Physics News

Massive Neutron Stars Could Contain Cores Made of Deconfined Quark Matter

An artist’s impression of the different layers inside a massive neutron star, with the red circle representing a sizable quark-matter core. Image credit: Jyrki Hokkanen, CSC.
Dec 28, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Neutron-star cores contain matter at the highest densities in our Universe. This highly compressed matter may undergo a phase transition where nuclear matter melts into deconfined quark matter, liberating its constituent quarks and gluons. But it is currently unknown whether the transition takes place inside at least some physical neutron stars. In a new study, physicists from the University of Helsinki, the University of Stavanger, Flatiron Institute...

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Nucleon densities for several low-lying states of carbon-12; each image is labeled with the spin (0 to 3), the sign under parity inversion (+ or -), and the excitation number (1 to 3). Image credit: Shihang Shen.

New Research Sheds Light on Structure of Carbon Nucleus

Dec 27, 2023 by News Staff

The carbon atom provides the backbone for the complex organic chemistry composing the building blocks of life. The physics of the carbon nucleus in its...

Sketch of a Rydberg molecule (a): the coordinates of the Rydberg electron (blue) and ground state atom (green) relative to the Rydberg core (red) are denoted with black arrows; the relevant spins are that of the Rydberg electron s1, the electron of the ground state atom s2 and the nuclear spin of the ground state atom I. Sketch of a trilobite molecule (b): the Rydberg core and the ground state atom are shown (with exaggerated size) as red and green spheres respectively; the electronic probability density projected to 2D is indicated by the density of blue dots. Image credit: Althön et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-43818-7.

Physicists Observe Trilobite Rydberg Molecules

Dec 18, 2023 by News Staff

A team of physicists at the Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau has produced pure trilobite molecules in rubidium over...

The merger of two neutron stars is among the leading candidate sites for synthesizing the heavier elements on the periodic table through the r-process. Image credit: Matthew Mumpower, Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Ancient Stars were Capable of Producing Elements with Atomic Masses Greater than 260, Scientists Say

Dec 11, 2023 by News Staff

The rapid neutron capture process, or the so-called r-process, occurs in neutron-rich environments such as neutron star mergers or certain types of supernovae....

An artist’s illustration of the Amaterasu particle observed by a surface detector array of the Telescope Array experiment. Image credit: Osaka Metropolitan University / L-INSIGHT, Kyoto University / Ryuunosuke Takeshige.

Astrophysicists Detect Second Highest-Energy Cosmic Ray Ever

Nov 23, 2023 by News Staff

Astrophysicists using the Telescope Array experiment in Utah, the United States, have detected the second-highest extreme-energy cosmic ray. An artist’s...

Spatial wavefront of a narrowband laser beam is shaped by a spatial light modulator and excites many modes in a multimode fiber. Image credit: Chen et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-42806-1.

Physicists Find New Way to Increase Power of Fiber Lasers

Nov 21, 2023 by News Staff

An international team of physicists has demonstrated the potential use of multimode optical fiber to scale up power in fiber lasers by three-to-nine times...

Illustration of two types of long-lived particles decaying into a pair of muons, showing how the signals of the muons can be traced back to the long-lived particle decay point using data from the tracker and muon detectors. Image credit: CMS / CERN.

CERN Physicists Searching for Dark Photon Production in Higgs Boson Decays

Nov 13, 2023 by News Staff

Physicists with the CMS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have presented their first search for new physics using data from LHC Run...

Masses, sizes, and relative densities of objects in our Universe. Image credit: Charles H. Lineweaver & Vihan M. Patel, doi: 10.1119/5.0150209.

Astrophysicists Put All Objects in Universe into One Pedagogical Plot

Oct 19, 2023 by News Staff

In a new paper, astrophysicists from Australian National University present an overview of the thermal history of our Universe and the sequence of objects...

Wells et al estimate that there should be at least 10 -- currently undiscovered -- exoplanets which are favorably located to detect the Earth and are capable of sustaining life as we know it. Image credit: NASA.

Scientists Unveil Nature’s Missing Evolutionary Law

Oct 18, 2023 by News Staff

Physical laws — such as the laws of motion, gravity, electromagnetism, and thermodynamics — codify the general behavior of varied macroscopic...

Anderson et al. show that antihydrogen atoms, released from magnetic confinement in the ALPHA-g apparatus, behave in a way consistent with gravitational attraction to the Earth. Image credit: Keyi ‘Onyx’ Li / U.S. National Science Foundation.

CERN Physicists Observe Influence of Gravity on Antimatter

Sep 29, 2023 by News Staff

Physicists from the ALPHA Collaboration at CERN’s Antimatter Factory have demonstrated the existence of gravity between antimatter and Earth, reaffirming...

Dark photons are hypothetical dark sector particles proposed as a force carrier similar to the photon of electromagnetism but potentially connected to dark matter. Image credit: University of Adelaide.

New Research Provides Further Clues to Nature of Dark Matter

Sep 19, 2023 by News Staff

The key to understanding the mystery of elusive dark matter could lie with the dark photon, a hypothetical dark sector particle proposed as a force carrier...

Oxygen-28 and oxygen-27 provide stringent tests of modern nuclear structure theories. Image credit: Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Physicists Observe Oxygen-28 for First Time

Aug 31, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

The oxygen-28 (28O) nucleus is of particular interest as, with the Z = 8 (protons) and N = 20 (neutrons) magic numbers, it is expected in the standard...

The Swift Ray 1 imaging device is a pocket-sized hyperspectral camera that is designed to sit over a smartphone’s camera lens and wirelessly connect to Swift Medical’s Skin and Wound app. Image credit: Ramirez-GarciaLuna et al., doi: 10.3389/fmed.2023.1165281.

Real-Life ‘Tricorder’ Can Spot Infected Wounds

Aug 24, 2023 by News Staff

Named the Swift Ray 1, the real-life Star Trek ‘tricorder’ is a novel point-of-care hyperspectral imaging device that allows the acquisition of medical-grade...

A muon particle passing through lead in a cloud chamber. Image credit: Jino John 1996 / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Physicists Measure Muon’s Magnetic Moment with Unprecedented Precision

Aug 15, 2023 by News Staff

Physicists report a new measurement of the muon magnetic anomaly using data collected in 2019 and 2020 by the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab National...

Candidate Higgs boson decays into two photons in the ATLAS experiment. Image credit: CERN.

CERN Physicists Measure Higgs Boson’s Mass with Unprecedented Precision

Aug 1, 2023 by News Staff

In the eleven years since its discovery, studies of the Higgs boson have become a central avenue for shedding light on the fundamental structure of the...

The structure of boron monoxide was a longstanding problem, dating back to 1940. Solving it required developing new NMR methods as well as applying x-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), x-ray photo electron spectroscopy (XPS), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Image credit: U.S. Department of Energy Ames National Laboratory.

Chemists Finally Determine Structure of Boron Monoxide

Jul 19, 2023 by News Staff

Boron monoxide, a binary compound of boron and oxygen, was first reported in the 1940s. However, scientists were unable to determine the structure of the...

Mirror nuclei, such as oxygen-18 and neon-18, have the same number of protons and neutrons (18), but while oxygen-18 has 8 protons and 10 neutrons, neon-18 has 10 protons & 8 neutrons. When they absorb enough energy, they can decay and emit an alpha particle (2 protons and 2 neutrons). Image credit: M. Barbui.

Nuclear Physicists Find Evidence of Superradiance in Mirror Nuclei

Jun 28, 2023 by News Staff

Superradiance occurs when an atomic nucleus reaches a high excitation energy. Mirror nuclei, such as oxygen-18 and neon-18, have the same number of protons...

In shaping the Universe, gravity builds a vast cobweb-like structure of filaments tying galaxies and clusters of galaxies together along invisible bridges hundreds of millions of light-years long. This is known as the cosmic web. Image credit: Springel et al. / Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics.

New Link Found between Dark Matter and Universe’s Clumpiness

Jun 14, 2023 by News Staff

New research from the University of Toronto suggests that the so-called clumpiness problem, which centers on the unexpectedly even distribution of matter...

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (top left) and the IceCube Neutrino Observatory (sensor strings, bottom). Image credit: NASA / Fermi / Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University.

Could Quantum Properties of Spacetime Slow Down Neutrinos?

Jun 13, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, astrophysicists have found preliminary evidence for gamma-ray...

Strong evidence suggesting that frying in space is possible. Image credit: Lioumbas et al., doi: 10.1016/j.foodres.2022.112249.

Is Frying Possible in Space?

Jun 12, 2023 by Natali Anderson

French fries are a very popular food commodity across many cultural backgrounds on Earth and as such they may be appreciated by long-term space travelers....

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