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Illustration of a supersolid state, in which the properties of a frictionless fluid and a crystalline state coincide. Image credit: Julian Léonard, ETH Zurich.

Supersolid: Physicists Create New State of Matter

Mar 4, 2017 by News Staff

Two teams of physicists have independently created a mysterious new state of matter. The state is known as a supersolid and it combines the properties...

According to Antusch et al, oscillons produced a characteristic peak in the otherwise broad spectrum of gravitational waves. Image credit: University of Basel.

Oscillons, Gravitational Wave Factories in Very Early Universe

Feb 15, 2017 by News Staff

A team of theoretical physicists at the University of Basel, Switzerland, has found that in the very early Universe, so-called oscillons — strong...

Photo of metallic hydrogen at a pressure of 495 GPa; the sample is non-transmitting and is observed in reflected light; the central region is clearly more reflective than the surrounding metallic rhenium gasket; the sample dimensions are approximately 8-10 microns with thickness 1.2 microns. Image credit: Ranga P. Dias & Isaac F. Silvera, doi: 10.1126/science.aal1579.

Physicists Produce World’s First Sample of Metallic Hydrogen

Jan 30, 2017 by News Staff

A duo of physicists at Harvard University has succeeded in creating a metallic modification of hydrogen. The research is published in the journal Science. Photo...

Following a blueprint created by N.Y. Yao et al, University of Maryland physicists made the first time crystal using a one-dimensional chain of ytterbium ions; each ion behaves like an electron spin and exhibits long-range interactions indicated by the arrows. Image credit: J. Zhang et al.

Physicists Unveil ‘Time Crystals’

Jan 27, 2017 by News Staff

Thanks to a breakthrough by a research team led by University of California Berkeley physicist Norman Yao, time crystals are now a reality. Following a...

Top: schematic of the Penning trap set-up used in CERN’s BASE experiment; a cloud of antiprotons is stored in the reservoir trap (RT), which supplies single particles to the co-magnetometer trap (CT) and the analysis trap (AT) when required; the CT is used for continuous magnetic field measurements; the AT is the trap with the strong superimposed magnetic bottle, which is used to measure the cyclotron frequency and the Larmor frequency. All traps are equipped with radio-frequency excitation electronics and highly sensitive superconducting detection systems. Bottom: results of the six g-factor measurements carried out during CERN’s 2015/2016 accelerator shutdown between February 20 and March 5, 2016; based on this set of measurements H. Nagahama et al extract gp/2=2.7928465(23), as indicated by the red line; the green lines show the 95% confidence level error, the blue line represents the currently accepted value of the proton g-factor gp/2=2.792847350(9); the error bars of the individual measurements are based on the uncertainties of the individual frequency measurements, which are dominated by the random walk in the magnetron mode. Image credit: H. Nagahama et al, doi: 10.1038/ncomms14084.

Physicists Precisely Measure Magnetic Moment of Antiproton

Jan 22, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of physicists led by RIKEN researcher Stefan Ulmer has found that the magnetic moment of the antiproton is extremely close to that...

Bhattacharya et al have discovered a way to confine the behavior of electrons by using extremely high magnetic fields. Image credit: Argonne National Laboratory.

Researchers: Electrons ‘Puddle’ under High Magnetic Fields

Jan 5, 2017 by News Staff

A team of materials scientists and physicists from the DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and the National...

Picture of the distribution of the genetic information in an E. coli cell. Image credit: University of Bielefeld.

Optical ‘Tractor Beam’ Traps Biological Cells

Dec 28, 2016 by News Staff

Physicists in Germany have developed a novel technique for trapping biological cells with a laser beam. Using this technique, the researchers obtained...

The next leap second will be inserted on December 31, 2016. This will be the 27th leap second added since their adoption in 1972. Image credit: National Physical Laboratory.

2016 Gets Longer with Extra Second Added to New Year Countdown

Dec 23, 2016 by News Staff

This New Year’s countdown will be one second longer as the National Physical Laboratory — the UK’s national measurement institute and the birthplace...

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

CERN Physicists Observe Light Spectrum of Antimatter for the First Time

Dec 19, 2016 by News Staff

Physicists from CERN’s ALPHA experiment today report the first ever measurement on the optical spectrum of an antimatter atom. Artist’s impression...

Artificially grown bismuth crystal illustrating the stairstep structure, with a 1 cm3 cube of bismuth metal. Image credit: Heinrich Pniok / CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.

Scientists Observe Superconductivity in Single Crystals of Pure Bismuth

Dec 8, 2016 by News Staff

According to a team of researchers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai, India, pure bismuth — a semimetal with a rhombohedral...

L.M. Maestro et al find that two states of liquid water play an important role in the thermal and optical properties of nanomedical systems; the team’s preliminary findings also suggest that the structure of liquid water strongly influences the thermal stability of proteins. Image credit: Martin Str.

Physicists Demonstrate Existence of Two States of Liquid Water

Nov 12, 2016 by News Staff

There are two states of liquid water, says an international team of physicists led by Oxford University’s Dr. Laura Maestro. L.M. Maestro et al find...

Electron density of a butterfly molecule. Image credit: University of Kaiserslautern.

Physicists Observe Butterfly Rydberg Molecule for First Time

Nov 7, 2016 by News Staff

An international team of physicists, led by Prof. Chris Greene from Purdue University and Prof. Herwig Ott from the University of Kaiserslautern, has observed...

Tetra-neutron system produced in double-charge exchange reaction 4He(8He,8Be). Image credit: Susumu Shimoura / University of Tokyo.

Physicists Demonstrate Existence of Tetraneutron

Nov 4, 2016 by News Staff

An Iowa State University-led team of physicists has demonstrated the quasi-stable existence of a tetraneutron, a subatomic structure once thought unlikely...

Prof. Gordon Cates and Dr. Wilson Miller with the unique imaging apparatus the team built in their lab. Image credit: Dan Addison / University of Virginia.

Polarized Nuclear Imaging: New Technique Has Potential for High-Resolution Medical Diagnostics

Nov 2, 2016 by News Staff

A team of researchers at the University of Virginia has devised a new imaging approach that combines powerful aspects of both magnetic resonance imaging...

The scanning tunneling microscope used to inject electrons into a silicon surface. Image credit: Michelle Tennison.

Physicists Visualize Quantum Behavior of High-Energy Electrons

Sep 28, 2016 by News Staff

A team of physicists from the University of Birmingham and the University of Bath has identified a method to visualize, over a millionth of a billionth...

Universe is Expanding Uniformly, Scientists Say

Sep 23, 2016 by News Staff

The Universe is not spinning or stretched in any particular direction, according to a team of researchers from University College London and Imperial College...

This image shows a pellet of plutonium-238 dioxide. The pellet is glowing red because of the heat generated by the radioactive decay (primarily alpha) of the fuel. Such pellets were used in radioisotope thermoelectric generators that powered NASA’s Galilleo and Cassini spacecraft on missions to Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. Image credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Plutonium Acts Like Ions in a Salt, New Study Shows

Sep 16, 2016 by News Staff

Plutonium, a heavy, silvery metal with 15 isotopes that is produced by the neutron irradiation of natural uranium, is formidably complex element that does...

Proton-proton collisions events in which two high energy electrons and two high energy muons are observed. Image credit: L. Taylor / T. McCauley / CERN.

Madala Boson: Physicists Predict Existence of New Heavy Particle

Sep 7, 2016 by News Staff

An international team of physicists, led by the University of the Witwatersrand (UW) in Johannesburg, South Africa, predicts the existence of a new particle...

$A false-color high-resolution transmission electron microscopy image of the zirconium pentatelluride (ZrTe5) with an inset selected area electron diffraction (SAED) pattern, showing the layer normal along the b axis. Scale bar - 2 nm. Image credit: Yanwen Liu et al.$

Physicists: Massless Electrons Acquire Mass in Presence of Strong Magnetic Field

Aug 31, 2016 by News Staff

For the first time, physicists have discovered that in an extremely high magnetic field ‘massless’ Dirac electrons can acquire a mass. A false-color...