two surfaces, each containing 36 transducers); expanded polystyrene (EPS) particles are trapped at its nodes. Image credit: Marzo et al, doi: 10.1063/1.4989995.

Researchers Develop Home Acoustic Levitator

Aug 16, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

A research team at the University of Bristol, UK, has developed a relatively cheap and small acoustic levitator that is capable of holding samples of interest...

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