Physics

Nov 19th, 2024 - Gravity may not emerge, but some interesting ideas did. Emergent gravity is a bold idea. It claims that the force of gravity is a mere illusion, more akin to friction or heat—a property that emerges from some deeper physical interaction. This emergent gravity idea might hold the key to rewriting one of the fundamental forces of nature—and it could explain the mysterious nature of dark matter. But in the years since its original proposal, it has not held up well to either experiment ... [Read More]

Nov 19th, 2024 - New work provides a good view of where the field currently stands. In September, Microsoft . It demonstrated progress with quantum error correction, something that will be needed for the technology to move much beyond the interesting demo phase, using hardware from a quantum computing startup called Quantinuum. At the same time, however, the company also announced that it was forming a partnership with a different startup, Atom Computing, which uses a different technology to make qubits ... [Read More]

Nov 6th, 2024 - Primordial black holes (PBHs), which are thought to have formed right after the Big Bang, may be heating up and exploding throughout the universe. These black hole explosions, powered by Hawking radiation — a quantum process where black holes generate particles from the vacuum due to their intense gravitational fields — could be detected by upcoming telescopes, physicists suggest in a new study. And, once spotted, these exotic explosions could reveal whether our universe contains ... [Read More]

Nov 6th, 2024 - NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab How did everything begin? It's a question that humans have pondered for thousands of years. Over the last century or so, science has homed in on an answer: the Big Bang . This describes how the Universe was born in a cataclysmic explosion almost 14 billion years ago. In a tiny fraction of a second , the observable universe grew by the equivalent of a bacterium expanding to the size of the Milky Way. The early universe was extraordinarily hot and ... [Read More]

Nov 3rd, 2024 - A decade after the discovery of the "amplituhedron," physicists have excavated more of the timeless geometry underlying the standard picture of how particles move. The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine . In the fall of 2022, a Princeton University graduate student named Carolina Figueiredo stumbled onto a massive coincidence. She calculated that collisions involving three different types of subatomic particles would all produce the same wreckage. It was like laying a ... [Read More]

Nov 1st, 2024 - Technology companies are pouring billions of dollars into quantum computing , despite the technology still being years away from practical applications. So what will future quantum computers be used for — and why are so many experts convinced they will be game-changing? Building a computer that harnesses the unusual properties of quantum mechanics is an idea that has been in contention since the 1980s . But in the last couple of decades, scientists have made significant strides in ... [Read More]

Oct 25th, 2024 - The universe is made up of much more than meets the eye. While telescopes reveal countless galaxies, each containing billions of stars, physicists and astronomers believe that visible matter is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, and that some kind of unseen dark matter must be out there as well, accounting for some 85 percent of the mass of the universe. No one knows what dark matter is made of, but scientists are confident it's something that doesn't interact with electromagnetic ... [Read More]

Oct 25th, 2024 - Scientists have proposed a new type of data storage device that harnesses the powerful properties of quantum mechanics . The ultra-high-density optical memory device would consist of numerous memory cells, each containing rare earth elements embedded within a solid material — in this case, magnesium oxide (MgO) crystals. The rare earth elements emit photons, or particles of light, which are absorbed by nearby "quantum defects" — vacancies in the crystal lattice containing unbonded ... [Read More]

Oct 23rd, 2024 - For the first time, researchers have accelerated muons — the heavier, unstable cousins of electrons — into a tightly controlled beam, bringing the vision of a muon collider a step closer to reality. A team at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) in Tokai shot a laser at a stream of muons to bring the fast-moving particles to a near-standstill. Then, the researchers applied an electric field to accelerate these 'cooled' muons to around 4% of the speed of light. The ... [Read More]

Oct 22nd, 2024 - The emergence of quantum entanglement is one of the fastest processes in nature. Scientists show that using special tricks, this can be investigated on an attosecond scale. Scientists have managed to analyze ulrafast processes which up until now were considered to be 'instantaneous': When a laser pulse hits an atom with two electrons, one electron may be ripped out of the atom, while the other electron stays close to the nucleus. These two electrons can become entangled in such a way that the ... [Read More]

Oct 22nd, 2024 - Researchers present the integration of a detector system and a polaritonic platform in the same 2D material, enabling for the first time the detection of 2D polaritonic nanoresonators with spectral resolution. The device is suitable for miniaturization and shows record levels of lateral confinement and high-quality factors simultaneously. Polaritons are coupled excitations of electromagnetic waves with either charged particles or vibrations in the atomic lattice of a given material. They are ... [Read More]

Oct 22nd, 2024 - Chemists have developed a new theoretical framework for more accurately predicting the behavior of catalysts. The study reveals how conditions such as temperature and pressure can change a catalyst's structure, efficiency, and even the products it makes -- and can potentially be used to control reaction outcomes. Chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a new theoretical framework for more accurately predicting the behavior of catalysts. ... [Read More]

Oct 20th, 2024 - For decades, physicists have grappled with a puzzling question: How can we reconcile the two different pictures we have of the atomic nucleus? On one hand, we see nuclei as collections of protons and neutrons. On the other, at higher energies, they appear as a sea of quarks and gluons. This disparity has been a sticking point in nuclear physics, but a recent development might just have the answer. High-tech, innovative approach One physicist determined to solve this mystery is Dr. Aleksander ... [Read More]

Oct 18th, 2024 - Physicists have shown that extremely light particles known as axions may occur in large clouds around neutron stars. These axions could form an explanation for the elusive dark matter that cosmologists search for -- and moreover, they might not be too difficult to observe. A team of physicists from the universities of Amsterdam, Princeton and Oxford have shown that extremely light particles known as axions may occur in large clouds around neutron stars. These axions could form an explanation ... [Read More]

Oct 17th, 2024 - Moiré superlattices are materials consisting of two layers stacked on top of each other with either a small rotational misalignment or a lattice mismatch between them. The Kondo lattice model, on the other hand, describes systems in which conduction electrons interact with localized magnetic impurities, which changes the systems' electrical and magnetic properties. In recent years, physicists have successfully engineered materials that combine the physical properties of these two types ... [Read More]

Oct 16th, 2024 - How long do free neutrons live until they decay? This has been a hotly debated topic, because different measurement techniques lead to different results. A possible new solution has now been proposed: All the results can be explained, assuming there are different neutron states with different lifetimes. Neutrons are among the basic building blocks of matter. As long as they are part of a stable atomic nucleus, they can stay there for arbitrary periods of time. However, the situation is ... [Read More]