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A tabletop gravitational wave detector based around a piece of ringing quartz has recorded two mysterious signals in its first 153 days of operation. It's unclear exactly what these signals are; they could be from a number of phenomena. But one of those phenomena is exactly what the detector is designed to pick up – high-frequency gravitational waves, which have never been recorded before. It's way too soon to come to any conclusions, but the next iteration of the detector will be able to narrow down what caused the quartz to resonate. "It's exciting that this event has shown that...

Accelerators like RHIC and LHC routinely turn energy into matter by accelerating pieces of atoms near the speed of light and smashing them into one another. The 2012 discovery of the Higgs particle at the LHC is a notable example. At the time, the Higgs was the final unobserved particle in the Standard Model, a theory that describes the fundamental forces and building blocks of atoms. Impressive as it is, physicists know the Standard Model explains only about 4% of the matter and energy in the universe. The ions are nuclei of massive elements like gold or lead, and ion...

J2150. (Optical: NASA/ESA/Hubble/STScI; X-ray: NASA/CXC/UNH/D. Lin et al.) _______________________________________________________________________________ The mess created by an encounter between a black hole and an unlucky star has yielded a rare and incredible treasure. By measuring the X-radiation as the star was torn apart by gravity, astronomers have determined that the black hole is an incredibly elusive beast: an intermediate-mass middleweight black hole, sitting between the stellar-mass lightweights and the supermassive heavyweights. Scientists think intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) could be incredibly common, but for some reason, they have proven adept at evading detection, so this discovery is a real prize - one that...

Quantum mechanicsResearch updateWave–particle duality quantified for the first time 01 Sep 2021 Complementarity A new twist on the double-slit experiment. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Andrey VP) One of the most counterintuitive concepts in physics – the idea that quantum objects are complementary, behaving like waves in some situations and like particles in others – just got a new and more quantitative foundation. In a twist on the classic double-slit experiment, scientists at Korea’s Institute for Basic Sciences (IBS) used precisely controlled photon sources to measure a photon’s degree of wave-ness and particle-ness. Their results, published in Science Advances, show that the properties of...

Warp Drive remained in the world of fiction until 1994 when Mexican Mathematician Miguel Alcubierre presented a mathematical model under which a human-piloted craft could theoretically exceed the speed of light. A decade passed, but quietly in the background, NASA brought in scientist Dr. Harold G. “Sonny” White in the mid-2000s to continue developing the Warp Drive. White made refinements to the original model, and in 2003 and 2011, significant leaps were made in Warp Drive theory, seemingly making the impossible a little more possible. Even more revisions have been, and today, the leading model for faster-than-light travel is dubbed...

Using a technique called pendellösung interferometry, a team of physicists...have used neutron beams to probe the crystal structure of silicon at the highest precision yet achieved... This has revealed previously unrecognized properties in silicon, a material crucial to technology; more detailed information about the properties of the neutron; and placed important constraints on the fifth force, if it exists. In a perfect silicon crystal, sheets of atoms in the lattice are arranged in planes that repeat in spacing and orientation. Bouncing the beam precisely off these planes can cause the neutrons to diverge in their routes through the lattice, generating...

In metals, electrons are normally expected to be diffusive in their movement, operating as individual particles – in other words, they don't gain momentum as a group. In a new study, scientists have now discovered a type of metal where electrons actually do flow in a fluid-like way – like water in a pipe – by interacting with quasiparticles called phonons, which emerge from vibrations in a crystal structure. This causes the electrons to shift from diffusive (particle-like) to hydrodynamic (fluid-like) behavior in their movement. The metal superconductor that causes this behavior is a synthesis of niobium and germanium called...

The galactic center in radio wavelengths. (MeerKAT/SARAO) ______________________________________________________________________________ As our eyes on the sky grow ever more sensitive, we're going to find more and more things we've never seen before. Such is the case for a newly discovered source of radio signals, located not far from the center of the galaxy. It's called ASKAP J173608.2-321635, and astronomers have been unable to figure out what kind of cosmic object best fits its weird properties. Their paper has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, and is available on preprint server arXiv. "We have presented the discovery and characterization of ASKAP...

Fast-moving debris from a supernova explosion triggered by a stellar collision crashes into gas thrown out earlier, and the shocks cause bright radio emission seen by the VLA. Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF __________________________________________________________________________ Astronomers have found dramatic evidence that a black hole or neutron star spiraled its way into the core of a companion star and caused that companion to explode as a supernova. The astronomers were tipped off by data from the Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS), a multi-year project using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). “Theorists had predicted that this could...

The galactic plane, seen through infrared eyes. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA) ______________________________________________________________________________________ There are many kinds of stars out there in the big, wide Universe. We have a whole system for categorizing them according to temperature, size, and brightness. Even so, a recently discovered object is suggesting that we're far from knowing everything. It's been nicknamed 'The Accident', and it's a type of object called a brown dwarf, also known as failed stars. But it's unlike any brown dwarf we've ever seen before, with a confusing spectrum – suggesting that it may be nearly as old as the Universe. Since all of the...

Physicists working on a type of fusion reactor called a stellarator are getting closer to actually harnessing the power of nuclear fusion. According to a new paper, the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Germany is now capable of containing heat that reaches temperatures twice as high as those found in the core of the Sun. This means physicists have been able to reduce heat loss - a major step forward in stellarator technology. "It's really exciting news for fusion that this design has been successful," said physicist Novimir Pablant of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). "It clearly shows that this...

Water is the most abundant yet least understood liquid in nature. It exhibits many strange behaviors that scientists still struggle to explain. While most liquids get denser as they get colder, water is most dense at 39 degrees Fahrenheit, just above its freezing point. This is why ice floats to the top of a drinking glass and lakes freeze from the surface down, allowing marine life to survive cold winters. Water also has an unusually high surface tension, allowing insects to walk on its surface, and a large capacity to store heat, keeping ocean temperatures stable.Now, a team that includes...

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have linked together, or “entangled,” the mechanical motion and electronic properties of a tiny blue crystal, giving it a quantum edge in measuring electric fields with record sensitivity that may enhance understanding of the universe. The quantum sensor consists of 150 beryllium ions (electrically charged atoms) confined in a magnetic field, so they self-arrange into a flat 2D crystal just 200 millionths of a meter in diameter. Quantum sensors such as this have the potential to detect signals from dark matter — a mysterious substance that might turn out to...

When X-rays are irradiated onto tumor tissue containing iodine-carrying nanoparticles, the iodine releases electrons that break DNA and kill the cancer cells. Credit: Mindy Takamiya/Kyoto University iCeMS Researchers have found a way to enhance radiation therapy using novel iodine nanoparticles. Cancer cell death is triggered within three days when X-rays are shone onto tumor tissue containing iodine-carrying nanoparticles. The iodine releases electrons that break the tumor’s DNA, leading to cell death. The findings, by scientists at Kyoto University’s Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) and colleagues in Japan and the US, were published in the journal Scientific Reports. “Exposing a...

Visualization of the blue short-wavelength and red long-wavelength bursts. (Joeri van Leeuwen) After taking new radio observations, astronomers have ruled out a leading explanation for the cyclic nature of a particularly curious repeating space signal. The signal in question is FRB 20180916B, which repeats with a 16.35-day periodicity. According to existing models, this could result from interactions between closely orbiting stars; however, the new detections - which include fast radio burst (FRB) observations at the lowest frequencies yet - do not make sense for such a binary system. "Strong stellar winds from the companion of the fast radio burst source...

The five-decade-old paradox — long thought key to linking quantum theory with Einstein’s theory of gravity — is falling to a new generation of thinkers. Netta Engelhardt is leading the way. =============================================================================== In 1974, Stephen Hawking calculated that black holes’ secrets die with them. Random quantum jitter on the spherical outer boundary, or “event horizon,” of a black hole will cause the hole to radiate particles and slowly shrink to nothing. Any record of the star whose violent contraction formed the black hole — and whatever else got swallowed up after — then seemed to be permanently lost. Hawking’s calculation...

Black holes are great at sucking up matter. So great, in fact, that not even light can escape their grasp (hence the name). But given their talent for consumption, why don't black holes just keep expanding and expanding and simply swallow the Universe? In 2018, one of the world's top physicists came up with a dazzling explanation. Conveniently, the idea could also unite the two biggest theories in all of physics. The researcher behind this explanation is none other than Stanford University physicist Leonard Susskind, also known as one of the fathers of string theory. He gave his two cents...

Random twists of place: How quiet is quantum space-time at the Planck scale?February 12, 2021 | Craig Hogan Fermilab scientists have been conducting experiments to look for quantum fluctuations of space and time at the smallest scale imaginable according to known physics. At this limit, the Planck length, our classical notions of space and time break down.Imagine the ratio of the size of the universe compared to a speck of dust. That’s about how big the speck of dust is compared to the Planck length, 10-33 centimeters. The Planck time is how long it takes light to travel that distance.Quantum...

In 1934, Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, theorized a strange kind of matter — a crystal made from electrons. The idea was simple; proving it wasn’t. Physicists tried many tricks over eight decades to nudge electrons into forming these so-called Wigner crystals, with limited success. In June, however, two independent groups of physicists reported in Nature the most direct experimental observations of Wigner crystals yet. “Wigner crystallization is such an old idea,” said Brian Skinner, a physicist at Ohio State University who was not involved with the work. “To see it so cleanly was really nice.” To make...

Like a perpetual motion machine, a time crystal forever cycles between states without consuming energy. Physicists claim to have built this new phase of matter inside a quantum computer. A time crystal flips back and forth between two states without burning energy. Maylee for Quanta Magazine Natalie Wolchover Senior Writer/Editor July 30, 2021 VIEW PDF/PRINT MODE condensed matter physicscrystalsphase transitionsphysicsquantum computingAll topics Watch and Learn In a preprint posted online Thursday night, researchers at Google in collaboration with physicists at Stanford, Princeton and other universities say that they have used Google’s quantum computer to demonstrate a genuine “time crystal.” In...