The Physics Times

2021-08-04 21:27:57 #PhysicsNEWS
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Rate of nuclear reaction in exploding stars
New research by Surrey's Nuclear Physics Group has shown that it's possible to mimic excited quantum states with exotic nuclei, opening up a host of opportunities for next generation radioactive beam facilities, such as the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB).
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2021-08-03 05:19:54 #PhysicsNEWS
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Searching for dark matter inside the Earth
Dark matter remains one of the greatest mysteries in science. Despite decades of astronomical evidence for its existence, no one has yet been able to find any sign of it closer to home. There have been dozens of efforts to do so, and one of the most prominent just hit a milestone—the release and analysis of eight years of data. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory will soon be releasing results from those eight years, but for now let's dive in to what exactly they are looking for.
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2021-08-01 00:07:32 #PhysicsNEWS
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Researchers propose a method of magnetizing a material without applying an external magnetic field
Magnetizing a material without applying an external magnetic field is proposed by researchers at São Paulo State University (UNESP), Brazil, in an article published in the journal Scientific Reports, where they detail the experimental approach used to achieve this goal.
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2021-07-29 00:25:33 #PhysicsNEWS
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Water as a metal
Under normal conditions, pure water is an almost perfect insulator. Water only develops metallic properties under extreme pressure, such as exists deep inside of large planets. Now, an international collaboration has used a completely different approach to produce metallic water and documented the phase transition at BESSY II. The study is published now in Nature.
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2021-07-27 17:44:24 #PhysicsNEWS
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Exploring quantum systems that don't find equilibrium
Some physical systems, especially in the quantum world, do not reach a stable equilibrium even after a long time. An ETH researcher has now found an elegant explanation for this phenomenon.
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2021-07-26 23:22:58 #PhysicsNEWS
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ATLAS reports first observation of WWW production
The ATLAS Collaboration at CERN announces the first observation of "WWW production": The simultaneous creation of three massive W bosons in high-energy Large Hadron Collider (LHC) collisions.
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2021-07-25 21:08:49 #PhysicsNEWS
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Antimatter from laser pincers
In the depths of space, there are celestial bodies where extreme conditions prevail: Rapidly rotating neutron stars generate super-strong magnetic fields. And black holes, with their enormous gravitational pull, can cause huge, energetic jets of matter to shoot out into space. An international physics team with the participation of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has now proposed a new concept that could allow some of these extreme processes to be studied in the laboratory in the future: A special setup of two high-intensity laser beams could create conditions similar to those found near neutron stars. In the discovered process, an antimatter jet is generated and accelerated very efficiently. The experts present their concept in the journal Communications Physics
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2021-07-21 18:06:37 #PhysicsNEWS
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Capturing electrons in space
Interstellar clouds are the birthplaces of new stars, but they also play an important role in the origins of life in the Universe through regions of dust and gas in which chemical compounds form. The research group, molecular systems, led by ERC prize winner Roland Wester at the Institute for ion physics and applied physics at the University of Innsbruck, has set itself the task of better understanding the development of elementary molecules in space. "Put simply, our ion trap allows us to recreate the conditions in space in our laboratory," explains Roland Wester. "This apparatus allows us to study the formation of chemical compounds in detail." The scientists working with Roland Wester have now found an explanation for how negatively charged molecules form in space.
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2021-07-19 22:04:31 #PhysicsNEWS
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The paradox of a free-electron laser without the laser
A new way of producing coherent light in the ultra-violet spectral region, which points the way to developing brilliant table-top X-ray sources, has been produced in research led at the University of Strathclyde.
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2021-07-14 08:50:11 #PhysicsNEWS
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Simulating microswimmers in nematic fluids
Artificial microswimmers have received much attention in recent years. By mimicking microbes which convert their surrounding energy into swimming motions, these particles could soon be exploited for many important applications. Yet before this can happen, researchers must develop methods to better control the trajectories of individual microswimmers in complex environments. In a new study published inEPJ E, Shubhadeep Mandal at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (India), and Marco Mazza at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation in Göttingen (Germany) and Loughborough University (UK), show how this control could be achieved using exotic materials named 'nematic liquid crystals' (LCs)—whose viscosity and elasticity can vary depending on the direction of an applied force.
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