https://phys.org/physics-news/physics en-us The latest news on physics, materials, nanotech, science and technology. One of the greatest problems in modern physics is to reconcile the enormous difference between the energy carried by random fluctuations in the vacuum of space, and the dark energy driving the universe's expansion. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-elucidate-dark-energy.html General Physics Wed, 06 Mar 2024 16:02:03 EST news628963321 The idea of objects seamlessly disappearing, not just in controlled laboratory environments but also in real-world scenarios, has long captured the popular imagination. This concept epitomizes the trajectory of human civilization, from primitive camouflage techniques to the sophisticated metamaterial-based cloaks of today. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-drone-invisibility-autonomous-sea-air.html General Physics Optics & Photonics Wed, 06 Mar 2024 12:47:03 EST news628951621 High-energy neutrinos are extremely rare particles that have so far proved very difficult to detect. Fluxes of these rare particles were first detected by the IceCube Collaboration back in 2013. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-atlas-detector-flux-high-energy.html General Physics Tue, 05 Mar 2024 07:30:01 EST news628766453 Plant vascular circulation, ion channels, our own lymphatic network, and many energy harvesting systems rely on the transport of dissolved salt solutions through tortuous conduits. These solutions, or electrolytes, maintain a positive or negative charge that's vital to how the system functions. However, this charge balance depends on the properties of the channel that contains the fluid. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-electrolyte-neutrality.html General Physics Mon, 04 Mar 2024 17:05:03 EST news628794302 A team of researchers led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst has recently found an exception to the 200-year-old law, known as Fourier's Law, that governs how heat diffuses through solid materials. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-exception-year-scientific-law.html General Physics Mon, 04 Mar 2024 16:57:03 EST news628793821 During the manufacturing process, many medical devices or equipment for use on humans must be sterilized according to recognized standards. This includes gowns, surgical drapes, syringes and implantable medical devices. In fact, the United States has a huge medical device sterilization industry, regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The industry is expected to grow considerably in the coming years. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-electron-sterilize-medical-equipment.html General Physics Mon, 04 Mar 2024 14:40:37 EST news628785627 The LHCb collaboration recently reported on the arXiv preprint server the first observation of the decay of the Bc+ meson (composed of two heavy quarks, b and c) into a J/ψ charm-anticharm quark bound state and a pair of pions, π+π0. The decay process shows a contribution from an intermediate particle, a ρ+ meson that forms for a brief moment and then decays into the π+π0 pair. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-lhcb-decay-mode-charmed-beauty.html General Physics Mon, 04 Mar 2024 13:27:50 EST news628781268 Just over a week ago, European physicists announced they had measured the strength of gravity on the smallest scale ever. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-gravity-kitchen-table-tiny-big.html General Physics Quantum Physics Mon, 04 Mar 2024 11:10:01 EST news628772387 Researchers in Imperial College London's Department of Materials have developed a new portable maser that can fit the size of a shoebox. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-maser-shoebox-portable-precision.html General Physics Condensed Matter Fri, 01 Mar 2024 11:55:15 EST news628516512 From televisions to X-ray machines, many modern technologies are enabled by electrons that have been juiced up by a particle accelerator. Now, the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has worked with General Atomics and other partners to unlock even more applications by exploring the process of designing, prototyping and testing particle accelerators that are more powerful and efficient, while also less expensive and bulky. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-cooled-cavity-feasible-commercial-applications.html General Physics Superconductivity Thu, 29 Feb 2024 16:40:05 EST news628447201 Improved neutron mirrors can increase the efficiency of material analysis in neutron sources such as the European Spallation Source. The improved mirror has been developed by researchers at Linköping University by coating a silicon plate with extremely thin layers of iron and silicon mixed with boron carbide. Their study has been published in the journal Science Advances. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-neutron-mirrors-reveal-secrets.html General Physics Thu, 29 Feb 2024 10:34:03 EST news628425241 A study led by Prof. Chen Xurong at the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has provided new insights into the origins of proton mass. From an experimental standpoint, the researchers suggested that the influence of heavy quarks on proton mass could be bigger than scientists initially thought. The findings were published in Physical Review D on Feb. 27. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-insights-proton-mass.html General Physics Wed, 28 Feb 2024 08:07:02 EST news628330021 Most of the energy from the sun and other stars comes from a chain of nuclear fusion reactions. The end of this chain is marked by the fusion of protons with beryllium-7 to form boron-8. This process is key in determining the flow of high-energy solar neutrinos that reach the Earth. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-theory-based-clearer-picture-fusion.html General Physics Plasma Physics Mon, 26 Feb 2024 15:24:13 EST news628183444 There is no doubt that water is significant. Without it, life would never have begun, let alone continue today—not to mention its role in the environment itself, with oceans covering over 70% of Earth. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-theoretical-electronic.html General Physics Soft Matter Mon, 26 Feb 2024 15:00:02 EST news628176248 Scientists are getting a more detailed look than ever before at the electrons they use in precision experiments. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-laser-focused-electrons-shatters-world.html General Physics Optics & Photonics Mon, 26 Feb 2024 14:02:31 EST news628178545 A groundbreaking body of work led by Monash University physicists has opened a new pathway for understanding the universe's fundamental physics. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-secrets-universe-discoveries-gravitational.html General Physics Mon, 26 Feb 2024 12:32:14 EST news628173128 In a recent development at Fudan University, a team of applied mathematicians and AI scientists has unveiled a cutting-edge machine learning framework designed to revolutionize the understanding and prediction of Hamiltonian systems. The paper is published in the journal Physical Review Research. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-machine-predictor-capability-intricate-physical.html General Physics Mon, 26 Feb 2024 11:12:57 EST news628168374 Stanford researchers are getting closer to building a tiny electron accelerator based on "accelerator-on-a-chip" technology with broad potential applications in studying physics as well as medical and industrial uses. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-chip-advance-electrons-microchip-scale.html General Physics Optics & Photonics Mon, 26 Feb 2024 10:52:04 EST news628167121 A new analysis by the STAR collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a particle collider at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, provides the first direct evidence of the imprint left by what may be the universe's most powerful magnetic fields on "deconfined" nuclear matter. The evidence comes from measuring the way differently charged particles separate when emerging from collisions of atomic nuclei at this DOE Office of Science user facility. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-super-strong-magnetic-fields-imprint.html General Physics Fri, 23 Feb 2024 11:55:03 EST news627911701 Networks can represent changing systems, like the spread of an epidemic or the growth of groups in a population of people. But the structure of these networks can change, too, as links appear or vanish over time. To better understand these changes, researchers often study a series of static "snapshots" that capture the structure of the network during a short duration. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-track-important-dynamic-network.html General Physics Fri, 23 Feb 2024 09:29:03 EST news627902941 AEgIS is one of several experiments at CERN's Antimatter Factory producing and studying antihydrogen atoms with the goal of testing with high precision whether antimatter and matter fall to Earth in the same way. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-paves-antimatter-laser-cooling-positronium.html General Physics Condensed Matter Thu, 22 Feb 2024 12:40:02 EST news627825598 When clouds meet clear skies, cloud droplets evaporate as they mix with dry air. A new study involving researchers from the University of Gothenburg has succeeded in capturing what happens in a model. Ultimately, this could lead to more accurate climate modeling in the future. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-cloud-climate.html General Physics Wed, 21 Feb 2024 10:31:15 EST news627733871 In the future, the use of quantum computers could make a significant contribution to promoting greater sustainability in global developments. This was shown in a white paper, which was recently presented at the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai and included contributions from the HPCQS consortium. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-doubly-sustainable-quantum.html General Physics Quantum Physics Tue, 20 Feb 2024 16:22:02 EST news627668521 Researchers at the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and their collaborators have synthesized two new isotopes—osmium-160 and tungsten-156—which sheds new light on nuclear structures and hints that lead-164 could be a doubly magic nucleus with increased stability. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-isotopes-osmium-tungsten.html General Physics Mon, 19 Feb 2024 09:46:03 EST news627558361 Neutron stars in the universe, ultracold atomic gases in the laboratory, and the quark–gluon plasma created in collisions of atomic nuclei at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC): they may seem totally unrelated but, surprisingly enough, they have something in common. They are all a fluid-like state of matter made up of strongly interacting particles. Insights into the properties and behavior of any of these almost-perfect liquids may be key to understanding nature across scales that are orders of magnitude apart. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-cern-quarkgluon-plasma-precisely.html General Physics Fri, 16 Feb 2024 14:09:33 EST news627314969 Nuclear power is considered one of the ways to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, but how to deal with nuclear waste products is among the issues surrounding it. Radioactive waste products can be turned into more stable elements, but this process is not yet viable at scale. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-neutrons-nuclear-technique-paves-treatment.html General Physics Fri, 16 Feb 2024 11:18:04 EST news627304681 According to a recent study from the University of Helsinki, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, a vortex of a superfluid that has been quantized four times has three ways of dividing, depending on the temperature. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-quantum-state-rotating-superfluid-discharge.html General Physics Quantum Physics Fri, 16 Feb 2024 10:24:32 EST news627301468 In creating five new isotopes, an international research team working at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University has brought the stars closer to Earth. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-nuclei-fundamental-science-earth-cosmos.html General Physics Thu, 15 Feb 2024 15:49:05 EST news627234542 In an experiment akin to stop-motion photography, scientists have isolated the energetic movement of an electron while "freezing" the motion of the much larger atom it orbits in a sample of liquid water. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-scientists-electrons-real-liquid.html General Physics Quantum Physics Thu, 15 Feb 2024 14:00:01 EST news627210213 The interior of black holes remains a conundrum for science. In 1916, German physicist Karl Schwarzschild outlined a solution to Albert Einstein's equations of general relativity, in which the center of a black hole consists of a so-called singularity, a point at which space and time no longer exist. Here, the theory goes, all physical laws, including Einstein's general theory of relativity, no longer apply; the principle of causality is suspended. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-star-matryoshka-doll-theory-gravastars.html General Physics Thu, 15 Feb 2024 13:32:15 EST news627226330