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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....

Xiong et al. observed a correlated insulator of interlayer excitons in a bilayer consisting of tungsten diselenide, which hosted holes, and tungsten disulfide, which hosted electrons. Image credit: Xiong et al., doi: 10.1126/science.add5574.

Physicists Create New Exotic State of Matter: Bosonic Correlated Insulator

Jun 9, 2023 by News Staff

This is the first time a highly ordered crystal of bosonic particles called excitons has been created in a real — as opposed to synthetic —...

An artist’s rendition of a giant star in orbit around a low-mass black hole. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

All Large Objects in Universe Will Eventually Evaporate, Astrophysicists Say

Jun 5, 2023 by News Staff

According to quantum mechanics, a vacuum state is populated by virtual particle pairs undergoing spontaneous creation and annihilation processes. These...

An image of a ring shaped supramolecule where only one iron atom is present in the entire ring. Image credit: Ajayi et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06011-w.

Physicists X-Ray Single Atom for First Time

Jun 2, 2023 by News Staff

Since the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895, its use has been ubiquitous, from medical and environmental applications to materials sciences....

Event display of a candidate H→ Zγ event with the Z boson decaying μ+μ-. The transverse momenta of the two muon candidates, shown in red, are 72 GeV and 20 GeV. The photon candidate is reconstructed as an unconverted photon with a transverse momentum of 32.5 GeV. Two jets (R=0.4) are represented by light blue cones, with mjj of 965 GeV. The green boxes correspond to energy deposits in cells of the electromagnetic calorimeter, while yellow boxes correspond to energy deposits in cells of the hadronic calorimeter. The invariant mass of the Z boson candidate is 91.1 GeV and the invariant mass of Zγ system is 125.4 GeV. Image credit: ATLAS Collaboration / CERN.

CERN Physicists Find First Evidence for Rare Decay of Higgs Boson

May 29, 2023 by News Staff

Physicists from the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have independently conducted extensive searches for the rare Higgs...

This enormous image from Webb reveals never-before-seen details of the Stephan’s Quintet. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI.

Parity Symmetry Violation in Orientation of Galactic Shapes Could Explain Abundance of Matter

May 23, 2023 by News Staff

Symmetry is a tidy and attractive idea that falls apart in our untidy Universe. Indeed, since the 1960s, some kind of broken symmetry has been required...

Espresso coffee is brewed by first grinding roasted coffee beans into grains. Hot water then forces its way through a bed of coffee grains at high pressure, and the soluble content of the coffee grains dissolves into the water (extraction) to produce espresso.

New Study Explains Why More Finely Ground Coffee Beans Brew Weaker Espresso

May 9, 2023 by Natali Anderson

A recent experiment showed that, contrary to theoretical predictions, beyond a cutoff point, grinding coffee more finely results in lower extraction. One...

Schouten et al. find links at the atomic level between photosynthesis and exciton condensates, a strange state of physics that allows energy to flow frictionlessly through a material. Image credit: Evgeni Tcherkasski.

New Study Finds Link between Photosynthesis and Exciton Condensates

May 3, 2023 by News Staff

Bose-Einstein condensation of excitons — in which excitons condense into a single coherent quantum state, known as an exciton condensate —...

The most recognizable feature of graphene’s electronic spectrum is its Dirac point, around which interesting phenomena tend to cluster. At low temperatures, the intrinsic behavior in this regime is often obscured by charge inhomogeneity, but thermal excitations can overcome the disorder at elevated temperatures and create an electron-hole plasma of Dirac fermions. The Dirac plasma has been found to exhibit unusual properties, including quantum-critical scattering and hydrodynamic flow. However, little is known about the plasma’s behavior in magnetic fields. Xin et al. report magnetotransport in this quantum-critical regime. Image credit: University of Manchester.

Physicists Discover Giant Magnetoresistance in Graphene

Apr 12, 2023 by News Staff

Record-high magnetoresistance appears in graphene under ambient conditions, according to new research led by the University of Manchester. The most recognizable...

An artist’s impression of defect centers in diamond nanostructures. They can be used as quantum bits. Via quantum entanglement, quantum information can be stored in emitted single photons and transmitted in optical fibers in the future quantum internet. Image credit: HU Berlin / AG Integrierte Quantenphotonik.

Scientists are One Step Closer to Quantum Internet

Apr 6, 2023 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Ferdinand-Braun-Institut has succeeded in generating photons with stable frequencies...

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.

Astrophysicists Find New Evidence for Standard Model of Cosmology

Apr 4, 2023 by News Staff

Astrophysicists from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have measured the X-ray emission from galaxy clusters, which revealed...

The FASER Collaboration reports the first observation of collider neutrino events. Image credit: FASER Collaboration.

Physicists Detect Collider Neutrinos for First Time

Mar 24, 2023 by News Staff

Using the ForwArd Search ExpeRiment (FASER), a particle detector installed at CERN, particle physicists were able to detect very high energy neutrinos...

Shoshany et al. define and analyze a new model of time travel paradoxes, which is fully compatible with all known physics; the model consists of a wormhole time machine in 3+1 spacetime dimensions, which can be either permanent (existing eternally) or temporary (activated only for a short time). Image credit: Genty.

New Quantum Breakthrough Paves Way for ‘Local Wormholes’

Mar 13, 2023 by News Staff

A local wormhole is a physical system characterized by the no-cloning of information that mediates the action of an exchange-free quantum computer: locally...

Left: a fully assembled quantum system at Google Quantum AI; prominently displayed is the dilution refrigerator in which the computations occur, the quantum processor and quantum-limited amplifiers installed at the bottom stage of the refrigerator, various cables connecting bottom to top, and control electronics of quantum computer in the back. Right: two generations of Sycamore processors fabricated by Google Quantum AI; each processor features two chips that are bonded together: a chip containing the quantum bits (qubits), and a chip containing the wiring between the qubits and the outside world; the latest generation of the Sycamore processor on the right is notably larger than previous generations, but also has several modifications to the qubits resulting in improved performance. Image credit: Google Quantum AI.

Google Quantum AI Team Improves Error Correction in Quantum Computing

Feb 23, 2023 by News Staff

A new work from Google Quantum AI represents a step towards the development of scalable quantum error correction to enable quantum computers to reach sufficiently...

The surface of Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view; image scale is 1.6 km per pixel; north on Europa is at right. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SETI Institute.

Planetary Scientists Create Two New Forms of Extraterrestrial Ice

Feb 21, 2023 by News Staff

University of Washington researcher Baptiste Journaux and colleagues believe the newly-created substances could form at the surface and bottom of deep...

The PEMFC domain generated by Wang et al.: (a) 2D and (b) 3D rendering of the segmented membrane electrode assembly with artificially overlayed flow channels; the gas channel and land contacting the microporous gas diffusion layer are labeled. Image credit: Wang et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-35973-8.

Novel Algorithm Helps Produce High-Resolution Images of Hydrogen Fuel Cells

Feb 20, 2023 by News Staff

A team of scientists led by University of New South Wales researchers Ryan Armstrong, Chuan Zhao and Quentin Meyer has developed a new algorithm to improve...